I needed to get out at lunch today and paint, but I have run out of hardboard cut to size, so I painted on a file folder I had with me. A view at the little park past Peaceful valley. I liked the paper surface, I should try more works on paper like this. (pic later)
We are seeking escape from the lines and lanes that hold us in chains. The paintings are simply a tool in that journey, they are not product-making pursuits (although we do sort of end up with these relics, and putting them up for sale makes sense). But the real work is freedom I believe. That is the glory of art, the prize, the crown of creation - that a man or woman, thus inspired, discover the freedom hidden in life, and they become free, forever free, of the dictates and meanings of man. This freedom is beyond compare… so few find it, for it requires the utmost attention upon the mists, and the faint voices from heaven. But always there, always ready, always soothing. This place, which can not be placed into words which man’s reasoning can grasp, is a secret place (a white stone with a new name written, which no man knows except he that receives it).
The journey is really not about art at all. Art is the aftermath, the wreckage of the journey, but it is not the journey. This is where artists err today, we think we are “artists” like we are here to make magnificent creations. We are here for no such reason (that is a meaning of man). What we are here for is to DO THE WORK and MAKE THE JOURNEY that we might then in turn heal our community. An artist is really nothing more than a medicine man, a witch doctor, a healer. Maybe. In any case, the work is not anything we thought it was.
There is a cohesive articulation which awaits, shrouding everything in the mists. I have given up on meaning, on ways that make sense, on the practicalities of providence. I have abandoned every guarded purpose and am adrift in the feathering dawn.
Art has nothing to do with plastering pictures on walls. This is its most vulgar meaning (fit only for mass consumption). The true work is spirit, it is sighings and tears. It is the discovery and exploration of heaven, of the mind of the eternal God, it is salvation and resurrection. These paths are discovered as you proceed, never beforehand. This is the “sword hich turns every which way” to block access back to the tree of life (innocence). It is the aging mind of man in its determination to hold to race beliefs which chart our destinies. We are the prisoners of our own conclusions, the wayward lost sheep of a million and one truths.
And we are forgetting that we made our understandings… we are losing our grip on creation.
My expressions are the desperate attempt of one man to awaken the dead, and prepare us for resurrection. We are in the midst of transformation. Art is simply a tool to help turn our hearts AWAY from the machine mind and towards the heart of the Mother of our soul.
This is the part that baffles me however… I am at the mercy of the other one, my viewer, this person whom I do not know. They bring all meanings to bear, and my weakness is unable to stand under such steel-eyed demand for perfection. A painter then realizes that they are indeed forever apart, and while this at first may strike fear into your soul (in that you become aware that you will never cross the chasm into another’s heart, not really…) you are rewarded with your patience and forbearance by being comforted and ministered to by the Lord, and it is is this comfort (the Holy Spirit I am guessing), which attends to your awareness, and you realize…
You are in heaven.
Then again, it is only paint. They mean nothing more than that. Perhaps. One thing is certain, without the work, and the effort to find the Lord, we are forever imprisoned by the meanings of man. Art is here to guide us, give us a clue, provide some little inkling of transcendance, and minister if need be.