When did going slow become radical?
Fighting robots, asking the right questions and art as a totem for reflection...
The Rollercoaster
Art, love, and war.
Three constants of reality.
As much as we try, humans can’t do without any of them.
Technology promises connection, then becomes a stage for battle.
Facebook began as a way to unite campuses, then turned into a battlefield for attention and markets.
Nuclear fission promised abundant energy, then was used to destroy cities.
Art stands on the other side of the coin.
A mirror of reality rather than a tool to bend it into a new shape.
A process for reflection and, at its most powerful, a way to see the part of ourselves we keep hiding.
The works that cut deepest show a side we want to fight, a truth we have not yet learned to love.
The admission that we do not love that side is the start of healing.
And, if we refuse the admission, the darkness finds another way out.
If anything can balance the technological vertigo we are applying to ourselves through artificial intelligence, it is art.
Understanding ourselves.
Growing.
Becoming better as humans.
We are all responsible for showing the world what it is.
Not just my art.
Everyone’s.
Polyhymnia
tl;dr The muse of introspection helps you figure out your message
Historically, the Muses, the deities of feminine energy, represented the guiding force within art.
They are born of Mnemosyne and Zeus.
Memory and power.
It is funny how Greek and Roman societies are perceived in the modern world.
History books frame them with scale and grandeur.
Emperors.
Wars.
Growth.
Yet the spiritual culture that underwrote both was balanced.
I started my journey with the Muses about nine months ago.
Born out of a project looking at connection and love, I needed to find something deeper and spiritual.
I looked beyond the usual idea of a person as muse.
It’s a little played out for male artists.
I looked back at their historical utility.
All of the nine Muses play their role within the arts and together provide a coherent structure for looking at all of it.
Polyhymnia felt like the right place to start.
She represents inward eloquence.
Sacred concentration.
The power of silence that gives language its shape.
Eloquence was the ability to communicate an idea, and it was judged by how well the idea resonated.
It comes from silence, from looking inside at reality.
Only when we carve away what we don’t want do we understand the clearest direction.
For me, Polyhymnia is the journey inward.
She is the practice of pondering what we believe.
Her reward is the ability to chart a direction forward.
For you, Polyhymnia is the part of you that turns quiet into direction.
Sit long enough for what you do not want to fall away.
Slow is fast
tl;dr Art balances technological progress by providing long-term stability
AI is moving fast.
Technology is accelerating at a pace that will make many feel vertigo soon.
When things move quickly, it is unclear what direction they go in.
As those who have been to war understand, the most important principle is selection and maintenance of the aim.
Set the aim.
Hold the aim.
This is what the current progression of artificial intelligence has yet to crystallize around.
Progress for progress’s sake.
On the other side of the scales, there is a requirement for ballast.
Slow.
Deep.
Methodical thought.
It’s what we are seeing in the best spiritual and philosophical communities around art.
A place to consider what is good for all of humanity.
If art is to take a step beyond what it is at the current stage, it is that art as a tool for reflection is better understood in the wider world.
But Art does not need new justifications.
It needs a wider audience that can see it.
So maybe if the world better understood how to see it, then it would be able to resonate further.
Doing art and watching those who do it authentically helps us understand who we are.
It gives us time for reflection.
It helps us unravel what the world actually is and what we are turning it into.
Just as a fast boat needs ballast, a fast culture needs formal slowness built into it.
Art can be that ballast.
It steadies the vessel so we can choose where to go.
Art as Totem
tl;dr Art acts as a totem by bringing you back to the same place, even though you change.
I make my paintings for myself
I sit on them once complete for months
At first, it was to wait for the paint to dry, which often takes months
Now, I realise that my relationship with them during this period helps me understand as much as making them.
Who deserves them, and whether I can ever let them go.
I realised recently that each one has their own personality
Some common focus that draws me back to them.
I talk to them,
We have an ongoing dialogue,
And even though their contribution is limited..
They help me.
Every time I look at them, I see the time we spent together
The questions they’ve helped me resolve.
For me, it’s their value.
not in the months of rent they could cover.
or their contribution to the art conversation.
But at some point, my heart was broken.
And I spent the next week staring at a finished painting,
as if it’s the only friend I have.
When I think about art education, I think about the depth of the art schools.
It is fascinating, but the reality is that the art education that I got in school (predominantly being kicked out and copying other artists’ painting styles) did not help me understand what art was.
I knew how to make things.
I could draw well.
I had craftsmanship.
I did not know how to absorb it.
I did not understand reflection.
And herein is what I think the wider art education in the world is missing.
Schools only teach how to produce, instead of enjoy…
I am fortunate to have a wide variety of people come through the studio, and I am relatively judgmental.
I can survive on very little, and I am picky about who gets to keep my paintings.
Generally, when someone looks at my work, I can understand how far they can see by the questions they ask.
It is relatively consistent with my presumptions about them.
There is no judgment in it, but the space to reflect deeper is a learned skill, just like thinking.
If there is any value that I can contribute to art, it is making that hidden subjective part of it more obvious.
One should view my works as a totem.
Something that maintains a single question across time, but remains the same.
The obvious use of mirrors in my work was not as obvious as I thought.
It is a little bit meta.
How I am building my work now is that each object carries a proposed direction for reflection.
Something more obvious.
If the paintings are colour fields, I can use language to help them find purchase.
However, how you choose to reflect on that question is up to you.
It is a little controlling of the viewer, and it removes a little of the freedom.
Hopefully, it highlights the question of what art is meant to be.
I think we are all trying to say something when we create.
We are trying to get a message across.
The notion that there is nothing to be said and the viewer can view everything is nonsense to me.
It is poor communication.
If I did not care about what you thought, I would not have made it in the first place.
Or if I did make it from some necessity to feed my inner artist, I would not go through the pain and strife of getting others to see it unless it was for monetary value or to carry a perspective across humanity.
There is an arrogance in showing people your art.
You are saying you have a perspective that is more interesting than whatever else they were going to look at that day.
Any artist who thinks otherwise yet continues to show their work is as fraudulent as those who make it solely for fame or fortune.
So what am I trying to communicate?
It’s simple.
You are free.
It’s selfish, I like freedom.
And if everyone is a little bit freer, that’s good for me.
What about you?
The Question
tl;dr Maybe how I look at my paintings is part of what I need to communicate
I like painting abstract works.
It is something that I enjoy.
I like the feeling I have when I create them because they allow me to reflect.
For the most part, the way that I think and do things does not fit into the world because I love abstraction.
This space gives me a place where I do not have to worry about the finicky nature of language.
It also gives me a space where I can reflect on my own work.
What if the approach to a painting is an abstraction led by a defined question with which to interrogate it, so that there is a consistent visual frame to explore an idea throughout time?
Inner Journey
tl;dr Has Art been bypassed by a slew of Apps and processes marketed as contemplation and meditation alternatives
Our personal inner journey is the counter to the externally focused technological and AI journey that the world is going through.
If I am to create any value in this process, it is that I create tools for a select group of people to go on their own inward journey.
To process certain thoughts throughout their life that bring ballast in a world that will feel like vertigo.
I do not know how I am going to do this yet, but I have an idea.
A hypothesis.
A companion practice that will ride beside the paintings.
What I know is that inner stability improves external selection.
When you sit with one question across time, decisions get simpler.
What no longer fits drops away.
What remains becomes obvious.
Try it:
Tape a question you want the answer to on a mirror or near a piece of art.
Keep it there for a week… see if you unearth something.
The Machine
tl;dr Art as the message against the machine
Every time there is a huge change in society, an artistic and creative element rises to balance it.
Rock music after the war.
Pop music in the nineties.
Over time, capitalist structures learned how to seize most of this and monetise it.
I am for the most part independent.
I will see how far I can go with this.
The industry may or may not notice.
The point is to provide creative tools for those who want to escape, in a world shaped by companies larger than many nation-states.
Because, for the most part, we have become swallowed by the machines, they control what we see, buy, and desire. Indentured servitude has become consumerist slavery.
We used to rebel against slavery, but that tool has since been quashed by our addiction to its algorithmically suggested lifestyle.
If we don’t create the tools to escape it (Art), it’s just a matter of time before we become part of the machine, working day and night to afford the things that keep it alive for those who own the levers that control it.
If we spend our time making sure more art exists,
then maybe,
The robots won’t win
And we can keep our freedom
-R
Poet’s Corner
Off By…
To know it
store it
amongst
endless
Birth
countless
Death
Stow
the thing you love
in mind
It’s always worth
remembering
Speak it
aloud
Shout it
by heart
- Thomas May
If you’ve made it this far, I appreciate your time; hopefully, it was worth it.
I’ve started a thread below. If this was helpful, consider answering the question below… It helped Odysseus; maybe it can help you, too
Nothing but love
-R