Painting
“Free Association”
Of course, I can be spontaneous, un-thinking, un-editing, when I paint. After all, I spent more than six years in daily psychoanalysis saying whatever came into my head: free association.
And I learned from this experience to trust my inner self, to give it its freedom. I came to Know that there was a Power that could heal me if I could just remove my ego restraints on It.
Read More »“Zuihitsu: Following the Brush”
I don’t write books, but essays which are sometimes later collected into book form. The Japanese call essays zuihitsu, literally, “following the brush.” And it often seems to me that this is the way I write – the words just coming out of my pen, as if automatic. Or at least how I would freely talk.
Read More »“Artists Often Declare”
Artists often declare that their work comes from their unconscious. That’s an ego-proclamation, of which they are proud.
But, unlike them, there are painters – never artists – who are led to believe that the work seemingly by them is really merely through them. And they bow before it in humility, in homage.
Read More »“Empty and Full”
I do some drippings and flingings which vaguely – very vaguely – resemble Jackson Pollock’s.
One of our many differences is that I leave considerable space, whereas he fills every inch of his canvas. Too much, I think. No plains, all mountains. Nowhere to relax and breathe.
Every inch is filled – is wondrously full, but there is no emptiness.
Read More »“I Read Blake and Feel the Spirit”
Of all the paintings and poetry I have ever examined, Blake’s have by far the highest Life Energy, because of his devotion to the realm of the Spirit. As Catherine, his wife, said of him: “I have very little of Mr. Blake’s company; for he is always in Paradise.”
He was an emissary of the Spirit World.
Read More »“Why Did I Paint That?”
“There are reasons of the heart of which Reason knows nothing.”
— Pascal
Why did I paint just that, just there, just then? I don’t know. (And the less representational a painting is, the less superficial the explanation for it.)
There are reasons of the Soul of which my mind knows nothing.
Read More »“Jackson Pollock Dances”
You might think that Jackson Pollock’s movements when flinging the paint would be awkward – even violent. But look at the films of him in action: he’s dancing! There is rhythm and flow; there is grace.
My canvas is much, much smaller – no room for my body to dance – but when I look at it, my hand always is.
Read More »“Every Painting Is Alive!”
Yes, I am pantheistic. Everything is Spirit – is its own unique individual manifestation of The Spirit. Everything is Alive! And the more we Know this Truth, the stronger can be our relationship with It.
Every painting is Alive! Every painting projects, emanates, This into the space before it, into us in that space.
Read More »“Now I’m Painting as a Child Again”
“The reason we find nothing to dislike in the drawings made by children is that in them the inherent nature of man finds expression without being thwarted or frustrated.”* That is to say, they are free to express their Muse, their Souls unrestrained.
But then, “The moment children become self-conscious, their pictures degenerate.”
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