Modern Art as Consciousness Study
"Justice" 10x8 acrylic
Earlier this year I spent a few months living with Brendan Getz at his studio in Berkeley. In addition to being an awesome person, Brendan is a highly accomplished artist with a present focus on modern abstract. Although I was coming with a background in commerce, and he in art, we found tremendous fertile common ground in philosophy. Over many breakfast and late night discussions, we began to appreciate the similarities and differences of our world views, and resultant implications for history and society. It was a life changing experience for me as I began to understand that my insight was of relevant value to Brendan's world.
This subtle encouragement was, for all purposes, an next level of initiation into the world of "art". Art is something I have always admired from afar but felt too intellectually shy or incapable of engaging in the intuitive way I normally approach my process. I discovered that I shared a lot in common with the preoccupation of painters, except that I had been expressing my ideology onto a different canvas.
In a recent fit of creative frustration, I purchased art supplies to see how my worldview might be articulated onto the medium of painting. It has been a great challenge to listen to my deeper self and at least try something new. Being a beginner is painful for any person, as it makes one feel woefully inept. My approach to this painting germinated from the intersection of present moment awareness, intuitive composition, and an attempt at unselfconscious transmission of what was seeking to emerge through me. In a way this is a continuation of the transpersonal psychology and enchanted cosmology studies I am pursuing in the Philosophy, Cosmology and Consciousness department at CIIS.
In many ways modern art itself was paralleled by the emergence of depth psychology. these two movements were expressions of a similar paradigmatic breakthrough that occurred in the global consciousness through the 20th century.
For me, this experience exploring reality through abstract modern painting offers an opportunity to integrate philosophy, aesthetics, and consciousness and I am interested in noting how my awareness in the other areas of life begin to shift as I wade around the luscious world of paint.