Teone | Written

CULTURALLY ABOUT MY WORK?

Many of my visual works characteristically draw inspiration from the strongly tribal aspects of my family's cultural heritage; Oceanic perspective from my mother's Norfolk Island people, derived from their unique blend of Polynesian cultures - 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.

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. 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.

Book excerpt... Lemuria, Pacifica, Muu… I watched my hands as they smeared bold colours upon the backdrop of all cloudy thoughts, and I bleated, in a frantic sheep’s song that trembled and suffered the brightest shafts of pure and brilliant light, piercing into my mind as my heart yearned to be reaching, climbing up the wall and out of the grasping windows of these times.

How had 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 paced for an opening, a wave upon which to slip and drift gently from these shores…

Shocking me, a horde of flickering blue radiants dazzled me, touching my face and eyes with a sprinkling of shimmering light, such luminous makers, they whispered to me of world-deep waters, wide coastal lanes and great oceans of power until I curled tightly within their legendary laps and sailed into the full gust of their words.

- excerpted from Gaia's Mouth 2005