Intense Liminality

The Shaman's Doorway

Spring dances among the still present drifts of high mountain snow and the bears paw through the forest startling my silent walks. I keep thinking about the Greek philosophers many references to Hekate, the great goddess of liminal spaces and incomparable originator of ideas. What is the studio, if not the space of liminality in all its manifestations with the ever present invitation to risk and intensity?

The 15th century poet-mystic Kabir wrote of intense living, risk taking, liminal space, 'jumping into the experience'. There is always risk with the jump and the 'plunge into the truth'.



TO BE A SLAVE OF INTENSITY

Friend, hope for the Guest while you are alive.
Jump into experience while you are alive!
Think...and think...while you are alive.
What you call 'salvation' belongs to the time before death.

If you don't break your ropes while you're alive,
do you think
ghosts will do it after?

The idea that the soul will join with the ecstatic
just because the body is rotten -
that is all fantasy.
What is found now is found then.
If you find nothing now,
you will simply end up with an apartment in the City of Death.
If you make love with the divine now, in the next life you will
have the face of satisfied desire.

So plunge into the truth, find out who the Teacher is,
Believe in the Great Sound!

Kabir says this: When the Guest is being searched for, it is the
intensity of the longing for the Guest that does all the work.
Look at me and you will see a slave of that intensity.

Morning Moon-Good Friday

Moon slipping
behind west mountain

Dawn sky brightens
in the east

Bird song echos
through the snow covered forest.

Risking the Edge

Risking the edge in studio practice has more to do with realizing who it is that stands before the canvas, brush in hand, than any intellectual explanation of one's work.

COME TO THE EDGE

Come to the edge.
I might fall.
Come to the edge.
It's too high!

COME TO THE EDGE!

And (she) came,
And she leapt,
And she flew.
__adapted from the Poem "Come To The Edge" by Christopher Logue

Dry Mountains in Early March

THE SOUND OF THE SEA

The sea awoke at midnight from its sleep,
And round the pebbly beaches far and wide
I heard the first wave of the rising tide
Rush onward with uninterrupted sweep;
A voice out of the silence of the deep,
A sound mysteriously multiplied
As of a cataract from the mountain's side,
Or roar of winds upon a wooded steep.
So comes to us at times, from the unknown
And inaccessible solitudes of being,
The rushing of the sea-tides of the soul;
And insipirations, that we deem our own,
Are some divine foreshadowing and foreseeing
Of things beyond our reason or control.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882)



My mountain is very dry, the forest is crackling under my feet, the fire danger is officially "HIGH". The winds are roaring down and through the canyon and I find myself remembering the roar and mist of hidden coves on my ocean walks. Memory becomes such mystery to me. What my psyche soul re-members on this dry Colorado mountain in early March is part of the "inaccessible solitudes of being."

Cecil Collins and the "realities" of spirit.

I have recently discovered the writings of Cecil Collins (1908-1989) a British painter described as "creating some of the most profound and beautiful images of any artist of the twentieth century, a visionary artist as the most important since William Blake. (An artist) remaining faithful to an imaginative vision that owed nothing to passing trends..."

In the introduction to Collins' book, THE VISION OF THE FOOL & OTHER WRITINGS ( Ipswich, England, GOLGONOOZA Press, 2002) the reader is asked:

"With what eyes are we to look at the work of an artist who declares his belief that 'art is a metaphysical activity', and who resolutely claims 'there are no objects in my paintings'? With the images of Cecil Collin's art we must turn our gaze inwards to contemplate the realities of spirit. Here the 'eye of the heart' alone will suffice the transformation of consciousness that such things demand. Faced with a vision that runs counter to most contemporary expectations, are we not justified in asking for a guide? And what better guide than the artist himself?"

How does the language I use to speak and write about my work influence my painting? Why do I search as if on a never ending quest for a way to think, speak and write about my work? There is power in discovering resonance with the works of artists, be they poets or painters or both who have gone before me. These women and men become the silent audience in the studio as I paint. Their writings and thoughts are the companions of insight and critique. The ensuing 'dialogue' is held in silence richly embedded with learning and insight.

Collins held that a picture "must live on many different levels at once, it is an interpenetration of planes of reality, realized as a total experience."

New Year's Quotes for Reflection

-Heidegger - January 2009-

The piercing cold of high mountain walks on clear days demand a clarity to my reflective musings. Several quotes come to mind as Heidegger and I walk on frozen paths of crunching snow. We are surrounded in a dazzling display of swirling hoar frost. I commit to inviting these quotes into the studio with me, to sit by the warmth of the fireplace as companions for the winter season in this New Year.

"The vehicle that makes great art is extremely subtle, it is ethics, morals." -Enrique Martinez Celaya

"The journey between the known and unknown - at the boundary is art." - Enrique Martinez Celaya



"There are words I cannot choose again:
'humanism' 'androgyny'

Such words have no shame in them, no diffidence
before the raging stoic grandmothers

their glint is too shallow, like a dye
that does not permeate

the fibers of actual life
as we live it now."
-Adrienne Rich


"Only bad painters enjoy painting." -Cecil Collins (1906-1989)