Ecstatic images, series one : a departmental honors thesis (HONRS 499)

Abstract

The enclosed portfolio was done for a departmental honors thesis exploring the Palaeolithic Mother Goddess that I completed between January and April of 1996. The pattern of the goddess is of an abstract nature, omnipresent and transcendent of all time and space. She functions as a pictorial for the old European ideological system ( nature herself ), and as a linguistic pattern bound by signs and symbols of the divine flowing power. This is a pattern beget by souls who danced the spiral in harmony with the directional, primordial pulse of the All Mother. The goddess is a symbol for the great giver of life, the wielder of death, and the regeneratrix, not of man exclusively, but all life in the cosmos. The goddess affects humanity regardless of our consciousness, for she is the eternally enduring center, the point from which we all have come. Openly, she is a metaphor for creativity and peace and the knowledge of all that life can be.The spirit of my images are to service the spiritual, the goddess, who gives to humanity the deepest experience of reality. I am concerned with the divine as the ultimate subject of art, for in my opinion, man is a metaphysical being, therefore art is a metaphysical experience. The images I have chosen to work with are both affirmations of the ageless and eternal and inner experiences with dreaming end the void - creating vision. This vision functions as an awakening to and a coming to terms with the unconscious signs and symbols of my true self. Through my work my soul's true life is vindicated by the divine and a pure level of consciousness. Along my journey to discover the goddess within and without, my artistic endeavors function as a vehicle for spiritual .transformation and medicine.Regarding the actual creative process, I am very much interested in constantly changing the relationship I have with my work. This may range from the way I might hold a tool to make a mark, to feelings inside that may dictate the way I might open my eye to view a mark. As I make my images I am concerned with esthetics, but even more so, the feelings I experience while creating. Through the days and nights of my working, I have felt something older than thought, deeper than death, a warm, enveloping of delight at the delicate whisper of love in life. These feelings are serene end enduring, and that which I try to visually communicate through my images. I feel this to be an open and an ever changing approach I can take regarding the process of art making.The visual arts are a powerful arena in life and through art, people can either be depressed to die or stimulated to live. It so excites me that e momentary experience with en image can cultivate an infinite sensation of contentment. The honest light end joy of creating and sharing eternally refreshes my life and opens me to that which is wiser end higher than my nature.