Artist's Statement / 2020

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Art as Shamanism:

 

   I approach paints, pigments and brushes as ritual magical energetic objects, tools with which I can bring forth images and objects  into manifestation. When I am with my ritual objects, I am making every part of my process a trance inducing play, I'm participating in a meditative ritual of creation, affirmation, and transformation. I'm not racing to a foregone conclusion that I hold somewhere in my head. It’s the difference between goal-orientated behavior, contrasted to an attitude of appreciating every step in the process as an end in itself, appreciating the journey in its fullness each step along the way.    

 

   Many art historians believe that art has its roots in shamanism and that its original function was to illustrate the shamanic experience and be a focus for shamanic power. Today shamanic art is never mere ornamentation. It illustrates what the spirits look like, provides maps of the universe to keep the shaman  and the viewer oriented, and generates Mandalas—symbols of wholeness which remind us of our place within the universe. Shamanic art is one of the tools of the shaman, just as are the rattle and drum. This is true whether the art is on the cave walls of Lascaux (ca. 17,000 years ago) or on a newly painted canvas.

 

   Artists are the ones who communicate myths for us. In todays “modern” society it is the function of the artist to interpret the unseen things, the divinity inherent in nature and within ourselves. The artist and the shaman supply the “link” for people between the worlds of the seen and the unseen.

 

   Every normal human being (and not merely “the artist”) has an inexhaustible store of buried images in his/her subconscious, it’s merely a matter of courage or liberating procedures … of voyages into the unconscious, to bring pure and unadulterated found images and insights back into the light of daily existance.