Art!

WIP on my next space painting, and thoughts on art as primary.

A huge departure for me, adding an old chrone to my pantheon of primordial gods and goddesses. (Each of them 64×48”, oil on linen.) This one is the 15th or 16th, depending on what I decide about the previous one, Eve.

The Space Series is devoted to our shadowed selves being transparent and the stuff of the universe, while it is the light that defines us.

What tipped the scale to include this golden oldie was that the nebula is luminous behind her and since her shadows will be transparent, everywhere will be glowing. Instead of looking like a dark ink drawing of a gnarly oak tree with Grand Canyon crevices she will personify radiance itself, and I believe will look like her spirit inside.

Many people think an artist or writer can take an old or deformed person and turn them into something beautiful and godlike by will, and have them viscerally feel that way to the viewer! It doesn’t work that way, no matter how much everyone wants it to be so. I’m pretty sure my glowing approach will work, but it could backfire.

Iv never been religious or mystical, I am 100% about human life of earth, its past, and future legacy. Figurative art marks the beginning of modern human cognition 40,000 years ago with Lion Man and the cave paintings. We cannot prove how they thought, felt, and perceived except through painting, drawing, and sculpture. We cannot prove it through other means without relying on speculation.

Going further, it’s my belief is that art is god, that incredible spiritual feeling of when our emotions, thoughts, and perceptual senses merge/integrate creating the ultimate experience of exaltation with it powerful and certainty of reality—none of that messy shit trying to frame a void into human meaning. There is also the fact that all religions have appropriated some form of art as visceral hooks, they have nothing without art.

Amazingly still, figurative art is a million times more universal than any religious framing. Art is experienced by everyone (in the last 40,000 years), little children 3 and 4 years old create it, it’s in our DNA, it applies equally to every race, culture, and civilization. A painted bison registers to literally everyone, except the blind (but sculpture will work the same way for them through touch). Art includes everyone past, present, and future. While tribal stuff of race, politics, and nationalities divide people into us versus them. Ha, I just want to yell at these divisions: just fucking stop it!

My pantheon speaks to this human continuum and university. And recognizing that art is what makes humans human and will continue to do so.