Tag: creativity

Posted in Paintings in Progress

All that is Golden- The Sun Standard

Posted on by Dogfish Bay

It’s hard to say why we are struck by certain images.

20 years ago I did a painting inspired by a dream of a bullfight. Bullfight ticket sellers ask their customers: “el sol o la sombra? Meaning: “do you want seats in the sun or the shade?”. As the sun passed, the shaded seats commanded a higher price. This fluid standard seemed a true valuation system because of it’s cosmic scope. It might be called the Sun standard.el sol o sombre

Gold and Sun are symbols that announce a new age ruled by the truest of values-that which emerge from the human heart.

In this Spanish interrogative I hear echoed the ancient Mithraic conflict between the Light of Glory and Ahrimanic Darkness. This is a drama which transcends religious history, learned judgments about dualism, and my own, personal revulsion at an act of cruelty.

The arena is a mandala-a microcosm.  The ritual killing it sanctifies has echoes throughout the cycles of history as an archetype-one that charges a brutal spectator sport with religious energy.  it is the reenactment of the primordial victory that ensures the perpetuation of the world.

In his book, Spiritual Body and Celestial Earth, Henry Corbin uses the striking  image of the progersso harmonium to describe the relationship between Shi’ite Islam and the earlier Mazdianism religion. The relation is not the  linear view of religious history by which  fundamentalists of all faiths are bound, but the fundamental tone, the timeless Truth to which all religions are ultimately traced.  It is ever present, running throughout time like a basso profundo under the higher registers of the octave.

To pass from one octave to another is not the same as to pass from one date in time to another, but is a progression to a height or pitch that is qualitatively different. All the elements are changed, yet the form of the melody is the same. Something in the nature of harmonic perception is needed to perceive a world of many dimensions.

So midway between the darkness of uncertainty and the light of inspiration, I revisit a related image, the altar. I set the stage with a yellow/orange ground. I want to hone my harmonic perception that I may realize my theme in a higher register, one that captures it’s elusive quality.day of dead altar

It now becomes  an altar for the Day of the Dead. On it I place my mother’s ashes, the tattered image of dad, and all loved ones who’ve left the arena of life. Here is the true value-the measure of all that is Golden.

Posted in Paintings in Progress

Raven Window-The Albedo Phase

Posted on by Dogfish Bay

DSC02382raven window 3The canvas is theTemenos, where I had earlier faced the black work of the Nigredo- where the inessential was burnt away leaving the skeletal composition etched in blackest black..

Stained glass framed the scene for my latest confrontation with doubt and the obstinate reality of the Prima Materia.

Now is the phase to which corresponds the Alchemical process of the Albedo-the whitening.

The Hermetic philosopher, Artephius said it is:

“That which is uplifted by the air…pure, subtle, brilliant, clear as the dew, diaphanous as unflawed crystal.”

The diaphanous in between I invoke, where light reflects both ways.

Julius Evola, says in the Hermetic Tradition says the Albedo:

“ …reintegrates the personality with the non-corporeal state.”

It moves me outward from this dark interior of crowded thoughts, into something vast-where the spectral colors of the work’s final phase finds its completion in harmony.

It is Raven’s call.

Posted in Paintings in Progress

Raven Visitation 2

Posted on by Dogfish Bay

DSC02373raven window 2

Carrying on with the Raven Visitation. As Raven is the messenger who dwells between worlds, the stained glass window motif fits the theme. It frames the shifty threshold where spirit travels between waking and dream.

Stained-glass demands a faithfulness to process which brings you back, again and again, to the logical form of it’s making. It is fitting that the material for scribing of boundaries in stained-glass windows is Saturn’s element, lead.

It is also fitting that the base material of the painter is charcoal, end product of the calcification process in Alchemy. Composition is a fiery process where all superfluous passages are burnt away, leaving only the original inspiration, the point of it all. It is a reminder of the point of all this shifting between worlds, and the spirit I need to maintain through the fiery calcification process: that my heart’s work may benefit all beings. It is Raven’s wake-up call.

Posted in Paintings in Progress

Raven Visitation

Posted on by Dogfish Bay

raven windowraven window

I’ve gotten to work on my November art show, beginning with an image inspired by an encounter with raven.

In waking life, while walking in the forest I heard the a rush of a raven’s wings beating the air overhead.

Later, the same sound woke me from sleep. The clear call pierced my dream and I suddenly woke  in my bedroom with nary a raven in sight and the doors firmly shut against intruders.

A visitation, a call? The light-bringer moved between worlds with a sign for me to to transpose into the language of art.

So this is where the work comes in.   It is a Art Deco stained glass window motif I thought appropriate Raven’s boundary-crossing spirit.  It is a spirit that, as James  Fielden puts it in his beautiful post,  A Lapse of Time, “pushes against the edges of mystery.”

Posted in videos

The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner

Posted on by Dogfish Bay

I shot this video yesterday while cruising slowly down Bainbridge Island’s east shore toward Point Monroe and Port Madison beyond.  Although my speed was a mere 2 knots, it was one of those days where all came together in a perfect moment.  The only sign of wind I saw wind was along my course-

…on me, alone, it blew.

Posted in Musings

Ovoids and Northwest Coast Indian Art

Posted on by Dogfish Bay

In my last post I cited Johnathan Raban’s observation in The sea and it’s meanings about the elongated oval motif seen in Northwest Coast Indian art. He said that the image was inspired by wave patterns on the water’s surface.  Though I wasn’t that impressed by Raban’s book, I think of this idea whenever I contemplate the play of light flitting over the water.

Then I began I began reading The Way of the Masks by Claude Levi-Strauss.

The stories of the masks are about preservation of a heritage, the appearance, healing or perpetuation of the ancestors through drama. Since the drama occurs in the timeless realm, its artistic retelling is continuous with the original creation, and the cyclic rehearsal of the masks’ origins is part of a long process establishing it’s status as an ancestor.

Levi-Strauss, using structural analysis of Salish stories, claims the masks (and accompanying stories, songs and dances) originated on the mainland and made their way to Vancouver Island. During migration, the chthonic, submarine origin stories of the mainland are counterpoised by a celestial derivation. As they made their long journey to the islands the stories underwent a structural and thematic inversion:

“Having placed the masks’ origin at the beginning instead of the end of the tale, and having the masks fall from the sky-in contrast with the mainland versions where they are pulled up from the bottom of the water-the island versions literally do not know how to finish the story. They need a conclusion…”

He goes on to say how these contrasting origin stories were resolved:

“…as the story unfolds between the mainland and the island, it always adopts intermediate courses. Instead of falling from the sky or surfacing from the bottom of a lake, the first mask suddenly appears on the roof of a house: halfway between up-above and down-below.”

Another such midpoint is the surface of the water.

Many have remarked on the Northwest Coast artist’s capacity for improvisation within a limited set of design motifs. With this image of the oval, the  artist invites us to see above and below simultaneously. The ovoid shape and surrounding areas are interwoven with a fluid dynamism that unifies various elements and vantage points.  In addition to the simultaneous views of front and back, left and right, we see a fusion of above and below, uniting not only various views on the horizontal plane, but that along the vertical axis as well. The contrasting viewpoints are artistically realized on a higher plane-a broader prospect that transcends contradiction. Northwest Coast art is animated by the dialectics of height and depth.

In the two origin stories and their resolution we see how myths and art are co-extensive with the tribe’s history, and how the reconciliation of chthonic and celestial origin stories are reflected in the development of artistic styles.

Posted in Uncategorized

Wandering in Place

Posted on by Dogfish Bay

A great post. He writes eloquently about the inability to write. Something I’m sure my blogger friends can relate to.

danielwalldammit's avatarnorthierthanthou

There once was a boy named Dan. He sat down in front of his computer and thought real hard. But on this day, he had nothing really to say. Dan thought, and he frowned, and he even tapped out a word or two, but nothing much came to mind. The big bad delete button ate all his work. Dan pouted and said; “foo on you, bad button.” But the bad delete button just laughed and told Dan it was his own fault.

Silly Dan. Only a Dummy-Butt sits at a computer with nothing to say.

The blank page mocked Mr. Dammit as he sat in silence contemplating this new quandary. Where had the words made off to? China-town? The casino down by the back alley? Perhaps they were sitting right now with a hot dame having a laugh on Dan’s behalf? There may have been a million stale stories to…

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Posted in Paintings in Progress

Our Lady of the Kedge

Posted on by Dogfish Bay

vickers painting may 23 2013

There are infinite possibilities in art. When faced with an empty canvas an artist can be stymied by so many alternatives. It requires a narrowing of focus to hone in on intention, that particular thing you are called upon to express.

One needs set the right environment, speak prayers of supplication to the muse, and open to what nature has to reveal in the exuberant flow of her endless manifestations.

The challenge is to maintain balance, and walk the fine line between conscious intent and receptivity to what arises spontaneously when paint hits canvas and colors bleed in confounding ways.

I take a break from the mental gyrations of painting to work in the garden.DSC02047

Thatcher Farm is big, with more rows of fertile earth than I can plant. I take an 8 by 16′ bed and divide it according to the square foot gardening technique. I lay it out with sticks and line, and plant seeds so many per square depending on the plant’s requirement for space. I impose an ordered framework, prepare the ground and trust that Mother Gaia can take it from there.

It’s like the layout for my next painting. But here the grid is based on the mystic proportion, the Golden Mean.

It is a major precept of spiritual and artistic disciplines to work like nature. The ancients discovered that the Golden mean is the proportion that comes closest to the original unity from which the diversity of life forms arose. It is this unity to which, in spiritual practice, we aspire to return. The proportion is expressed in plants, shells and seasonal cycles.

I lay out a grid of charcoal lines and, with color studies, narrow the colors to a triad of blue/green, red/violet and yellow/orange.

vickers painting 3

The sculpture on the Vickers memorial abides by the golden proportion, and its mystic rule sets the measure for creative expansion into the space around her. She is a portion of that spaciousness which is the ultimate nature of reality and she bestows it generously upon the graves of Port Madison’s founders lying at her stone feet.  Like a beacon, she radiates light far over the bay.

I recall what my Eastern European sculpture teacher told me: sculpture is, ultimately, about light and space. He talked about how Michelangelo distorted David’s head so it would catch light and project it upward. Maybe it had to do with chakra’s. But I did learn from him that the ultimate end of the sculptor’s work is emptiness.

It is the quality of spaciousness and light she projects that is the theme of my painting, and her expansive energy inspires a harmonious distribution of color and form on the canvas. For, in the end, it comes down to this: to call upon the muse of art (and gardening) to favor us with her bounty and use the brute material of the tangible world to evoke the intangible spirit.