The real voyage of discovery
consists, not in seeking
new landscapes but in having new eyes.
Marcel Proust
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| Evolving Edges |
As in dreams, images in my paintings reflect how the psyche
is very often several steps ahead of us. That is to say, you can know something
even if it is not-yet-speech-ripe. I
am still catching up to the edge of growth from my last large abstract
paintings. They relate to the practice of Direct Awakening and preparation for
the Transformational Painting Retreat in Costa Rica taking place in Montezuma Beach
on the Nicoya Peninsula, July 23-August 3, 2017.
This retreat was conceived in the wake of the last
election, in response to the question of what can we do in the face of our unsettling
political climate and the various crises in the world. The underlying current in
our painting circles at the studio for the last year has reflected the events
in the larger collective, a sense of apprehension, adrift as to how to respond.
The societal uncertainty has affected our work and image-making confirming that
where we are now in this country, on this planet, can most possibly not be
resolved through the systems that got us here.
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| Emerging Skyline |
From our limited human perspective of life, we have tried to
conceptualize our understanding of the Universe. We identify the Big Bang as
the point of origin, finding ourselves near its periphery, possibly endpoint.
The environment we have consumed and degraded so efficiently, poses our
largest, most obstinate, existential threat. It is within this frame of
reference, we note that only our own consciousness and actions can alter our
personal and collective trajectory in a positive way. It requires, however, we
sense ourselves, our relationship with each other, and the world anew. We don’t yet know what this is,
but we do know that how we are doing things needs to change. Very possibly our limited behavior aligned with our limited perspective.
Our painting circles, workshops and retreats at Studio
Anavami use archetypal stories to explore mythic blueprints. Fundamental to
this work is cultivating a greater awareness of awareness or Presence. The Costa Rica
retreat draws from several innovative thinkers, Otto Scharmer of U Theory and
Jeff Carriera and Craig Hamilton from Cultural Evolution of Integral
Enlightenment. It is remarkable that, Scharmer, MIT professor of evolutionary
methods of learning and leadership uses the word Presencing as key to the shift needed to start thinking
differently. He talks also about Absencing,
the deer caught in the headlights, as an apt description for rationalizing,
self-delusion and reactionary behavior in an effort to preserve old beliefs.
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| Gathering Impetus |
The archetypal journey for this Transformational Painting
Retreat is the Wizard of Oz. Dorothy
and her companions are aspects of the self in need of cultivation, including
the Wizard, trickster-ego. It is interesting that all Scharmer’s methodological
schemas center on the imperative to open the mind, heart and will, Tin Man,
Scarecrow and Lion, in order to Presence aspects of reality that are in our Blind Spots. This is where the creative
process generates new ways of
perceiving and creating.
How can 10-days in Costa Rica relate to evolution of
consciousness? First, it begins locally, that place inside ourselves, our
individual self or identity. How we perceive and define ourselves and how we
participate and contribute in the world is integral to how we create. Taking
time outside our regular habits and ways of perceiving sets new possibilities in
motion.
The second perspective takes even more imagination because
it is outside of our established mode of thinking, perhaps beyond current
language. In this retreat our on-going exercise in imagination is to suspend
the hierarchy of acquired beliefs that everything outside the boundary of our self we discern as something augments or
diminishes us. The exercise is to not perceive in terms of self/other.
Martin Buber puts it as I-Thou, to sense the bond or relationship. It
requires a leap of imagination to shift from centralized self to one based on
connection, or field of flow, rather than a point inside-me. It is radical, but common in spiritual text.
History demonstrates how artists of all disciplines have
been in the vanguard of change agents reflecting political processes underway,
anticipating and guiding the direction of social response. Our Costa Rican
quest is to shed some the social weights and expectations that attach us so
rigidly to our habits of thought, action and emotions. This is not intended, in
any way, to disrupt our deep connection to the objects of our lives, only to be
able to catch sufficient glimpse of those attachments, and constraints, and
thereby liberate or enable the creative impulse those attachments block from
our view.
These exercises, to suspend ingrained beliefs, is not easy,
however daily Qi Kung, Contact Improv
and a particular approach to drawing and painting will be used to support this
experiment while we engender to expand how we perceive self on the Emerald Peninsula. It is an endeavor to experience
and possibly cultivate the transformation of our personal worlds from ego-centric to
eco-centric .
