1994
“Creative Artists... are mankind’s wakeners to recollection, summoners of our outward mind to conscious contact with ourselves, not as participants in this or that morsel of history, but as spirit in the consciousness of being.
Their task, therefore, is to communicate directly from one inward world to another, in such a way that an actual shock of experience will have been rendered. Not a mere statement for the information or persuasion of a brain, but an effective communication across the void of space and time, from one center of consciousness to another.”
Joseph Campbell “The Masks of God”
Science and rationalism have sheared away the rich inner life of many of us, but art making has brought it back into being for me. Rather than seeking to live a life based on the elevation of the ego and the exercise of its will for its own end, I have discovered that the ego can maintain its point of reference and yet subjugate itself to the will of the unconscious, thus allowing the intellect to become a tool of the great and unfathomable mystery which life is, and which cannot be penetrated by the intellect alone. Jung wrote... “Man.never perceives anything fully or comprehends anything completely...no matter what instruments he uses, at some point he reaches the edge of certainty beyond which conscious knowledge cannot pass.”
Life can be and is lived beyond that edge of certainty. True creativity exists there too. And though we may search forever in the outer kingdom, we will never find it there, for as Jesus said, “the Kingdom of God is within” My work comes from this source, the kingdom of God within. This work is the Iconography of that inner realm. The place from which our dreams come. The place from which we draw the strength to go on. The place we hear the voice telling us what it is we truly want in our lives. It is the place that connects us to the same energy that drives the galaxies through the universe. It is a place from which the intellect is banished, and so cannot be rationally experienced or explained. It is the place from which answers come when we are truly and profoundly stuck.
But this inner realm is not only a place of goodness and light. It is also a place of shadow and refuse, the unacceptable in ourselves we refuse to look at. As the myths tell us it is a place of challenge, hardship and sacrifice. The artists’ way was well put to us by King Arthur when he instructed the knights on where to begin their search for the Holy Grail... “Go to that place in the forest where there is no path, and it seems darkest and most fearful to you”
The actual day-to-day working in my studio is anything from mentally or emotionally placid. The image of the artist who creates easily and happily, avoiding blocks and turmoil is a fantasy. I spend a lot of time either stuck, or working through being stuck, with only short periods of flowing creativity. The moments of inspiration and vision are infinitesimally small compared with the time spent actually producing the work. Yet my love of art making and the materials I use, drive me on.
In the end, this work is a memento or gift if you wish, from my encounters in the inner world. Not a proof, but an expression that there is more to life than simply what we know or don’t know, and that there is a way to live in which we can be guided by an inner wisdom, if we will have the patience to seek it out.