Necessarily Revisioning

This past Fall I had approached galleries in Santa Fe to have my work exhibited. I was told that my work was good, however, unmarketable. I later was marginally tutored by a very helpful gallery owner and pointed out to me what I could do to improve my chances of having my work noticed, at least, in Santa Fe.

One aspect is to include more color in my work that is not so tonally dark. One of my inspirational sets are the Spanish painters of the post Renaissance and and Caravaggio; and hence the dark tones of my work. I then decided additionally that I should incorporate modern/20th century aspects into my work. My paintings since have become different, being the results of small aesthetical leaps in color, composition, subject matter, and especially, brush strokes.

I will re-approach Santa Fe to have at least some of my work exhibited in any of the contemporary galleries. I will have at least six modernist-influenced works of art to show to them. I have two accomplished. I hope to begin this approach within the next six to nine months.

Something's happening

I subscribe to Friedrich Nietzsche's philosophy of aesthetics, in so far, that art is exemplary of the state-of-affairs, or at least the collective psyche, of a culture. I believe, therefore, that art is also explicitly exemplary of the artist who created it.

My art has been transitioning. It is personally arresting to me because I am not only conscious of the change in the overall aesthetics of my art that I’ve recently produced, but that it also makes me conscious that I must, therefore, be transitioning as well, prior; my art is a response to my transitioning. I, however, have yet to catch up to what is happening to me. I can "see" it, but I do not understand it yet. I have become more distant and isolated from people, more depressive, and less hopeful of my life; and yet my work has recently been produced in ways that it normally has not been, in concordance. 

I have not been doing well. In contrast, however, my art has been at the beginning of a “leap”. It’s going somewhere, as I am psychologically/psychically going somewhere, and I’ve no idea of how the phenomena will appear. I just hope and pray that it will be good, morphologically, and experientially.

Possible psychological uses for art-making

Art making is not a cathartic function for me. Instead of providing me with an ongoing positive experience, it serves me by preventing further descension to negative experiences, if and only if, I am actively art-making. When I stop painting then I fall back into depression, worry, and anxiousness. Chemical antidepressants do virtually nothing for me and drinking has been profoundly damaging. Painting at least keeps me from destabilization, but only as it is happening. Objectively, I have been becoming aware of aspects of my internal sate-of-affairs. I hope that this awareness can somehow, someday, pave further into the possible reconciliation of my psychological and emotional disturbances by being an active artist.

Art and Psychology

I will agree with psycho-analytic psychologies and their proposals that the visual image, when created by a person, can arguably be regarded as s psycho-visual phenomena of the artist who had created the image. The image is a data-set of sorts, of the artist’s psychic corpus (Emotivity, intelligence, awareness, etc.) This is a notion that supports Freidrich Nietzsche’s text, “The Borth of Tragedy” and his argument that the grounds of the particular appearance of a work of art is foundationally rooted in the current state-of-affairs of a culture. The state of culture is reflected in the body of art created by its people. I argue that this phenomenon applies to the individual artist, in that, the art piece is a reflection of the individual’s psychic current psychological state-of-affairs, just as an art piece reflects the psychological state-of-affairs of an entire culture.

Inspiration

Inspiration, or what ever datum, whether it be meta, immediate or otherwise, arrives in certain forms. Artists have been known to derive from the universals of sadness and pain, and it seems sometimes, the lesser frequent experience of happiness and joy. Of the former, depression, great anxiousness, and personal tragedy of various levels have powered my work; however only in part. Other phenomena for me includes a sense of wonder and attraction to what I perceive as subtle and sublime; as if invisible forces are at work in the world and that I am a part of it.
     I wonder often how a state of mind may be conditioned independently of intoxicants, medications and psychological conditions. (Those who suffer from depression understand how this condition can affect decision making and perception of the self and the world that it is within) States of Being, of which sub-ordinates the superficial aforementioned conditions, provide the structural foundation for perception and personal existence. One can be within the ontological throws of certain states of being, and combinations of. Suppose a particular state imposes itself onto ones self to the point where they are sensitive to the soul and to that which it can access? Even if the idea of God is an error, the experiences and feelings that has lead those to conclude that God is so, is certain and perceptible.
     Other than love, being among children and concluding bodies of art, it is the content of my second paragraph that has brought joy to my experiences.

Depths

I make art in terms of the depths involved in my experiences, my intellect, and my being. The latter is essential. I understand that there is a universal form of being, of which that pertains to humanity; all people have universal aspects that reflect as human. But there is personal being; of which the reflects the individual, independent of the the universal being of people. My work deals with both aspects of being, however, much more the latter. I am “peeling” further and further into my personal being despite I do not understand what I am uncovering.

The further one descends, the more difficult it is to “see”. It seems to be one thing to find somethings in the depths, but it is another to understand them. I can only make images that metaphorically represent my inner being. I can hardly claim that my images represent them at all because I hardly understand them.

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- Diamon

“-halfway between mortal and immortal. What do you mean by that, Diotima?”

“They are envoys and interpreters that ply between heaven and earth…”

                                                                                                             - Plato, symposium

The biblical angel seemed to be a Greek idea, first. There were those who critically thought and concluded logically that a God, being such that is impervious to space, time and matter (immortality being an obvious consequence), cannot be compatible with the spacial, temporal and material. If a God were to influence the world, it therefor should not be capable of it. The Daemon, however, is of which that receives and transmits the influence of Gods upon the world; the Daemon is of an in-between substance, being neither here nor there.

This “entity” is personally fascinating to me. The Greek Daemon, as Angels, would  paradoxically have both feet in either existence, and somehow, still exist in neither. This makes me consider the entities of dreams. But suppose that the dream image/entity is made into a phenomenon by a Diamond-Like phenomena? What do the inner mechanisms of the dreams look like, ifs only imaginable? Consider the ritualistic notion of a spiritual being that is invisibly within peyote, and that it comes to exist only when the plant is ingested and sacredly guiding the guided.

I still archaically wonder of the inner workings of imagination and the soul. Having grasped the imaginal product is one thing; the grasping of the very “mechanism” that makes possible our dreams, visual imagery, fantasy (wonderful or grotesque, intentional or unconsciously), and all of the emotivity involved, is another.

More


Something that disturbs me about being an artist is that it sometimes seems to be not much more than a synthesized facsimile of experiences, personality, consciousness, and being. What I however do not disrevere, is of how these aspects necessarily synthesize, as artists go, amongst others things, into "art" in-itself, as corpus. What I though do not wish, is for all of this to just be a synthetic weaving of all such, and NOTHING MORE; metaphysically and otherwise.

Reaching the Plateau

It seems that an artist who has come to their most refined point, then one comes to a “plateau”; as if the artist progress very little further, if at all, at all of their artistic levels. Monet, amongst many others, is my favored example of this; he needed not any longer to progress because his work was so complete and refined, perhaps even perfect. I truly believe that the notion of further refinement in his work, if it was even possible, would have been very, very unnecessary.

My work continues to change; I am still working to refine my art in terms of aesthetics, meaning, skill level, etc. My centration on pre-20th century art constitutions and their canonical aspects are coming to an end and I am moving forward from much of it. I am focusing more on what the surrealists have done, and then after much time, I’ll have to move on from what the 20th century had contributed to art. If I succeed, then I’ll have moved into an artistic, intellectual, and very personal state of being that should be uniquely my own.

Until then, it is a very slow and very focused climb forward and upwards. I wish to reach the point of “beyond”. This is where I believe that I will Plateau.

Art and Synthesis

Art, as it has been seeming to me, is a synthesis of 1) one’s empirical experiences, 2) the emotive experiences that emerge from the empirical, and then 3) the essential psychic corpus that the artist employs (abstraction, calculation, imagination, etc.etc.) to synthesize the aforementioned empirical/emotive experiences into an image.

The important distinction of this synthesis is that the artistic image is not simply a combination of 1), 2) and 3), but is a tertiary existence altogether, now independent of the empirical world, the emotions that prompted, and the artists inner world. I believe that this arguably addresses the problem of Cartesian Dualism of ‘Self’ and ‘Other’. The art image is now neither, but a tertiary existent entity.

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Supernatural

Consider the nature and purposes of Id, Ego and Super Ego consciousness of in terms of Jungian thought. Ego, crudely, can be seen as the in-between mediator of the lower Id consciousness and mediation towards the higher Super ego consciousness.

Suppose that it maybe be possible that both fields of the lower and higher consciousness can be co-operatively operational WITHOUT any mediation? As if for two regions can meet and have a single, synthesized rapport without a bridge?

This isn't logical. Psychologically, however, as a possible phenomena, I want to call this the supernatural.

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Psychic Narrative

The “Psychic Narrative” is a term that I’ve invented for the purpose and intention of my artwork. If one were to have inner and outer experiences during their life, it may become a personal story of sorts; a psychic narrative insofar that it is an emotional, ontological and existential discourse. My Psychic Narratives are transformed into visual images. Should one choose to look at and attempt to ‘read’ my work, they will uncover my stories; my inner state-of-affairs.

Mediation and Identity

If a completely assembled puzzle were to fall to pieces, it plausibly could be pieced together again because it already possess the constitution of necessarily fitting pieces that could become a completely assembled through the mediation of a guiding hand and mind. Imagine however if 1) the picture was somehow non-referential to itself and 2) all of the pieces of this puzzle were uniformly shaped; the risk of piecing together its picture incorrectly becomes possible. 

 

This concept may be applied to phenomena of self. If one’s identity and self were to somehow become discorporate, and if it were possible to re-form ones self, however without guidance or reference, then “malformation” will likely ensue. One may experience disturbance if one can experiences that they were somehow not “formed” as one that ought be. 

Metaphysically, the foundation for “self, or an analogous puzzle, may allow malformed phenomena of self to occur depending upon it’s mediation; in other words, upon how the puzzle itself is assembled. The foundational stuff in-itself, or the puzzle pieces themselves, may not possess error at all, but that the ASSEMBLY of such analogous pieces may be the cause of error. It is a picture that had been wrongly mediated by hands that fit the pieces incongruently, creating a strange picture upon completion. Such as in the case of chemical interference of a child in utero causing deformation, or the carnation that had an artificial dye in it’s water thus causing it to assume an unnatural color; the phenomena thus would be profoundly altered; a puzzle that had been wrongly mediated. If existentially addressed, then one may assume that their current phenomena may be a mistake or an error.

 

As I examine my-self I personally wonder how I could have been formed otherwise. I wonder how my particularized self may have become another had I experienced different conditions of life, resultant of alternative mediation. Had I life conditions that were optimal without such harm that my personal history indicates, then I may be a very different person from the standpoint of who and how I am. Optimistically and empoweringliy, however like a puzzle, I wonder if I have such power to disassemble and reassemble myself, if possible, through the mediation of will and personal intent; that I may mediate myself in the way that I desire.

Concerning the roots of past and present

The art of Caravaggio, Rembrandt and Monet has been a set of ongoing influences of my work. Despite the historical grounds, my work however does not escape modernity; it is in the color used in my work and the structure involved in he subject matter depicted. Examining the history of art informs one of it’s progression and organic “evolution” through time. I do not feel that I will, perhaps ever, add to the corpus of art in terms of its changing growth. I tend to believe this because I extrapolate so much from the past and synthesize it with the ‘now’, but seem not to create something that progresses towards the new. It is something that is difficult for me to  imagine. 

 

The Renaissance was the set of movements that derived from the historical past of art, but clearly moved on ahead through time. It succeeded in mapping the future course of all art and aesthetics, and even aspects of science, for the western world. But if a modern artist is creating something that will help enable the western world to move forward to different and new epochs of expression, aesthetics and intellect, can they do so without so much dependance upon the historical past and the movements of the present?

 

Or has this synthesis of past and present been the catalyst of moving forward to our cultural future, all along? If not, what is it? If it is, what are we missing that can inform us of this?

 

My work represents at best, only as far as I am aware, are extensions of what was and what is; past and present. But I’ll not know if it ever will foster, along with the efforts of other artists, the ongoing progression and evolution of Western art; the future.

What strikes me about the the idea of Purgatory is that it constitutes a metaphysical means to an end for the struggling soul upon the time of death; to purge itself of forgivable sin for the purpose of rising to Paradise. The venture from this upper region of damnation however comes at the divine price of vast and required commitment to effort, labor, time. The transcendence from Hell, via the laborious commitment to the terms of Purgatory, was famously expressed through Dante Alegheri’s ‘The Divine Comedy’, where author himself was lead by Virgil and then Camille, to climb an enormous spiral of stone toward its ‘end’, to Paradise above. It was however suggested by St. Augustine of Hippo that the metaphysical experience of laboring through Purgatory can be experienced while one is alive within the corporeal world. If it is so that the metaphysical experience of Purgatorium is feasibly possible during life, it must be made possible as via the human soul; this may be so as the soul allows access to, what is believed in catholic and christian doctrine, the regions of Damnation, Purgatory and Paradise. The doors to such experiences are splayed wide open upon death. Within life however, it seems that glimpses are possible. My grounds for this is supported from what I’ve read from Augustine, Aquinas, Dante, and Origin. My own experiences in both 2006 and 2007 constituted the best proof of the Human soul that I could have ever imagined.

Philosophically I consider the problem with ‘Being’, as considered by Rene’ Descartes, as Cartesian Dualism; the fact that human beings tend to divide all that they experience into a set of ‘self’ and ‘other’. Immanuel Kant examines invites this problem to an examination of the Ontological, and then eventually by Martin Heidegger, who refines this and proposed that the experience of Self and Other is imposed upon human beings as per order of Dasein. It’s been a personal struggle for me to be aware of myself as separated from other selves, and even from the world at large; everything seems to be, in my experiences, and in everyone else's I presume, an en-labled entity separate from myself. The result of this experience is a feeling of separation and non-integration of the world, despite that I am physically "there". I’ve met people in my past who have admitted to me that they experience the world as if it all was on the other side of a sheet of glass, or as if watching it on a tv screen. As analogy, Purgatory seems to be a fitting description of this ontological experience. Being neither here nor there, having not yet removing that barrier between one’s self and the world beyond them. A synthesis of self and other can be possible, but I wonder what labor and amount of time would be required in the mind and soul to accomplish this.

On Aesthetics and History

According to accounts of art history, a critical component of painting, prior to the movement towards modernity, was the visual narrative and its depictive “concrete” imagery. Approaching the 20th century, the subject matter of western painting became simpler in its narrative, and therefore, required less complexity of the visual imagery to support it. The time of biblical and mythological narrative that concerned Western art was exchanged later for a time that concerned humbler subject matters of, for example, the provincial and the landscape; the importance of the narrative, and the imagery the supported it, continued to wane during the emergence of the experimentally modern and “New” trends of the art in the 20th century. The quantitative visual results and effects of the medium itself had became more important than the image that could have been created had thus brought the narrative and the concrete image largely to an end in the art history of Western Art. I agree with aesthetic theories that explain the importance of historical grounds with art, in so far it it provides the foundation necessary to preserve the importance, value, and cultural durability of the art piece, through time. The narrative and the concrete image are facilitations of the historical grounds of visual art; if the narrative and the concrete image were to be removed from the art work, then there would not be means for history to make art endurably relevant through time. Modernist aesthetics demonstrated not only how the historical had been rendered irrelevant in the support of the experimental ‘New’, but that the historical contradicts the very constitution of the New and the modern; the new would contradict its very constitution if it possessed aspects of old. The historical was necessarily rejected for the creation and survival of the new art of modernity, and therefore, frequently had no use for the image and the narrative in the contemporary visual art of the 20th century.

The trend of Pop Surrealism seems to have gained momentum in contemporary western culture, and with it, some restoration of the concrete image and the visual narrative. History therefore has become relevant again and is evident within the products of the Pop Surrealist trend as it exhibits baroque aesthetics and technique of painting, an emulation from the late 1800’s, however mimetic. Aesthetic mimicry however now may be the momentum of new trends of art that involve concrete imagery and narrative, for it seems that art has not moved far enough beyond from the standards of modern art set by the 20th century to discover what is ahead. The contemporary artist who wishes to create an image independent of of “modern art” now seem to have little else but to grasp back into history to derive from for any aesthetic that could be considered progressive, because there has yet to be a new aesthetic established beyond those set by modernism.

Smelting

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I recall the myth of Paeton and his decision to take the chariot of his father, the God of the Sun. He wanted to experience greatness, however, in his folly, he burned the universe. Stars came into being at the expense of his life.

Fire as an idea has been a part of my thinking for a long time. It is a part of the analogy of Smelting and it arrives as I think of some of my experiences and what I hope to become. I believe that one can become greater than what they presently are, but the price behind this is adverse to one degree or another. An athlete trains to be great at the expense of the physical pain of training and injury; an artist does this too at the expense of time, error through trial, criticism, and the labor committed to art. Purity requires that impurity must be removed; the process necessarily involved is neither a kind nor easy experience.

I think much of the idea of purging fire as I step into and out of it to become a better, greater person. Inequities are purged by great time and labor in a Purgatorial sense. Biblically, it would be to redeem one to Paradise. In the actual world, is this not analogous to what is required to become a greater person?

I am afraid of the effort and sorts of ‘pain’ that I have to face to become better than I am. However, I am often more afraid that there is not enough time to become what I feel that I ought to. This is one reason why I fear death, and yet, faith has always been difficult for me. This has been something that I’ve been needing to learn; that I’ve enough time and strength in this world to allow great things to emerge from myself. I believe that this is possible. I am committed to making this happen.

On aesthetics

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I've had little reading experience with the idea/theory of "Aesthetics". Until I can have my idea improved, I believe that an aesthetic, owned and applied by an individual and/or a culture, is like an inner-personal gauge that evaluates a thing on a purely qualifiable level of value. Not quantifiable; I do not believe that objective evaluation of physical, spacial nor physical measure are relevant aesthetics, such as how one erects a building, with mechanical and mathematical necessity, beginning from its schematic. But as to how the building looks and feels in an acceptable and positive sense to the builder, such as its style, color, and placement in the world, are things that are qualifications as opposed to quantifications. An object considered ugly and unsightly has qualified such a thing through his/her personal aesthetics. Another may have an alternative form of aesthetics that may qualify for one interest or even beauty, for the same object considered negatively.

My personal aesthetics have their grounds in several periods of the Renaissance; a synthesis of subject matters that concerned Rubens, of Caravaggio and Rembrandt for their considerations and experimentation of light and shadow, and then the artists of the Mannerist period where the imaginatively ideal influenced their sense of color and the human form. The Impressionist period that had begun in France had offered me alternatives to brush quality and color application, and the movement of the Surrealists offered me the possibility of what descends my consciousness. I've spent much time synthesizing these styles and idea's in combination with my own contributions.

I sometimes feel that the relevance of my art can be compromised by the aesthetics that govern it. I have been using archaic visual ideas and themes, of which that seem not of cultural or popular interest when compared to the contemporary/modern. The nude, the male nude especially, is neither an aesthetic that comes without difficulty when it faces the puritanical judgments of the western world. I've dedicated myself to being an artist; however, I am afraid that my art with my aesthetics applied may not be evaluated as something desirable or needed in the world.

What does an artist do if this is the case? I could either go on being an artist with the hope that the world will judge me well and desire my art as a contribution, or be an artist to generate work that will be ignored. I'd be an artist all the same, and a good one; however the rest of the world as my judge and that of my work seems to be the other half of my success. I hope that I will be involved in the world at the right time if a cultural void appears and it hungers for an aesthetic that will help take it beyond the now.

Afretbirthed

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2006 and 2007 were years when I had experiences that have provided great personal transformation. This image is one of many that represents what this experience was like. I often wonder of the experiences that have influenced the images and idea's of the many artists and thinkers of this world.

Smelting, as a concept, is relevant to this image. A pure substance is hoped to derived or extracted from a body of impurities. Gold, for example, within a vessel of great heat, can be released from the earth that contains it. The slag, however, is left behind.

Smelting, to me, serves as an analogy for profound transformation; intellectually, spiritually, and so fourth. The "purity" that I felt had been extracted from my self through my 'experiences' in 2006 and 2007 had transformed me into how I am now (both intellectually and how I've come to exist spiritually). I do however consider the the possible aspects of my self that would be analogous to slag; I often wonder what had become of it. Does it still reside within? Does the 'slag' of being, rendered unnecessary, disappear or become something else? How does it appear and does it have a function? Metaphorically, does this after-birth assume another form of inner life and re-arrive as a golem or a monster? Or will it become passive like earth where it can allow something to grow? I believe that it becomes absorbed or transformed. Into what, I still do not know. I try to imagine it however; this image reflects this curiosity.