CULTURALLY
ABOUT MY WORK?
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Mythology... Deeply scored upon the dreaming maps of many ancient tales lies the legendary Lemuria, a shimmering civilisation of cloud-like, ethereal beings.
Numinous within the formation of matter, the great ancestor beings breathed life into the matrix of the planet, stirring rock and seas, rivers and plains.
In my waking dreams I search for traces of the magnificent Lemurians; exquisite, delicate, powerful ones, the great mothers, singing earth into form, harmonising, vibrating sound into manifest reality...
Methodology... My experimentations in visual arts propose that trance (being a focus of attention) is a profound tool of the creative artist, and that the alpha state achieved during trance brings about a distinct shift from left-brain dominance to right-brain dominance, allowing deep unconscious dialogue to flow, commencing a collaborative union from the creative vault of impressions; imagination, dreams, memories, feelings, intuitions, abstract and seemingly random thoughts to the conscious will of the artmaker.
In that searching state I have sought to uncover and document the powerful links between unconscious imagery and the opportunities and access pathways to artistic expression through trance and traditional cultural themes. I assert that traditional cultural themes operate as symbolic triggers and catalysts to access powerful imagery.
In that searching state I have sought to uncover and document the powerful links between unconscious imagery and the opportunities and access pathways to artistic expression through trance and traditional cultural themes. I assert that traditional cultural themes operate as symbolic triggers and catalysts to access powerful imagery.
Ancient and traditional trance-accessing activities could include, breathing exercises, yogic practise, drumming, nature immersion, prayer, meditation, music, fasting, observation of lunar cycles, opening the ancient dialogue between human and nature, acknowledgement of the animate force in all things, seeking permission for entry into the sacred realm of mystery and dreams, respect and reverence for all beings.
Many of my visual works characteristically draw inspiration from the strongly tribal aspects of my cultural heritage; from my mother's people, an Oceanic perspective derived from Polynesian culture, Ra'atiran - Tahitian, and Ngah Puhi - Maori, and from my father's clan, a northern Irish opinion.
These themes
have bound the vibrant hues and fibres of my works, educating me,
urging me to explore every aspect of life in reverence, to truly
recognise each stage as an evolving piece in this lifelong rite of
passage, to know my sacred quest, and to deeply nurture the capacity to
reach out... to embrace the perfect nature in all things.
Further, I hold the notion that an artistic maker, reflecting the depths of the great, collective and unconscious genius, (a vast and organic repository of Neanderthal knowings), intuitively
reaches for inspired essence, and if blessed to be indwelled by that essence, swims
through an eddy of time and space, gathering frail tendrils of
impressions, filtered through all of our woundings, our gifts, our
ancestral imperatives, our trance-sets… our mystic being.
Excerpt... Lemuria,
Pacifica, Muu… I watch my hands as they smear bold colours upon the
backdrop of all cloudy thoughts, and I bleat, a frantic sheep’s song
that trembles and suffers the brightest shafts of pure and brilliant
light, piercing into my mind as my heart yearns to be reaching,
climbing up the wall and out of the grasping windows of these times.
How have I
tasted the drugging of our Great Spirit, how could I have fallen so
dead at my birth, landed here at the hem of such sedated, spiritual
inertia? I pace for an opening, a wave upon which to slip and drift
gently from these shores…
Shocking
me, a horde of flickering blue radiants dazzle me, touching my face and
eyes with a sprinkling of shimmering light, such luminous makers, they
whisper to me of world-deep waters, wide coastal lanes and great oceans
of power until I curl tightly within their legendary laps and sail into
the full gust of their words. - excerpted from Gaia's Mouth 2005