"Darkness"

Took a painting from last year and started adding dark layers of varnish to it...darker and darker til just  the barest trace of light left. I'm happy with it. One that really needs to be seen in person to be fully appreciated. Its like a signpost saying to me, "This way if you dare!" - time to get back to work...

New Piece!

"Act of Creation During a Moment of Melancholy"     acrylic on canvas, 32"X40".
( a description of some of the process involved in this piece follows below it:)

I began "Act of Creation During a Moment of Melancholy" with a completely different aim in mind: a bright, colorful, cheerful painting! It sat on the easel for some time in that state- cheerful and happy - and very shallow. It left me in a constant state of annoyance. Gradually, colors and light, of a very different nature began to fill my mind…until a moment came when I went back to work and created my dark, "melancholy" painting - at last, very happy and pleased with myself! But, as it turned out, I wasn't finished just yet…the bolt of life-creating energy (into all that lifeless abstraction) literally came out of nowhere, right in to my mind, like I had set the painting up for it to occur. This is the kind of thing I'm looking for - a sort of "search for the miraculous". The cosmological intertwines with the psychological, the macro invades the micro.

 Carl Jung's quintessential question, that he believed every human contained within themselves (whether they liked it or not) was : "What is Man's relation to the infinite?"  The art-making process is part of my search for answers to this question. 

  And it is said, "Always have a question". I have always had the question, "What doesn't change in Life? Everything is so transitory. This leads to questions about subjective states vs. objective states. Artists tend to dismiss the possibility of objectivity..Picasso's famous quote in regards to critiquing art:  "..its like picking the wings off butterflys." Artists get very defensive about being able to create "freely" - that any kind of objectivity would kill their imagination. 

   I'm not so sure. What I've found is a way to perhaps work with one state, the subjective, with the aim of allowing the objective in, as well...I like to start my paintings the way an abstract expressionist would - with no clear image in mind - only the blank canvas before me. I began this process years ago, so It takes a lot to "start fresh" each time. What has happened , over the years, is a sort of visual vocabulary has developed "of its own accord". The different organic shapes, etc that fill "my void" clearly connect to different experiences and different art influences I've had during my own subjective lifetime. These free associations fill up my "inner universe"- so to speak. Everybody is a doorway between the inner and outer universes. I like to think of my work as "abstraction come to life" within a metaphysical space.

  When I look out at the vast night sky I see an empty, dark, cold expanse of space both awe-inspiring and frightening at the same time. How fortunate I am, then, to be able to fill-up my own "inner universe" with comforting shapes and colors! Years back I was so curious about what the planets actually looked like, I invested in a very powerful telescope. My first view of Saturn literally knocked me off my feet. I began to see all sorts of amazing things: nebulae, star clusters, galaxies and color! The first time I saw a Red Giant star orbited by a Blue Dwarf star I was stunned by the sheer brilliance of the color.

 The older I get, it seems as if this thin veil between the two worlds, outer and inner, are constantly overlapping. My fascination with the night sky and expanses of space now permeates the inner world I paint on canvas. Events and circumstances seem to play off each other in ways I'm not even aware of most of the time. Its a cliche at this point in modern talk, but while I'm actually painting, I try to practice, as much as I can , being in the "Now" - dividing my attention between what's going on in my mind and on the canvas and what's happening in my body: my posture, my breathing, the sensations in various parts of my body. In this way, I believe, I can at least bring a little objectivity into play with my subjective states. The aim here, isn't to be less melancholy! More, its to be present to it - allowing it to be - when the inner position is:  "OK paint - I'll watch."

Dreamer

Zombie Regret

I was exposed to my first zombie movie, "Night of the Living Dead", when I was just seven. Needless to say, it had a very powerful impact on me. I had to develop "inner-strategies" for years to battle the negativity and fears I had inside as a result...These days, zombies are part of culture - with zombie parties and parades now the norm. But, I think there's clearly something more than mindless "zombie-fun" going on here...

I'm a believer in the Jungian concept of a "collective unconscious", wherein subconscious messages and symbols present themselves through art and other mediums. Zombies, represent, in my view, a "call to awaken" from the collective unconscious. In this day and age, when religion has lost its  ability to "fill the void", so to speak in many people's lives, there is a sense of people "adrift". Not sure what to cling to for meaning in their lives, and simultaneously bombarded with popular entertainment as a panacea, people are left to find meaning where they can find it: in materialism, New Age fantasies, etc. It is said that the sexual impulse is the most "mechanical force" in the universe. Its pleasures hide the grip it has on persons and society. The celebrity culture would love to say its all about passion and freedom, but when one looks at it objectively, one sees it is the result of a strong , unconscious force having its way with sleeping people, content in their dreamland. Most people would recoil in horror and resentment were one to suggest that they are indeed the "walking dead" ( or, at least, the walking asleep).

Many take to causes: stop the current war, save the environment, stop prejudice, etc - certainly all noble causes in one sense or another. And many will tell you that there is indeed progress being made. But, I'm not so sure. To me, these all seem like temporary "noble causes" that distract from the real work to be done, that is: waking up.
There is a principle.."one's being attracts one's world". That applies to individuals as well as collective bodies. As long as Mankind continues to be fractured , and "in pieces", there will be more of the same.
What do I mean by being "in pieces"? An example: recently, there was posted online some statements by an artist which were quite confrontational and shocking. What was horrifying to me, though, was to see the viciousness and vile comments in response, coming from people whom, until that point,  I had considered rational and sound. All it took was some "vile words" to bring out a corresponding vileness in otherwise gentle persons. This was a fairly innocuous event, but underlined the fact that we are indeed, merely reactive, subjective beings who are not really "free" inside in any real sense of the word. We are all pawns to the forces that shape us. It has been shown that Rwanda and other genocides would not be possible were it not for the fact that normally friendly, gentle, God-fearing people also have the potential to become angry, blood-thirsty killers when the right buttons are pushed. We in the USA think we're above such behavior, when in fact, its only our present state of material comfort that keeps us in check.

 When I was battling my inner "zombie demons" as a boy I played out a scenario in my mind: me as the zombie, running along mindlessly, doing what zombies do; eating people, running, eating some more, etc. The only thing that could break the spell was a growing sense of remorse. I think "remorse of conscious" is an inner force created to assist in spiritual awakening. Its a particular type of remorse:
the realization that I am not actually living. I am merely asleep, living in a dream. Its said, that when a person receives this type of shock there is a possibility "to awaken" because that person may then be willing to begin the real work of what it takes to awaken and be a free human being in the truest sense of the word.

Below: a rather amusing piece I did entitled, "Zombie Regret":

World of Worlds

Think outside the box, think outside your world....a painting from a few years back - dealing with the idea that one can become quite "contained" within the concept of what constitutes "the world" for oneself. When, in fact, we human beings have been given the potential
(and perhaps our obligation to our own evolution) to expand beyond the scope and consciousness of just a single understanding of what constitutes "our world". I'm not referring to the countless inhabited planets in our known universe ( that only makes sense and is fairly obvious) - but more to a connection with a greater inner consciousness that permeates that universe, and other dimensions beyond our (at present) limited imagination.
 I understand that these sorts of ideas will have no resonance for many ( those content to 'chew on their patch of grass' before its they're time to die, or those caught up and rationalizing how important the affairs of men are).  There are others who feel an insistent "call" to grow in the kind of understanding I'm talking about... its you I humbly make my pictures for. Perhaps I come across as arrogant when I say I'm of those sort who say... "I have complete pessimism in the multitude, and complete optimism in the individual" - so be it.

Heated Exchange

Ultimately, to enjoy any kind of true inner freedom, I'm of the understanding that one needs to detach what one identifies as "myself" to the "small-self" emotions that rise up. I react to outside events
( a check in the mail!) or inner conditions ( such as fear of not getting what I want), and a corresponding "self" emotion takes hold : I am happy, I am sad, I am bored...etc.
How does one find a place in oneself in which to observe and accept (without needing to change) these various, ever-changing smaller emotions as they come and go? And, if one is able to do so, can one then allow larger, deeper emotions - unnameable emotions to enter?

Kooky KiDs StuFF

I get crazy serious sometimes and just crazy silly other times...its like the tides, or something. Here's a little piece from a few years back. The idea was to do an alphabet with funny monsters - this guy's name is Billy and everything in the pic starts with a B... (as if you couldn't tell). And the image below Billy is Charles collecting canaries. It was fun tweaking them with the computer a bit..would make nice kids' tees *(me-thinks).