Time for Art

When you’re a painter you paint with the ease of morning glories opening in the morning.
There is something elemental to effortless art. Maybe there is no such thing, maybe everyone struggles to be born and to give birth. What makes an artist though? I have studied their ways and paths looking for clues. Too often we afford powerful artists super-human honor. It seems they are gifted with brilliant ideas and skilled with handling matter while the rest of us exist on a mundane plane of earthly existence. In some ways this is true, there is a Magician’s mastery that artists possess. But it is not a exclusive power, as we can see in all cultures, art can happen anywhere. I think it comes down to a spiritual choice to make art and not waste energy on petty hold ups. So in a sense, it is sacrifice that allows art to happen. For example, time, I have been meaning to sit down and write for the past week and only now have I sacrificed the time to do it! Artists step aside of accessory impediments to allow the creative to flow! In that way the artist is mystic, the mystic is artist.
Art is a verb. And living is an art. Everyday we should savor the aesthetic experience of life. However the human race unanimously agrees that something special occurs by creating, that it is a special attribute of ourselves.

CG Jung was interested in Active Imagination. He pioneered the technique (which was an intuitive urge to create) as a means for healing his soul, overcoming fear and beginning to enjoy life again.

Tonight I’m going to see Philip Taafe speak at the Rubin Museum with a Jungian psychologist tonight. It is part of their Red Book Dialogues, the large, red bound illuminated journal that Jung compiled of his dropping into his imagination. It is penned in calligraphy in both Latin and German and bears the sensation of his own Bible.

I have always adored the experience of visiting artist’s studios—there is always a fresh feeling in there, something electric. And it makes it real, it connects the dots of what goes on between the human being as person and the works that get displayed. The Red Book exhibit is like this—you see Jung’s desk and his drafts and finished work is hung on the walls. It’s amazing how committing to your imagination, to giving birth to your creativity through the sacrifices of other involvements, can bring works that defy the transitory nature of time.