Q:  And that is a good thing?

A:  Perhaps not in an of itself but it makes me aware of the existence of an alternate inner reality that seems in many ways to be oppositional to outer reality.

Q:  And so you practice art making because you want to know about this alternate reality?

A:  Yes, I think it is a kind of orientation towards the power of life inside of us.

Q:  So you focus on the power inside of yourself and deny the power of outside reality?

A:  Well, yes, I do.

Q:  And how is that working out for you?

A:  I am not suggesting that it is necessarily a good thing to deny the power of outer reality.

Q:  And yet you do it.

A:  Yes, I do it but it is not my purpose.  The purpose of my art making is to grow a stronger awareness of the power of inner reality in order that I might one day balance the power of my inner reality with the power of outer reality.  I see this balancing as the purpose of my life and in a sense the ultimate art – the art of living life.  The power and longevity of art is about balancing the outer reality of form with the inner reality of content.  The true artist creates form that is empty and spacious enough to maximise content.  I see it as a paradigm, a pattern for living life that allows me to subvert materialism.

Q:  And this is important to you, why?

A:  I guess it is because as human beings we seem capable of the most extreme forms of evil.  And we allow and encourage and perpetuate great evil because we value the power of outer reality while we deny the existence of inner reality.  I want to practice my creativity because it helps me subvert my fear of outer power.  It seems that it is only through my creative practices I find the courage to act despite the incredible pressure to conform.

I think all of the greatest evils perpetuated by humans are only possible with the support of the realistic who conform.  I do not believe that Hitler could ever have come to power without the realists who conformed.  I want to know how those who resisted found the vision and the courage to act, though their actions jeopardized their careers, their security, their families and their lives.  Where did they find the vision that allowed them to see what was happening, rather than simply avert their eyes, or deny what they saw?  Where did they find the courage to act when their very lives and the lives of their families depended upon conforming?

A:  Are you being cynical? or just disrespectful?

Q:  You are much too intense and dramatic…therefore easy to tease.  Please answer the question.

A:  Your cynicism sometimes makes me very sad because I know you are the part of me that works so hard to conform and you are that part of me who has become dominant during the past year.

Q:  I have become dominant because you failed to make a living as an artist, you are a failure, again. 

A:  Yes I know I failed.  I set an unreasonable goal.  I gave myself a very finite and specific time frame for achievement of my goals.  This specific time frame allowed me to subvert my logical knowing rational self in order to follow a deeper search for truth, and to invest everything in that search.

Q:  And now I am back to help you realize what an idiot and a failure you are.

A:  Yes, I know how you help me, but I am neither an idiot nor a failure.

Q:  Well you have certainly failed and you have behaved like an idiot because everyone knows that you cannot make a living as an artist.

A:  And I know that logic and rationalism has never served me well and in fact what you encourage me to do is to live in fear of the unknown.

Q:  What’s wrong with that?  It makes a hell of a lot more sense than the way you choose to live.  Making art (or at least that is what you call it) which you seem to have difficulty giving away, and almost impossible to sell.

A:  I believe that art exists and that its existence and reality and can transform people’s understanding of the world

Q:  Well good for you.

A:  Yes it is good for me, because believing in the reality and existence of art is kind of like believing in spring.

Q:  Your point?

A:  Well you do not believe in the reality or existence of art do you?

Q:  I believe in the practical, the logical, the rational…what exactly is art anyways?  Define it clearly and I will then tell you whether or not I believe in it.

A:  I cannot define it, I have been trying to define it since 1980 and I have come up with a lot of definitions but I cannot define it.

Q:  And yet you have devoted and continue to devote an enormous amount of time towards trying to make something which you cannot even be certain, actually is , what you intend it to be.  Sounds like a kind of madness perhaps or somethinhg that could lead to madness.  Its certainly not the activity of a same person.

A:  So you are calling me insane then?

Q:  I did not call you anything, I just said that there seems no point to the activity.

A:  So art making is pointless?

Q:  Well what is the point, then?

My anger towards those who found me guilty sustained me for a few years, but after awhile I began to realize that I could not escape the image of god that I had been taught to worship throughout my childhood and youth.  I had internalized this image and it could not be destroyed as it had no literal form.  This image had been skillfully inserted into my psyche through two decades of skilful, constant programming.  This image of god wanted me obedient or he wanted me dead.  He wanted all or nothing.

The rules I was expected  to obey were very clear.  I was expected to go door-to-door selling his publications for at least 10 hours/month.  I was to spend a minimum of 5 hours/week attending meetings to practice salesmanship.  I was forbidden from pursuing any forms of higher education and not allowed to question or disagree with any of his rules.  I was not to form any kind of relationships with anyone who did not share a belief in him or who did not follow his rules.

After I had been condemned as a disobedient evildoer, my name had been announced at each meeting house in the city where I lived.  Therefore the group effectively cleansed themselves of evil by expelling me and I found myself without friends or family, outside of the protection of belonging.

I lived without protection from the war of Armaggeddon which had been planned for 1975.  Then I lived through the Armaggeddon planned for 1980.  Then I lived, unprotected, through the Armaggeddons planned for 1981, 1982, 1983 and 1984.  It never occurred to me to question the image of god who lived in my head, as he was all-powerful and all-seeing and I was just an evildoer who deserved to be punished.

Seeking forgiveness, I decided to adopt another image of god.  This one had a lot of rules too, but this god didn’t expect me to sell anything.

In 1980 I began to study the art of image making.  The new image of god battled with the old image inside of my head.  The old image started to shrink a little and occasionally looked almost small.  My head began to exhibit signs of small fissures.

I decided that I would devote my life to the study of image making, hoping one day to become skillful enough to deconstruct the images that had been constructed by others.  I imagined they could be safely defused and then separated into their component pieces and thus become innocuous.  The ticking sound  inside of my head, distracted me from the growing fissures.  I began to practice the art of image construction and deconstruction as though my life depended upon it.

After 20 years of practice I can call myself a survivor.  I am living proof that art saves lives and even gods designed to terrorize can eventually, with skill be defused.

How do we value what we do not see?   If our symbols of value (money) do not reflect the quality of productivity that has generated profits – then the activity of the arms dealer will be more valued than the activity of the farmer.  Art frees vision from form which holds no value for content.

Using my own images I frame images representing the literal “hard” currency of Canada.  Through this created currency, I seek to subvert materialism by using art as a frame or paradigm which includes value for both form and content.

When the literal form of currency does not reflect a value for non-literal content, form has subverted content.  This results in productivity that opposes creativity and leads to cancerous growth.

Currency is a piece of paper imprinted with color and image.  As a symbol, it reflects what is collectively valued.  If our symbols do not reflect what is valuable then we, as the creators of those symbols, can deconstruct them and create new symbols.

The artist practices seeing the subjective non-literal.  Art is form spacious enough to include the “otherness” of non-literal content.  Content is conceptual and the conceptual is perceived through the practice of envisioning the invisible.

My currency is designed to reflect value for the practice of seeing which can lead to vision large enough to include both the literal form of life as well as the conceptual non-literal content.

I have finally forced a very good friend to create digital images of my work and allow me the weekly use of his internet connection/computer.  Today I will (hopefully) show some of the work that I have created between November/08 and April/09.

I am still almost completely fixated upon trying to define the concepts of success and failure and the process by which the artist finds enough validation for the practice of art-making  to continue the practice. 

How to value and make space for a practice which can appear almost completely unproductive for decades (to those whose lives the artist’s life impacts most intimately).  How to continue practicing an activity which not only appears completely unproductive to the eyes of those whose influence is most felt by the artist – but which demands enormous resources in the form of time, energy, materials and physical space.  Resources which “normally” invested result in  measurable returns (most commonly symbolized by regular paycheques, health insurance, old age security, etc.)  How the artist continues to use resources that “normally” result in not only measurable returns but also a sense of connectedness to a world where people who appear unproductive are suspected of laziness, mental deficiency. perversion and easily become targets for the fear and anxiety of those for whom “normalcy” is conformism to an appearance .

How does the artist who finally acknowledges her/his practice and validates it by calling herself an artist – discovering the existence of others like herself who also practice and for the first time experiences a sense of belonging discovering that that belonging depends upon the validation of the product of their practice which must compete against the product of other practicing artists for scarce resources – and discovers this sense of competition often destroys community.

I stopped painting in August/08 when I acknowledged the end of my resources to continue buying materials and studio time.  I had seriously overextended myself during 2008 and in August I acknowledged the end of my grand experiment.  This body of work represents three different styles of working which have grown up in response to various restrictions involving time and space.  I am planning to post daily art images (once or twice a week) on this blog, beginning this month. 

Please allow 10 business day for the order to arrive.

Everything created by humans which manifests in the world of outer reality began its existence in the inner light of this dark unknown. Everything that exists in reality was once only imagined. Everything – no matter how large or powerful began in the imagination.

To believe that outer reality is more valuable or more powerful than the imagination is to misunderstand the relationship of the fruit to the seed. The process by which the fruit grows is invisible to outer vision, but the seed is always the origin of the fruit.

The fruit is the literal truth of outer reality but the seed is the non-literal truth which when separated from the fruit still contains the fruit as possibility. The fruit separate from its seed is the literal truth and becomes product.

As a child who becomes separated from its caregiver will eventually die or be consumed as food – so the apple without the gardener will die or be consumed as food. The fruit valued for its literal truth only will die or be consumed as product. To value the literal truth over the non-literal truth is called materialism. When materialism becomes a collective truth it manifests as a paradigm or a map and the literal truth of product becomes separated from the non-literal truth of the creative seed reality. Quantity then becomes the only value.

To understand the relationship of the fruit to the seed a different kind of map is necessary. One which represents/marks the dark of the earth where the seed must be buried and the seasons which while being distinct from each other do not end except to begin again. A map which represents the paradigm of the circle where the end of literal truth marks the beginning of non-literal truth – the end of the light of the visible marks the beginning of a descent into the dark of the invisible. A map which includes the paradoxical truth of opposites which are not in opposition to each other. A map where the one is not separate from the other – rather the mark of the directional diversity of the nature of the circular whole.

The loss of outer power brings us to the threshold where we are challenged to become explorers and journey inwards. To remain at the threshold valuing outer power only is to believe in separation, death and darkness as a reality, a destination, rather than a threshold marking the existence of totality.

To turn from valuing outer reality only towards inner reality’s invitation to explore marks our awareness that the source of light is also the source of dark. The reality of this dual nature challenges us to grow an awareness spacious enough to include the whole.

No amount of outer power can protect us from the reality of this dual nature which marks the source of both life and death.