Some artists think it old fashioned, but it was and in many cases I believe still is, an essential tool in an artist's repertoire. The preparatory sketch allows you to think around an idea and it provides an important breathing space for the development of visual concepts that sits between the processes of initial observation and those of composition. Edward Hopper is a classic case in point. If we want to see Hopper's ideas germinating we go and look at his preparatory sketches. In this instance, an observational drawing of a man from the back, sitting down at a bar begins an idea. We are sucked into the internal world of this lone figure and Hopper realises the potential that this small drawing has for something much larger, something that has a lot to say about the condition of human beings within a large urban metropolis.
Observational sketches
The small observational sketches above are simple visual notes, the sort of thing any of us might make, often scribbled in a note pad while having a cup of coffee, but this image in particular gets through to Hopper and he draws it again.
Edward Hopper sketch for the figure in the centre of Nighthawks
Hopper returns to his initial small drawings and redraws the man's back view, this time giving it more weight, solidifying the form and sitting it more firmly in a space. There is something about this figure, it begins to suck us in, as we look at it, it is facing in the same direction as us, towards the wall, but is focused on something we cant see. The hat begins to have more meaning, it is solidly on the head, but at the same time the circle of its rim indicates a rotational space that begins to revolve around the figure.
The centre of the composition
Hopper realises that this figure has a powerful presence, one that has enough gravitas around which he can build a composition. In the drawing above you can see clearly how he is beginning to imagine an image where this figure sits in the centre, and that hat now begins to have another type of importance, not just as a compositional device but as a psychological one. It further anonymises the figure of the man, casting a shadow over him and sending him even further into himself, in effect making this man even more lonely. Once the man is established as a focal or anchor point, Hopper is able to think about how various rectangles can be made to articulate themselves around him. Finally in the actual painting the rectangle around this man will become as dark as the man himself.
The man's interior darkness eventually pervades the entire composition, but earlier on in the development of the image his body stands out against the light. As other figures are firmed up they begin to establish relationships, a man and woman are clearly connected and they engage with the late night employee's gaze. It's a cold, rather unfocused relationship, but at least it is one that collects them together as a small group of three, the forth figure is acknowledged by no one, totally withdrawn into himself.
The composition is almost firmed up
The final painting: Nighthawks 1942
Nighthawks was painted in 1942, a time of war in Europe, which is perhaps why I was reminded of it. In the final painting the rectangle that surrounds the central figure of the lone man has got darker, so dark in fact his figure is almost lost in its blackness. The other figures are at least lit by the glow of artificial light, even if it is a harsh cold pale lemon yellow one.
Hopper has revealed the deep loneliness that people can feel, especially in a huge city full of millions of people. His thinking process as you can see is very formal, but he is using compositional processes that clearly reflect a deep understanding of the relationship between shape, position, colour, tonal value and their psychological impact.
The process Hopper uses begins with a tiny sketch, perhaps done in a similar situation to the final image, perhaps a drawing done in the full light of day, but once he has spotted potential in the image, you can see him building his composition piece by piece, thinking it through, but still making changes even as he paints the final image. That darkening of the rectangle of light that surrounds his lonely figure of a man, being a final painterly decision that turns this image into a dark masterpiece, one that has lodged itself firmly into my brain ever since I first saw it in the 1960s. Now, 80 years after it was painted, in a time of post-covid and worries about war in Europe, it seems to me that Hopper's image has a particular relevance, reminding us of how easy it is to slip into isolated despair, even when surrounded by other people and it perhaps reminds us therefore to be more open to others, and to offer companionship when we feel we can.
In my last post I pointed to the various energy fields that move between the body and mind, suggesting that they can be thought about and reflected upon as being parallel to the process of image making. I'd now like to fold into that series of interconnections 'environments of existence'. Perhaps a strange term, but I'm looking to develop ways of using language that don't always privilege a human centred world. These environments are usually analysed within disciplines such as urban design or landscape architecture, however it's not just fine art that needs to rethink itself, other visual disciplines such as town planning or architecture need to think about how they operate too. Instead to seeing themselves as disciplines that propose control, perhaps they could be windows through which we could look for how complexity arises and how relationships are built between things. For example in the city of Taipei there are constantly evolving mini events or tiny engagements based around community gardens and urban farms. They pop up like
mushrooms into degenerated or neglected areas of the city. They grow into open spaces in the same way that weeds find a home within small cracks in a pavement. Some people have already referred to these interventions as urban composts. The map above that tries to give an idea of their spread, uses eyes to indicate that they could be thought of as observation points from which to look at the city in a new way. Small interventions that look you in the eye and ask questions such as why cant the rest of the city feel like this? They emerge at pressure points that can be used to release the pent up energy of the city mass.
This situation can be looked at using a hybrid lens. Marco Casagrande states that urban Acupuncture is a bio-urban theory that combines sociology and urban design with the traditional Chinese medical theory of acupuncture. As a design methodology, it is focused on tactical, small-scale interventions in the urban fabric, the ripple effects of which lead to the transformation of the larger urban organism within which it operates. As in traditional acupuncture, pressure on a small point can release trapped energies over a much wider surrounding area. Casagrande is part of a new breed of designer / architect who typically mixes architecture with other much older disciplines to create highly aware, ecologically sustainable architectural installations. In his view, ‘there is no other reality than nature’, and architects he believes should operate like design shamans who act to interpret what the bigger shared mind of Nature is transmitting. I'm particularly interested in his idea of energy flows. He views cities as complex energy organisms in which different overlapping layers of energy flow are determining the actions of citizens as well as the shape of the city. By mixing environmentalism and urban design he advocates a sensitive series of ecologically sustainable interventions within a city, this 'Urban Acupuncture' is needed in order to 'heal' insensitive city developments. His example of using small-scale, but ecologically and socially catalytic developments, is I think very useful. We cant make changes unless we start somewhere, but change becomes daunting if we take on projects that are too big for us to handle. In my own case I begin to look around my own house and its garden and am thinking about what small decisions I could take to make a change for the better. Before making any decisions though one of the main permaculture maxims is to think slowly and to watch carefully, because it will be the way things join together synergistically in plant and animal communities that will become important and you only understand that, by looking closely at what is happening.
Community gardens in Taipei
Urban Acupuncture brings together acupuncture with urban planning, urban design, environmental art and anarchy. (If we define the root of anarchy as the impulse to do it yourself: everything else could follow from this) My own attempt to deepen my awareness of how fine art could be approached, (and as I have mentioned before, I think the term fine art needs rethinking) has led me to undertake a permaculture design course, as a way of working towards a set of ethically responsible ways of undertaking a fine art practice. Recent permaculture inspired thoughts about my garden, being a starting point for a more holistic approach to what I have been doing.
Diagramming a garden's energy flow patterns in relation to human energy needs
I would like to think that eventually fine art could become part of a more sustainable way of living, and that everything I am involved with would be seen as being entangled in some way with everything else. The idea of Organic Acupuncture being yet another signpost along a way that links to a much older tradition, whereby art and other forms of communication and knowledge transfer, are part and parcel of an approach to life that grounds its culture in a sensitivity to the biosphere, or what we now often call Gaia. The name Gaia was revived in 1979 by James Lovelock, when he was advised by William Golding to call his new theory of bio-systems regulation by the name of the old Greek goddess of the Earth, 'Gaia', (the same deity that in Roman times was called Terra). The Gaia hypothesis proposes that living organisms combine with inorganic material to form a dynamic system that is the Earth's biosphere and that this system maintains the Earth as a stable environment for life. The Earth itself is therefore viewed as an organism with self-regulatory functions. Art would in this case be simply part of that self-regulatory process.
A food pyramid and food web
There are several types of energy flow, the one we are most implicated in is the flow of energy through living things within an ecosystem. All living organisms can be organised into producers and consumers, and those producers and consumers can further be organised into a food chain, and usually humans are right at the top. But once we remember that over 50% of any one human being is actually composed of bacteria, we perhaps begin to see that the idea of one type of species being on top is actually meaningless. We are all interconnected.
The carbon cycle of a terrestrial ecosystem begins with photosynthesis, water (blue dots) and carbon dioxide (white dots) from the air are taken in with solar energy (yellow dots), and are converted into plant energy (green dots).
As the sun's energy is trapped and stored, animals who have eaten plants release materials back into the environment, there are in fact no things, only processes of exchange
The chemical process that underlies the formation of the carbohydrate glucose
These processes are central to everything, as the sun's energy needs to be captured before we can use it. The flows of energy begin with star stuff; sunlight and heat radiation is via photosynthesis converted and stored in fats and starches, things that animals can eat and convert back into energy that they use for their own ends. Alongside photosynthesis we also find respiration, achemical reaction which occurs in all living cells. It could in fact be argued that life is centred on the releasing of energy from glucose. Respiration can be achieved with or without oxygen; aerobic respiration occurs with oxygen and releases larger quantities of energy but slowly; anaerobic respiration occurs without oxygen and releases less energy but more quickly.
Comparison of Respiration and Photosynthesis in a wild strawberry
Respiration converts nutrients from the soil into energy and this is happening all the time, but as photosynthesis needs light it only happens in the daytime. Photosynthesis converts light energy to glucose which can then be used for respiration. This process is an example of an energy flow and also an example of how one type of energy can be stored or transformed into another, in this case it becomes an energy we call food. If there is a break in the chain, such as heavy volcanic activity sending out dust clouds to block the sun's rays, then something will go wrong because you will have an obstructed energy flow. One planet wide example of this was when a large asteroid hit the Earth triggering a chain of volcanic eruptions, the resultant long term darkening of the skies leading directly to the extinction of the dinosaurs. Acupuncture is a way of releasing trapped or obstructed energy flows; and there is a close energy flow connection between any body and the landscape it inhabits.
Human Body Meridians
As well as physical health there is a demonstrable link between body meridians and emotional well being. Meridian acupressure can be used to restore essential equilibrium and promote good health. Meridian lines are the energy network of the body; they are the channels by which our energy flows, transport energy throughout the body. Our life energy, also known in Chinese as Chi or Qi, is distributed by these channels, a process as opposed to a structure, that is studied by Chinese medicine practitioners as intently as a western doctor would have to study the anatomy of the human body. Blockages in this system may be caused by stress, bad diet, drug or alcohol abuse, injury or trauma and can be directly related to health issues. It is strongly believed in Chinese medicine that this energy flow conditions our overall existence; how we think, how we feel and how our body moves. It is further believed that the energy flows that surround us are interlinked with the energy flows that pass through us, something that is easily illustrated by the fact that the sun's energy flow is captured and converted by photosynthesis into substances that store and release energy. We in turn eat green vegetation that has stored that energy and our digestion system releases the energy and distributes it around our bodies.
Energy flow study
The good thing about drawing is that virtually everything can be both represented as and converted into visual energy using mark making processes. For example in the drawing above, the paper surface was gessoed, this alters the surface structure of the paper, so that scratched marks could be made to hold more ink and a line could be made to look ragged or broken, so that it could be read as a short rhythm of dots as well as a line. A curve sets up a very different type of rhythmic movement to a straight. The movement of the eyes in looking at a drawing adds another energy flow, the time spent contemplating the drawing being yet another flow of energy, this time out of the system, thus ensuring that another energy system is required to re-energise the whole, which may simply be a sweet cup of tea. The tea and sugar however will originate far from myself in Leeds, and this is where the environmental energy flows become so important, the question then asked is how much energy was wasted in transporting the tea and sugar from one side of the world to another?
The idea of the landscape as a body is another very old one. The traditional relationship of human beings to the land was one of deep reciprocity and continuity, in which it was the human responsibility to reciprocally keep the land 'enchanted' with various ways of communicating an awareness of energy flowing through both land and body, between which there should be a seamless continuum. The mythic link between land and body, might typically be understood within an animist tradition, whereby the relationship between land and body would be renewed and re-sanctified, by ritual and by the basic process of breathing it in over hundreds and thousands of years. It still feels wonderful to stand outside and breathe in and as you do so you feel all the various components of the air enter the body and then as you breathe out you can feel the various gases from the body being released out into the surrounding atmosphere. For the bacteria within you, you are the universe and you yourself are star stuff, a formation that is if only for a brief moment, something that is self aware.
Try to consider the conundrum that the universe can be regarded as a body and yet the body can at the same time be thought of as containing universes. A while ago I put up a post on the macro and the micro. At the time I wrote about making marks as energy fields within a drawing. I stated that "Not only does the mark quality and handling tell a story, but the concept of a mark field being something that comes together as an identifiable entity when you see it from a distance, is itself fascinating." This is the illusion of reality, from certain points of view we see patterns and we fix these patterns with words, but in reality all is always in flux. In the stories we tell ourselves, we steady the illusion of life and build fulcrums for change. However when real life events hit us we need to ensure that they are deeply understood, for instance death can be seen as in integral part of the flux of change and if we can accept this perhaps we can let go of life a little easier. The image immediately below is one of my own attempts to deal with these issues when my mother died. There was a sense of energy leaking away. In contrast the image 'Fluid passages' was a response to the energy exchange between two Phoenix dancers I saw in Leeds, their entwined bodies and contact improvisation techniques eventually dissolving their bodies into each other.
Slipping away, between states
Fluid passages
The fluid passage between the inside and the outside of the body is something we glimpse in a Frances Bacon painting,
Frances Bacon
The spaces surrounding Bacon's figures rarely immerse themselves back into the figures which inhabit them. They operate as traps, framing the event, rather than as reciprocal energies. Perhaps his contemporary Frank Auerbach was much more able to represent the integration and flow between the body and its spatial environment.
Frank Auerbach
The sense of flow or change is also I believe related to the importance of 'neuroplasticity', or brain plasticity; the ability of the brain to modify its connections or re-wire itself. (Stiles, 2000, p. 245) Without this ability, any brain, not just the human brain, would be unable to develop from infancy through to adulthood, recover from brain injury or learn new things. Something learnt can I believe also be thought of as a bundle of energy that can be passed on both from a direct experience and from secondary learning, such as reading about something. (Cartlidge, 2010 and Toyabe, Sagawa, Ueda, Muneyuki and Sano, 2010) report on research that is actually about converting information to energy by feedback control, and as an artist I do have an artistic licence to intuitively develop implications from this.
The brain processes sensory and motor signals in parallel and has many neural pathways that can replicate another’s function so that small errors in development or temporary loss of function through damage can be easily corrected by rerouting signals along a different pathway. The brain’s anatomy however ensures that certain areas of the brain have certain functions. This is something that is predetermined by our genes. For example, there is an area of the brain that is devoted to movement of the right arm. Damage to this part of the brain will impair movement of that arm. But since a different part of the brain processes sensation from the arm, you might be still able to feel the arm but unable to move it. This “modular” arrangement means that a region of the brain unrelated to sensation or motor function is not able to take on a new role. In other words, neuroplasticity is not synonymous with the brain being infinitely malleable, i.e. there are certain channels through which change is hosted but the fact that different regions of the brain do different jobs also helps us get a glimpse of somatic experiences and the relationship between interoception and perception.
A visualised somatic experience
Merleau-Ponty implies that the body constitutes both the cognitive ground of culture and its existential ontological ground. He argues (1962, p. 303) that we recognise things from the point of view of our bodies. Therefore it could be further argued that perception begins in a body that already knows itself; which is why my current research is focused on interoception and is entangled into the things that the body perceives in relation to itself, as Merleau-Ponty goes on to say, ‘my experience breaks forth into things and transcends itself in them, because it always comes into being within the framework of a certain setting in relation to the world which is the definition of my body’ (Ibid).
References
Cartlidge, E (2010) Information converted to energy Physics World: Quantum Mechanics Update 19 Nov Available at: https://physicsworld.com/a/information-converted-to-energy/ accessed on 20. 3. 22
Merleau-Ponty, M., & Smith, C. (1962). Phenomenology of perception (Vol. 26). London: Routledge.
Stiles, J. (2000). Neural plasticity and cognitive development. Developmental neuropsychology, 18(2), 237-272.
In the West art and anatomy have a long association; they are entangled together, which I suppose was a necessary condition as the ability to render objectively accurate images of the body necessitated artists study anatomy. Dissection of humans however was largely forbidden in the ancient world, but early medical thinkers such as Galen and Vitruvius were still able to come up with theories for how the body worked by dissecting animals, and from the information gathered, they deducted how the inner mechanics of humans worked, often by linking this knowledge to observations of exterior signs of illness such as changes in body colour and condition. This internal / external interrelationship would dominate Western thinking for centuries and in many ways still does.
Galen' s Tripartite Scheme, explaining how the blood circulated through the body
I love a good diagram and Galen has diagrammatic ideas as to how the body works. He believed in Hippocrates' Humoral ideas, which pointed to the existence of four fluid humors in the human body: blood, black bile, yellow bile and phlegmatic. Humors were divided into the body and a perfect harmony among them resulted in perfect health. Galen also linked the humoral theory to Aristotle’s ideas, which stated that the basis of existence resided in four elements: water, air, earth and fire. Each vital organ would be linked to one type of humor, which in turn, would be related to a natural element. We can see therefore how the body can also be seen as a landscape composed of the same basic elements as the environment that hosts it. The components of the body reflecting the ingredients of the earth. However it is Vitruvius who provides the classic image that we all remember when it comes to the proportions of the body.
Vitruvius
Theory and observation come together in the Renaissance and interestingly in his drawing 'Vitruvian Man', Leonardo did not represent Vitruvius's proportions, instead he used those he found himself after measuring several male models, a sign that things were changing. Vitruvius wrote his 'Ten Books on Architecture', approximately one thousand five hundred years before Leonardo read them. It is the only text on the subject of architecture to survive antiquity, but of far more interest is that it was also one of the first texts in history to draw the connection between the architecture of a human body and that of a building, not only is the bi-lateral symmetry of the body seen as a model for architecture, the interrelationship of body proportion is also seen as something that should be extended into architectural design. This, coupled with the fact that Vitruvius also states that the architect should also have a knowledge of the study of medicine. A building like the humans it is made for can become sick, because climate or air flow can effect the healthiness and unhealthiness of sites, and as Vitruvius goes on to point out, the use of different waters can also lead to illness if not controlled properly. The Romans here very good at building in underfloor heating, channelling water and creating steam baths. By extension an unhealthy body has characteristics similar to an unhealthy building. These characteristics I would argue are similar to those that compose what Henri Bergson in his book 'Creative Evolution' called the ‘élan vital’, an energy that runs through everything, not just living things. The implication of a force such as élan vital is that all materials have the potential to be informed by or formed into others, they just need to be in interaction with each other in some way. So you could describe something like metamorphosis or hybridity as a product of interactions between different energy states. For instance some of the interrelationships between interoception and perception are at their most interesting at the transition or liminal stage, between an external perceptual awareness of lets say a foot and interoceptual messages coming from a foot pain source, such as a bunion. One type of awareness passes into and becomes another type of awareness. This perceptual edge-land is for myself where visual invention conjoins with visual observation.
Image from an interoception awareness workshop
Like Russian dolls, these energy fields can sit one within the other, each one similar to the others, but each one also unique and having its own features. It is in the transition space that sits between the drawing of a man and the drawing of geometry that an idea grows.
Leonardo: Vitruvian Man
Even though the Catholic Church prohibited dissection, artists and scientists performed it to better understand the body. Renaissance artists wanted knowledge of the inner workings of the human body, which they believed would give them the necessary skills to paint and sculpt it in such a way that body positions represented appeared realistic or natural.
Andreas Vesalius: On the fabric of the human body in seven books
In the 16th century the physician Vesalius published his influential work, 'On the fabric of the human body in seven books'. He was an anatomist as well as a doctor and in making observations from his actual dissections was able to establish that many of Galen's theories were wrong. As these 'advances' in medicine were undertaken, what they also seemed to do was develop an idea of the body as a 'mechanism' or purely physical organ, advances in representation going alongside advances in medical procedures.
However there were other traditions.
Hua Khar Jaintsa 'Course of the Lifespan Principle' (1995–96) Pigment on cloth
In 1991 the 5,000 year old body of what was to be called Ötzi the Iceman was discovered. Entombed in ice shortly after his death, the glacial conditions protected much of his tissue, bones and organs and in particular because his skin was preserved, his tattoos were too.
Ötzi the Iceman with tattoo locations
80% of the tattoos found on the iceman overlap with classical Chinese acupuncture points, in particular those used to treat rheumatism, a medical condition that contemporary forensic archeology tells us the iceman suffered from. Other tattoos were found to be located on or near acupuncture points as well. Various herbs and medicines were also found alongside his remains, all pointing to ancient medical practices, that suggest the iceman belonged to a society with a surprisingly advanced health care system.
It is instructive to compare the Iceman's medical care with Tibetan medicine, a holistic practice with an approach that focuses on the conjunction of mind, body, and spirit. Also known as Sowa-Rigpa medicine, it is an ancient medical system that employs a complex approach to diagnosis, incorporating techniques such as pulse analysis, urinalysis, behaviour and dietary observation to determine what is wrong and uses herbs and minerals alongside acupuncture to treat illness. Hua Khar Jaintsa (active 1990s), created several intriguing images whereby the principles of Tibetan medicine were explained. The image 'Course of the Lifespan Principle' clearly illustrating the relationship between acupuncture points and the way that energy flows through the body. Hua Khar Jaintsa has created a body of work that reflects on many issues related to human development as well as on medicine and it stands comparison to many western European artists who have also attempted to explain the normally hidden aspects of our bodies.
Hua Khar Jaintsa: Early Human development
Hua Khar Jaintsa: Vulnerable points
It is interesting to compare Hua Khar Jaintsa to both Alberto Morroco and Luboš Plný. Alberto Morroco was the artist who in 1949 created the images for one of the definitive anatomy textbooks.
Alberto Morroco
Luboš Plný makes anatomical images of the human body, but he is also concerned to depict its functioning, its limitations, and its mortality. Sometimes labelled “anatomical self-portraits”, he combines coloured inks with acrylic paint and collage with organic elements such as blood, hair, the ashes of his dead parents and used medical aids to depict the body. He makes precise records of skin, musculature, bones, circulatory systems, and organs, embedding his observations into montages consisting of drawings made on the basis of everything from 19th-century anatomical guides, X-ray images, photographs of Madonnas and any other medical or religious items that he comes across.
Luboš Plný
Plný seems to have intuitively understood that as in Buddhist influenced health practices such as those practiced in Tibet, India, Nepal Siberia, China and Mongolia, healing is about confronting and transforming suffering and rebalancing the mind and body to equilibrium and not about waiting until someone is sick, so that you can then cure them. This equilibrium is something the body itself is constantly seeking to achieve, using its hormone systems to effect change when it senses things are out of balance.
Hormone Map
A brief look at a hormone map gives you an idea of the complexity of the body's feedback mechanisms. It also gives a chemical insight as to why an unhealthy body can affect mental health, and how poor mental health can affect the state of the body. The energy field that moves between the body and mind is called in Tibetan medicine 'duawa' and this is shaped by a combination of environment, diet, history, behaviour and belief system. For instance it is believed that if we eat the wrong foods, they can accumulate in our bodies and eventually manifest as illness. In terms of my understanding of what my own art practice is and what it could be, it has been important to understand that historically Tibetan artists created powerful images that were used as practical guides for well-being.
Tibetan Buddhist paintings of medical issues are used to help people understand the relationship between their condition and treatment, these images can combine physical, mental and spiritual conditions as well as illustrate how treatment could help them. This is a step beyond the work of a medical illustrator, and would seem to me to incorporate medical illustration with religious art, conceptualism and expressionism.
This fusion of various different disciplines offers for an artist such as myself a lot of freedom, whilst at the same time giving me a sense of purpose, especially as I continue my search for a way to visualise various forms of interoception. Here is another image, this time taken from an illustrated handbook of reflexology. The image of feet also has depicted within it images of the various parts of the body that are interconnected to them by energy flows which are themselves stimulated into action by applying pressure onto particular areas of the soles of your feet.
Acupuncture reflexology
The conjunction of images suggests a fluid liquidity of an embodied understanding, that compresses head, lungs, stomach and heart into a body that can exist within the flattest flatness of flat feet.
Holbein: Dead Christ
I am interested in a way of making images that combines Holbein's veracity, with an acupuncture reflexology diagram, with a chemical stain, with architectural space, with an emotive mark making system and a conversation between two people whereby they agree that a feeling tone can be not only depicted, but in that depiction captured and therefore externalised and making it available to healing rituals. As I struggle to find the right approach, I as always look around for artists that I think have developed a practice that feels as if it is hitting a spot at least near to where I would like to be. For instance Palden Weinreb, a New York–based artist draws on Buddhist teachings in his art practice, he makes works that help us to regulate our body rhythms. In the work below a pulsing white light brightens and dims in echo with our breathing patterns, encouraging deeper, more thoughtful, slower breaths. These regulated breaths may well have physical, psychological, and emotional benefits. He is essentially making a mandala within a mandala, a cycling light sits in the centre of a series of nested half spheres, the artwork as it pulses operating as an instrument for meditation.
Palden Weinreb
Weinreb's work is though but an echo of a very old Tibetan tradition, which includes the making of mandalas that have now been produced by anonymous artists for hundreds of years. These artefacts are though rarely to be seen on their own and would normally be accompanied by prayer or some other ritual.
Tibetan Mandala
There can be constructed between any two things a hybrid, therefore different aspects of the representation of humanity can be brought together, non figurative or more abstract images can be brought together with representation, sometimes to instruct and at other times to provide images that help foster moments of reflection or meditation. These hybrid forms are I believe necessary ones, because they allow imagery to operate across boundaries and to link together previously separate concepts.
From a series of images developed initially as foot votives
Colour and light would appear to me to be central to the way we develop metaphor, light in particular has often been used to provide a gateway into spiritual reflection.
Fused glass: memory of rib pain
Fused glass: Lower leg insect bites
I have looked at drawing with light in the past, and I have more recently been made aware of the healing power of both colour and light. 'Colour halls' were used for healing in ancient Egypt, China and India and I still remember first coming across SAD lights in a restaurant in Glasgow some years ago, and finding out then how much a lack of sunlight in winter effected northern people's circadian rhythms.
The various energy fields that move between the body and mind can all be thought about and reflected upon within the process of image making. Some of these processes will have historically belonged to the realm of religious imagery, others to more general ideas of spirituality but others have now entered the world of contemporary medical practices. Whether these issues are seen as belonging to art as therapy, or to art as a focus for meditation and a doorway into spiritual enlightenment, or simply as a way to use our hands and making skills as route into good mental health, I do think that we ought to be far more aware of art's potential to become once again part of the essential wellbeing of life.
