Illegitimi Non Carborundum
"Illegitimi Non Carborundum" loosely translates from Latin to mean "Don't Let the Bastards Grind You Down." Allied soldiers in WWII wrote it on their helmets while they fought the fascist Nazi regime of Germany.
These past few years in the US have been intense and I painted this in the summer of 2020 while I read constantly of Black Lives Matters protests - protests by people who only wanted to be treated equally, who wanted their voice to be heard - and, you know, not be afraid of having the police shoot them. Meanwhile the government that is supposed to represent me seemed to be getting overtaken by actual fascists (sure they might look like just a bunch of pasty old white guys but yeah... then there was Jan 6th).
So we have to rise and rise and rise again. Those of us who want to create a healthier world - a world where we can live together and be treated equally without regard to race or color or gender or sexual orientation or any of a thousand other reasons that people pick to divide and conquer and create fucked up hierarchies that they use to oppress. A world where we care for the environment as a steward and not a parasite.
So we rise and rise and rise again - busting through the complex structures created around us. All these illusions, ideas, conditioning. We have to rise and rise and rise again and not let the bastards grind us down.
Passion
'In a recent interview, Marc Andreessen [an investor who made all his money in tech and then VC investing] was asked what his best advice would be to a smart 23-year-old American today. "Don't follow your passion," he said. "Your passion is likely more dumb and useless than anything else. Your passion should be your hobby, not your work. Do it in your spare time."'
Business Insider - Jun 22, 2021
Don't follow your passions. Don't do that which brings you joy. At best, it's a frivolity. At worse, it's just taking up your spare time when you could be consuming more.
The Pale Blue Dot
Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there--on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.
The Future of Art Making
I think a lot about what the future holds for us. Like you, I am concerned (to say the least) for the ever changing climate. I worry about the divisive and tense politics of our times. Wealth disparity, economic catastrophes, and the kind of indentured servitude many of us find ourselves in: the list goes on.
I sometimes imagine these post apocalyptic futures where the trappings of my own life are stripped away and, like so many others, we scrape the earth for sustenance, banding together in our little tribes, trying to fight our way through an inhospitable landscape. It's unlikely to come to that in my lifetime although that isn't to say it's not possible.
Art Making in Times of Trial
"What is the point of making beautiful things, or of cherishing the beauty of the past, when ugliness runs rampant?"
Alex Ross - Making Art in a Time of Rage
I've seen multiple pieces, posts, inquiries regarding the act of art making when times are tough. When people are marching in the streets, when the freedoms, rights, and liberties you live with every day seem to be snatched away, who are you - who am i? - to sit here painting, writing, doing this creative act which seems a step or two removed from the direct actions others are taking every day? Where do people draw their battle lines and where are the front lines? Am I less engaged because I am not out there fighting, yelling, demanding that, for instance, my streams not be sullied with the debris of coal companies?
Lullaby
I've looked skyward many a night - especially in the rural area where we live - and witnessed this lovely halo around the moon. One night that vision just sort of got lodged in my mind and I've been ruminating on it ever since.
I started this painting in the middle of October 2019 with only a few sketches so as to give myself a lot of room for spontaneity. I wanted to explore that light in the darkness (and there's been no shortage of darkness) - and that moon - looking upwards in awe - at that great dance it's a part of.
Truth is a Pathless Land
Truth is a pathless land, and you cannot approach it by any path whatsoever, by any religion, by any sect. That is my point of view, and I adhere to that absolutely and unconditionally...
Take a piece of stick, put it on the mantelpiece and every day put a flower in front of it- give it a flower- put in front of it a flower and repeat some words- "Coca-cola", "Amen", "Om", it doesn't matter what word- any word you like .. listen, don't laugh it off .. do it and you will find out. If you do it, after a month you will see how holy it has become. You have identified yourself with that stick, with that piece of idea and you have made it into something sacred, holy. But it is not. You have given it a sense of holiness out of your fear, out of constant habit of this tradition, giving yourself over, surrendering yourself to something, which you consider holy. The image in the temple is no more holy than a piece of rock by the roadside. So it is very important to find out what is really sacred, what is really holy, if there is such a thing at all.
Break Through
The trouble is that we have a bad habit, encouraged by pedants and sophisticates, of considering happiness as something rather stupid. Only pain is intellectual, only evil interesting. This is the treason of the artist; a refusal to admit the banality of evil and the terrible boredom of pain.
Ursula K. Leguin
Evil. Anyone can be evil. And pain? Pain is all around us. It takes work to feel joyful, dedication to be happy.
Why Visionary Art
There are several essays available online exploring the question of what constitutes "visionary art" (Here is one by Lawrence Caruna and here is another by Alex Grey). For the sake of our discussion here, I'll add an abbreviated definition so we can have a point of departure for the conversation to follow and the topic I explore in this essay: the WHY of Visionary Art - why do the artists who undertake this style feel it worthwhile and what place might it serve in the world.
What is visionary art?
Visionary art is, I think, an approach to creative work that reflects personal archetypal experiences of the world at large. This reflection couples - and this is incredibly important and vital - the artist's own inner world and its dynamic interplay of emotions, archetypes, spiritual understandings with a broader world view exploring a particular idea or experience. It is neither a painting of a thing or simply the absolute abstraction to a point where ideas no longer apply. Instead, the best works of this type are a marriage of both inner and outer, the real and the abstract, the surreal, the mystical, and the dreamlike. This interplay can create or invoke a sensation that, when successful, is like a wordless dialogue between the inner formless world of the viewer and the inner formless world of the artist. The artist shares a vision - and idea - a perspective - of the world, their place in the world, and their understanding, in a sense, of where we as humans are or aspire to be in that equation.
What I Learn From Painting
When it's night time painting I usually just can't paint any more after 2am and five or six hours and my hand is cramped and my back aches and my eyes are starting to blur. My brushstrokes start to lose their precision. The good thing is that means I've covered a lot of ground. Painting is about 'the process' as much as 'the product'. Sometimes, it's just a lot of blanks to fill in. Sometimes it's the miraculous edge of everything. It's a story being written in real time and I'm following a line that leads to an inevitable conclusion. There are nuances to be explored, and colors and lines to be enunciated but the gist of the piece - this piece that I'm working on right now anyhow - was decided long ago. I am merely completing the vision.
While I paint, my mind wanders through the many worlds of my life and my heart travels through multitudinous emotions the way one might try on different outfits. There are the pure zen moments of one thought no thought. Or elated loving moments where my heart is glowing and it just feels so... good. While everything passes, I so appreciate those moments. It never hurts to simply center one's sense of consciousness in the center of one's chest instead of in the center of the head, where we tend to look out at the world from.