This world has a way of breaking us apart. It seems to do such a thing. Pull and tear at us until we break into something new. The way of development individually and collectively is filled with crisis. I’m not sure why it has to be as treacherous as it seems, but no matter what, we find our way to respond to the demanding nature of reality.
My decision to disappear into painting, I surely understand. The way it holds it still a few moments, much like good poetry or story. My first time painting was an inspired decision that I couldn’t refuse. A part of myself wanted to speak. Sat me right down and said, “now hear this”. What came out was therapy I did not anticipate and a friendship you can’t buy.
The clarity in the process was loud. That first painting was the only one I named for a number of years. I had called it “Failure”. An attempt at a flower that moved to mud. There was such intense frustration within my quietly painting form. I wanted to paint a prettier flower but I had kept at it too long. It was such a quick shot of upset, then my eyes moved next to the flower and let my hand do whatever it wanted. Joy returned with each stroke and next to the mud appeared a stream and then a sweet bird appeared. I didn’t expect it to happen and I didn’t expect to have such intense emotions about it all.
Painting is a good teacher of following instincts. An enlightening quest of knowing what is happening and a jump into the abyss of tell me more. It is a strange and wondrous experience. A part of a process of becoming aware of the incredibly intricate nature of being alive and the complexities of the artist trying to grasp the existential nature of reality that is present at all times and what to do next.
It has been a practice of giving in to the hand and instincts that are a number of steps ahead of me. You meet yourself many ways and one way is certainly painting. A vain and isolated predicament that pains harshly often. But when I paint, things inside come out. It feels like discovering rites of passage to inner workings and the communication that holds things together. You cross a bridge of unconscious becoming conscious and a leap into other states of being with a sense of eternal time that holds it all together.
What I had done for myself was simply the valiant effort and attempt to sift through the noise and find what truly wanted to be heard. I wanted to know it and act from it. It seemed to speak of the best of things and an anecdote to the problems. The gifts of humanity given freely when acted upon.
There is a painting I did one night of a pyramid torn open, an eye looking out of it. There are two monks sitting on the edge looking in. A Christian monk standing and a Buddhist monk sitting, both very humbled by their looking. The eye felt like it held everything that ever existed. They were silent and in shock of knowing the truth, despite being used to it, and simply present and observing, not knowing what else to do. That eye felt terrifying, it felt to have seen everything that has ever occurred. It felt like it told of the nature of humans. The Buddhist monk was holding me by a string tied around my waste. I was made of just a tiny brush stroke, almost nothing, but still a figure swinging from a cord, passed out cold. I could barely paint it and somehow felt the reality of it. Just with paint brush in hand and the desire to be in direct contact with deep truth of reality, I was attempting to experience a relationship with something deep and sacred, and found it impossible not to be overwhelmed.
Just in a room, sitting and painting, feeling the presence of everything at once right now and moving my brush to paint for me an understanding of what is streaming through. It is an amazing thing to be alive and be able to interpret information and relay it out. We are incredible beings with amazing faculties.
I am writing this and even sharing these paintings partially to point further to our capacity as people. Our ability to know things without really knowing them is an interesting concept. The things that lurk in our awareness and unconscious. Painting, I discovered my ability to know about things happening in real time. Things I would learn about the next day. That blew my mind and helped me to understand the ability of us to know things no matter where we are or what we are doing.
It also helped me to understand the vast sea of upset that I see people in everyday. The experience of being here together. Information builds and is shared. What that information tells us and what we do with it is the power that we have. The amazing nature of humanity is that is functions despite the large amount of information and energy of our system. Past, present and future. Purposes beyond capacity to fully realize, but that realization contains all the world and the future as it comes in every moment.
Some themes seemed to have gathered at different times throughout the years. The level from masonic ideals entered into a painting for my own life, a a relationship, and a city. To level and plumb your life. Also, robed figures bound together in other realms watching over us, great & wise birds, suns and moons, the sky, ocean and ground. There are often open windows, stairways, green fields and treasures. Large pearls are revealed and given as gifts. There is a medicine bowl and Buddhas. Christ and Mary appear often. Common themes are innocence, forgiveness and shadows.There are teachings of life force energy moving through the body. Chakras, the Atman and a diamond symbol of the soul. The ways in which humanity has formed and continues to. We have tremendous abilities still completely misunderstood. Within groups of people is found the very essence of what makes our world what it is today and tomorrow. We grow with each other and there is a way we all go.
We are alive and here with everyone else. We come and go and in it is beauty and terror.