We need natural vistas to cultivate internal ones

          I desire power over the capacity to orchestrate my life. I achieve this by exercising the liberties bequeathed to me – defined by the activities of both social and professional ancestors. I have opted to express reverence for the past in my social behavior, and reverence for my professional peers with my actions.
          My need for freedom bonds me to Nature, exposing another similarity. If what makes me civilized is the capacity to reflect, and freedom is a requisite of that ability, than it is hoped that through reflection I will realize some new thought that was previously unknown to me. I will seize a new insight from the wild, undeveloped territory in my mind.

          Civilization may need comparable undeveloped territories in Nature as fuel for the activity of contemplation. We may actually need natural vistas in order to cultivate internal vistas. We may need undeveloped territories in Nature as a means of advancing, developing, and cultivating the symbolic systems of culture.
          When one considers that the materiality of our being inherently bonds us with Nature and that man can be studied by how he handles physical substances, than it can be said that how he handles Nature is a clue to his level of civilization.
          Our reverence for undeveloped natural spaces and land untouched by the hand of man may be the physical embodiment of the space needed in our mind for contemplation. Without this space our capacity to contemplate may actually falter.

          The activity of art enhances the artist's introspective capacity and from that stand point has utility - it is one of the means used to describe and embody our culture's symbolic systems. But many people seem to consider introspection either a luxury or something to fear. Maybe introspection is feared in the same way Nature used to be feared - as something untamed, wild in its musings, and to be avoided or protected against for its unpredictability. Maybe it is perceived as something to avoid, like mental hurricanes and tornadoes and flash floods, something to be dammed up and transformed into usable linear electrical pulses.

          While we first needed skills to develop Nature in order to survive, we now need an increased ability to understand ourselves in order to survive. As an artist I am challenged to embrace this need. I willingly plunge into the arena of the unconscious looking for material which adds to the breadth of self-knowledge, increasing my introspective facility, and expanding the information available to me about our inner being.


          So my distinction from Nature can now be used to help me reach a plateau of activity which cooperates with her and is of mutual service in assuring the survival of both of the earth and humankind. It is one of the continuing tasks of art to provide a fresh view of life and the world in spite of the dominance of repetition - repetitiveness found in Nature, the products of man, and in the repetitive tendencies of history.

          I use introspective tools to pull insights out of the protective anonymity of the unconscious, delivering myself from the oppressive aspects of repetitiveness and offering this release to those who view my work. But insights are also elusive and often defy their own seizing.
          Intuition gives birth to thoughts that resist being named or communicated in language. So I turn to a visual language in order to communicate and record the activity of my mind.
          I explore and re-define the influences on my mind by contemplating Nature on the one hand and my own mental environment on the other. Through the traditions established by Nature I may yearn to depict three-dimensional forms and through the tradition of art history I am challenged to depict new one.

Ode to Gardening - collaborating with Nature

          Nature has proven to be an abundant and prolific mentor.  Pondering her distinctive grandeur gave me the means to comprehend distinction in general, learning through her to apply this distinction to myself.  So I am challenged to communicate distinction.  I will gravitate to activities which generate thoughts that succeed in helping me do so. 

          For me, creating art has proven to be such an activity.  Art work enables me to bridge a gap between Nature and myself because I am simply following her lead.  Nature participates in  elevating my social consciousness. 

          An artist can treat all of life as if it were food – as fuel for inspiration and thought, as potential subject matter and artistic content. An artist need not be prejudice against the good and bad of any of life. 
          When feeling and reflection intermingle they give rise to compassion, affection, and admiration.  Without these capacities added to my being, I would not be distinct from Nature in her detachment from the morality of the life forms she produces.  Yes, a certain amount of detachment and "objectivity" is required of me, but without the capacity for affection and attachment I would be less than human and would qualify as simply another creature groveling for survival on the earth's surface.

          So it is a challenge for me to overcome Nature's indifference with my specialized capacity to express affection.  And better yet if Nature's special skills and my own can interact. 
          Gardening is one area of expression where this interaction can occur - my gardening skill shares power with the earth's ability to grow plants and this activity tutors my affection toward Nature in a manner which transcends the specific activity of gardening. 
          Gardening teaches me how to collaborate with the inherent power of an entity other than myself.  I am enhancing Nature's unique skills with my perseverance and her power rewards me with a Total environment, one informed by both human and earthly nature. 

          I can grow affection toward Nature as I tend to the garden, so I can develop a concern for her even though I cannot see contaminants in the air.  I can express affection toward Nature as I paint abstract invertebrates and organisms, so I can create with an attitude of caring for her even though I cannot see the hole in the ozone layer. 
          In both instances my affection toward her is rewarded.  The abstract thing of affection is made just as physical and tangible as both Nature and myself.  Such expression while springing from our differences highlights our similarities.  These activities also tutor me about decay and loss.  I miss flowers when they disappear in the fall in the same way I anticipate missing family members when their opportunity to move about has passed.

          My desire to care is matched by her nurturing capacity, and my creative efforts embody our mutual physicality and tendencies toward growth.  For the greater part of life, growth is conditional - I am free to choose my own fertilizer.  I am not free to grow another arm, but I am free to refine the content of my expressions.  The ability to manipulate the content of my  expressions presupposes mastery of a particular medium.  With mastery literally in my hands, the struggle shifts from having difficulties with the materials of my craft to struggles with subject matter and content. 

          The desire to record and express affection has affected my objectivity.  It neutralizes my desire for power over anything other than myself, least of all nature.  The objects I make document my emotional history.  Whether I am conscious of my emotional state or not the making of objects will create a record of my emotions.  Artistic mastery is complicated by this dynamic.
          Not all are capable of manipulating their emotional state into the service of mastery.  Not all are planted in pristine soil to be nurtured by fate and good luck.

Inspired by Nature's example

          Nature is indifferent to the morality of the forms she sustains and gives birth to - she is objective and seemingly alienated about the cruelty or injustice one species inflicts upon another.  Practiced objectivity, then, is something I learn from her, as well as other people, and is yet another thing I have in common with her. 
          So a tradition of estrangement and alienation could be said to be inherent in life and common to everyone.  Bridging it is a challenge that can be met in a variety of mediums - merging ideas with form, pulling these two together in art, is one of those ways.

          Faulting Nature for her indifference is akin to faulting me for having a brain - both have inherent methods of operating that are productive and bountiful.  How can I resent Nature's means of expression, the means that give birth to a prolific abundance and variety that enriches me and gives me shelter?  We weave blankets from her cotton and wool keeping us warm while she needs to cool.  She provides us with the means to shelter ourselves from her "inhuman" methods.  But her methods are ultimately hospitable. 
          Civilization has spared me much of her terror, her cruelty.  But often, even during an earthquake, I just marvel at her power.  In the end I submit my body to her, leaving with her that part of me physically dependent on her.  Ultimately I lay under a blanket woven of soil.  But that part of me conscious of my separateness from her moves on, released to its own mysterious destiny.  Even then I may be able to visit her spaces in the same way I visit my own past.

          Even though I do not copy the visible world directly in my art does not mean I lack regard for it.  I convinced myself that depicting new objects and ideas in paint is the best way to honor the diversity I see.  Why should I paint a flower when Nature makes one so much better?  Will my painting ever smell as wonderful as a narcissus or stocks?  No. 
          I cannot sustain the desire to paint a thing that Nature makes so completely and so well.  I can sustain a desire to express my measure of reverence for the diversity she so clearly reveals.  The earth is a unique entity; we know of no sister planets.  Every individual living on her surface participates in this rare and wonderful setting.  Inspired by Nature's example I am compelled to contribute to this uniqueness.  Reverence is what disallows me from duplicating either the work of my ancestors or the handiwork of Nature.

          The capacity to think, ponder, consider and reflect is what makes me distinct from Nature.  This distinction sets up a condition of inherent duality which every generation is challenged to consider.  Social consciousness mediated by thought and feeling and then translated into action - transformed into tools and products - is what gives us civilization. 
          The state or relative health of civilization can be understood by studying "how man shapes and handles physical substances," because it can be assumed his thoughts and feelings are represented materially.  What I do materially, then, betrays and reveals how I reply to my contemplative distinction from Nature. 
          If I consume or produce without reverence for her, than I reveal a lack of capacity for reverence, a general lack of respect that is more than likely a reflection of my attitude toward myself.  Nature users are really no different in character then people users.  An industrial tycoon who is servicing human needs may actually have a great reverence for Nature.  A barefoot surfer who relishes walking on a colony of anemones as a cushion for his feet does not.  His attitude is the weapon he uses against her. 
          Even though the surfer is not shaping a marketable object, he is revealing a negative social consciousness by the manner in which he behaves toward a relatively defenseless creature.  It is in this way that one's behavior toward objects becomes a measuring rod of social consciousness.     

          Reflecting about the ties between action and attitude by developing an awareness of how they tutor one another is one of the primary activities that distinguish me from other mammals.  But if reverence is not an active component of my reflections, then it cannot become a component of my actions.  Without an intermingling of values and action, I cannot express reverence for anything no matter which medium I use.  Reflection is the activity that allows this intermingling to occur and is precisely what distinguishes me from organic Nature.

Ode to Gaudi: Seizing the Concept of Growth

          A feature I share with Nature is that she is continuously evolving, in a state of flux, growing, and changing.  Rosenberg said "Neither in nature nor in art nor in the self is there to be found a point of completion....all forms, past and present, float together in a sea of potentiality."*  So an artist is not likely to be able to "achieve more than parts." 
          But an artist can suspend this incompleteness for a moment by fixing a state of mind on the canvas in the same way a tree suspends its growth for a moment by offering its fruit.  The artist can complete part of himself on the painting even though as a person he may be changing as he paints.

          Art captures growth by suspending it for a moment, capturing it out of the sea of potentiality.  An art style based on motion and change may not have the same result.  But an art based on growth can pluck an idea out of the mind fixing it on the canvas in a form that might be called the fruit of contemplation.
           Such art arrests evolution and change for a moment, offering to the viewer of art one of the visible means of contemplating another person's thoughts.
          Or, as Greenberg said: "art ennobles raw matter to the point where (it can) function as art." ** Art can then make matter as relevant as ideas by creating physical refreshment - seizing the tangible out of the intangible meanderings of the mind, gripping it out of the sea of change.

          While it was my ancestors that instilled me with affection toward the soil, it was Gaudi who gave me the means of grasping the concept of growth.  His comprehension of the abstract features of growth was complete; he assimilated and urbanized the concept of the organic.  He merged the aesthetics of Nature with the aesthetic features of the fine art tradition.
          He grew an urban space, expressing the completeness of his gratitude for Nature by molding her raw material offerings into forms inspired by her spaces.  He did not forget her when the time came to consider the more abstract features of a particular design or project.
          I can imagine him asking himself "What would Nature do if she were growing this structure?"  And conversely, not asking himself what his human colleges were doing and thereby relinquishing his synthesizing gifts to the architectural standards of the day.
          He devised a different standard, a different visual method, giving us tangible examples of structures embodying those unique standards.  Seizing the concept of growth was one of the methods he used.

          One of the many things I do share with artists of the past such as Gaudi is the compelling need to respond to Nature.  The advances and contributions of my fellows teaches me new ways of responding to her that releases new thoughts and insights previously unavailable to the human mind.  While new thoughts are immaterial by themselves, depicting them in paint makes them material.  Rather than submitting to the separation between the organic and inorganic, art can merge them, bringing them into a new relationship not otherwise possible.  It is this very separation, learned from Nature herself, which artists can attempt to bridge.



*Rosenberg, Harold.  Artworks and Packages, pg. 48-9.  University of Chicago Press, 1986
**Greenberg, Clement.  The Collected Essays and Criticism, Volume II, pg. 233.  University of Chicago Press, 1986.

Indigenous to the soil of thought

           Nature's silence is not the only thing I have in common with her.
           By observing her she teaches me her methods and how they can enhance and complement my own "natural" inclinations.   She tutors me about the character of my own thinking and enables me to think symbiotically toward her.  Her enthusiasm toward growth finds an equivalent in my creative energy - both have a will to be.

           Her organic methods are similar to the organic features of contemplation - evolution in nature finding its parallel in the evolution of thoughts.  Evolution's dependence on the environment is similar to state-of-mind's dependence on perception.  There is an interlocking there that gives birth to form - either a form of life on her part or a form of vision on my own.  Nature influences me, my choices and thoughts influence me, and in turn, my choices impact nature.  The way I think, then, is vitally important.  If my thoughts evolve in a manner that is tutored by Nature then my capacity to care for her is enhanced.

           To me her eruptions, and my own, are not signs of evil, but symbols of a passion for life.  Her eruptions and tornadoes give shape to her diversity, creating unique and varied terrains and environments so the diversity of flora and fauna can flourish on her skin.  This passion and diversity informs me, not only about her temperament and "personality" and how it is given to express itself, but also about human nature.  Human eruptions and tornadoes give shape to cultural diversity, creating unique and varied personalities so the living diversity of human potential can flourish in society.

            Ideas are like bulbs or seeds planted in the soil of my mind in need of nourishment, pruning, and weeding to grow with enough strength to expand into the sunlight of conscious thought.  They emerge from the depths of my mind like fragrant narcissus, indigenous to the soil of thought.  They naturalize in a fertile social environment crowding out weeds of discontent.
          Sometimes quite literally, I will dig for indigenous rocks in the dirt of my garden, shopping for them, paying for them with movement.  My thoughts are no more easily won.  Sometimes when I dig it is difficult to discern between rocks and malnourished soil until they are cleaned and exposed to air.  Thoughts are the same.  Some thoughts expand when pruned, responding with new growth.  They press against my mind begging to emerge as three-dimensional form.  Others are like naked roots traumatized when exposed to air and better left buried.  

          I give objects space on the canvas not only as a means of compensating them for their captivity, but out of respect.  I respect their need of space to grow and move about in the same way I respect the need of a thought to have space around it in order to give it full consideration.  A thought cannot be littered with opposing notions; it cannot be properly studied if obscured by random ideas.  These cluttering thoughts must be removed like weeds around a flower or parasites on their stem.

          Mind weeding needs to be attended to as a form of mental gardening, removing intrusive thoughts having recognized they encroach on the growing space needed to cultivate vision, their roots competing in the soil of my mind.  I pluck these thoughts out, collecting them into the compost pile of a journal.  I want long-stemmed aromatic ideas growing in my mind.
          I link the diversity in shapes of the physical world with the diversity of thoughts available to my mind.  There are as many thoughts available to consider as there are shapes to ponder.  The desire to synthesize the diversity of physical shapes with diversity of thoughts propels me to paint in a concrete manner, giving ideas physicality - a physicality as concrete as the shapes I ponder.

Nature dissipates my concerns as if they were a necessary ingredient in photosynthesis

          It is an accident of history that I exist in a time when the surface of the earth has become weary as a source for artistic subject matter.  But this does not mean it is at all reasonable to conclude that artists are weary of Nature as a source of inspiration.  A generalization such as that is as valid as concluding that anyone who does not own a camera detests pictures or anyone who does not ski despises snow.

          I am not weary of natural preserves I can walk through, exposing myself to vistas and lush terrains which invite me into their spaces - spaces which surround me completely in an earthly organic womb.

          Such spaces dissipate all my concerns, pulling them out of me as if they were a necessary ingredient in photosynthesis.  I walk through them in anticipation of an organic focal point provided by forms composed in the wild.

          The scale of these compositions has little bearing on my pleasure.  It could be lichen on a rock held in my hand or the undulating folds of a massive granite rock.  This diversity of visuals becomes my repertoire.  They are organic symphonies whose notation I absorb.  I carry their memory in my brush.

      
          Nature presents some of her grandest and vivid spectacles in the renewal of spring, surprising me with her energy.  Her endlessly diverse forms are a vehicle of color.  Her most striking colors emerge, beckoning me, pulling me into her spaces to study her compositions and her bold combination of colors.  She is not shy about this, she is not modest in her use of color.
          With her color serves as a lure, having a pro-creative purpose that seizes the eye.  I feel as simple as a large vulnerable insect drawn by the pollen of her abundant diversity.  These notions too become part of my visual journal.

          Nature gives me the latitude to infuse my colors with strength, giving them substance and vitality and the element of surprise.  In my paintings, color becomes the liaison between form and content.  Forms want to be a certain color, they want to display a certain vitality so their aliveness can be enhanced.  The vitality of color I use in paint compensates the static painted forms for having to be fixed on the canvas.  Having been robbed of life and freedom of movement, they are resuscitated by color and space.  So what I have taken away from them, I do my best to give back.    

          Part of what makes it possible to develop a new relationship with Nature is that I have been freed by man's advances from being obsessed by notions of utility.  I am free from having to provide for my own material needs.  This freedom encourages new thoughts about nature to develop.



"Giacometti's defection from Surrealism came with his return to nature, to the study of the model.... It was precisely the Surrealist notion of a reality exhausted by common knowledge which Giacometti had resolved to challenge.... Reality, he assured me, had by no means been commandeered by the camera..."I can be boring.  Reality never!"*
*Rosenberg, Harold.  Art on the Edge, pg. 126-7.  University of Chicago Press, 1975.

Training to be a Visual Athlete

    "The main thing is freedom...a freedom which insists on its right to be just as inventive as nature in her grandeur is inventive."  Paul Klee*

          For my own part, I receive Nature.  What I want from her is what I receive.  So in that sense, I am thinking like a primitive.  When Klee talks about wanting to paint like the first man I think he means he wants to think and see like the first man, thinking through the present into the depths of raw pre-history, looking with both the eyes and mind of a primitive and a native. 
       
          The first man thinks without language, he cannot think with words.  He is a man so primitive he can only think visually and yet does so with all the intellect of an Einstein.
          This sort of seeing provides a first fresh glance.  It is the looking of a conscious man-child adept at thinking past words - defusing words, scrambling them, forcing them out of focus in the mind and opening a specialized domain of virgin seeing.  One can develop dexterity in fluctuating in and out of wordless seeing with as much ease as a photographer adjusting the focus of a camera lens.

          But there is an athletic requirement to this - it is an activity that needs exercising and nurturing.  As a visual athlete, there are specialized muscles one needs to exercise in the mind that would otherwise atrophy.
          The mind must inhabit a non-word playing field.  The more rigidly structured one's thoughts become, the more difficult it is to experience a "seeing" mental environment - for new experiences come marching into a judgmental chamber in the mind, are then pelted with relative values, surrounded by biases, and assaulted with prejudices.  New concepts and ideas emerge when the affect of these biases are held at bay for a moment allowing an insight to break through and present itself - offering a new sight from inside the mind.


           For me the Pacific coast is a fertile playing field for exercising a form of primal seeing.  Each beach is a book of visual pages I walk through.  The totality of the coast's raw environment allows me to become a primitive, a native, refreshing my sense of awe through pure sight.  It protects me from being overwhelmed or consumed by structured modes of thinking which can enclose and constrict my mind.

          The seasons of the mind are so fragile - there are areas in it which need protecting, need to be set aside and monitored by an internal benevolent ranger who is assigned to preserve its fragile ecosystem against predators.  Envy and greed are mind predators.


          To a visual athlete, words can become a form of claustrophobia imposing on the clarity of sight.  Words can become an obstruction in the same way lack of wind is an obstruction to a kite-flier, or rocks in the path of a bicycler, or lack of thread to a seamstress.

          Raw Nature enables me to swim in the ocean of vision.  She stimulates me visually, teaching me about organic forms and the features of natural composition.  She teaches me volumes about depth, shadow, diversity, light, movement, growth - informing me about the character and personality of organic forms, and the pleasure of asymmetry.
          Reading a book doesn't teach me that.  Driving down a freeway doesn't teach me that.  All that is left for my eyes to feast on then is the sky, and I endanger my life if I surrender them to the movement of the clouds.
          I consider Nature at least, if not more than, an equal tutor to all of art history.


 *Rosenberg, Harold.  Artworks and Packages, pg. 46-9.  University of Chicago Press, 1969.

Nature: a silent medium

          I am influenced by everything visible and had to learn how to discriminate between inspired, distinguished, and well-focused compositions, and those which are unfocused, chaotic, and disorienting.  Eventually I developed visual prejudices - finding myself drawn to organic rather than geometric forms and to objects mysterious enough to inspire contemplation.  For me the capacity of an object to evoke contemplation is its ultimate utility. 

          In other words, when I see a field of cotton* I don't think about the plant's eventual transformation into cloth, but absorb information about the plant’s structure, texture, and form, and consider its similarity to clouds.  I don't think about lumber when I see a tree, but digest ideas about the characteristics of growth and asymmetrical forms.  I'd rather think about growth than 2 by 4's.

          In the studio one of the things I have in common with my art is silence.  Art work is notoriously quiet and a blank canvas even more so - it begs to be marked or scared.  In this silence something wishes to emerge, be born, created, come into being.  My mind grows quiet, focusing on one thought at a time, developing it in the same way my eyes enlighten my mind about a single form by traveling around its perimeter and contours.

          There are many types of silent communication.  One of the grandest and most prolific is Nature.  As a person who works with a silent medium I developed a strong affinity toward her.  My biased mind is filled with a library of organic forms.

          Opinions about the modern artist's relationship to Nature vary widely.  I have been "told" by various critics that I despise her, that I am estranged, remote from and exploitative of Nature, that I consider her capricious and hold her in contempt, that I desire power over her, and that, if abstract, my art is decidedly unlike her and an assault to tradition.  Sometimes these same authors said the opposite - that I may not be derogatory toward objects simply because I neglect their appearance.  These remarks were made by critics who never reconciled their own inconsistencies.  In the face of them, there remains a lot of room for discussion.

          Most of the visual information I absorb has been shaped and handled by man.  And most man-made structures are geometric in form - they are angular and emphasize a strong preference for symmetry.  There are few organically shaped buildings in the world.  Being immersed in a man-made world and being one step removed from having to manufacture my own material needs gives me the freedom to think of the organic world in different terms.  I am free to consider Nature as a beneficiary of my actions rather then a dictator or tyrant who determines my every move.  As one of the first generations of persons to live with this liberty, I am free to define the terms by which I approach her.

          My interaction with Nature is no longer determined by the toil of my hands but is selected by the journey of my eyes.  I am free to contemplate her and the thoughts generated by doing so affect my creative actions.  But again, these thoughts are recorded and acted upon in the same format they are received - visual.  This cycle cannot help but produce new visual responses as my evolving relationship to natural phenomenon works its way into art.


*Gossypium hirsutum

Overcoming Silence, part 6: Feeling

          I don't want to miss making the point that the successful production of art involves a willing engagement of feeling.  This area of the brain is actively employed and was barely in need of training in order to become a productive member of the visual team. 

          It's primitive association with tactile sensations made it an early volunteer recruit, welcoming the artistic adventure, appreciating the opportunity to be intellectually useful to a modern human being.  Having once been a critical character in the daily life of the human animal, it is happy to contribute it's ancient expertise.

          Touch me, and let me touch, through eyes to hand in a socially graceful manner let me exhibit adoration.  Let feeling too be so uplifted, brought forward into contemporary life, not whittled away to a single abode, confined and imprisoned into an irrational corner.

          Emotion and touch have a bad reputation.  The artist wrestles with their impulse, taming them and giving them new social graces.  Accomplished with the whip?  No - they are escorted into a new mental chamber, with the reproductive urge squeezed out of them.  Then they can successfully be put to work, engaged to a purpose rather than an urge.  Yes, they volunteered themselves to art quickly.  Yes too, they needed to be refined, tutored, instructed, and disciplined.

Overcoming Silence, part 5: "Feeling" Vision

          Nicholas Humphrey (see Overcoming Silence, part 2: Perception, re A History of the Mind) spoke of the basic purpose of animal senses - that they originally provided an organism with the means to feel stimulus from the outside world in order to generate a survival reaction from its body. The senses humans retain have become more sophisticated in their ability to generate a survival reaction but are still capable of generating a rudimentary response.

          In other words, the sophistication of my eyes protects me from having to feel every threat to my body. I can move myself out of harms way before a thorny plant or object penetrates the surface of my skin. However, we have not been stripped of the capacity to feel.

          The eyes act now as an intercessor giving us the option of responding with feeling to the information they provide. This feeling response, when aroused, is generated in a different part of the brain, no longer integral to the activity of the eye's perceptive channel.

          Feeling something about what we see is no longer a survival necessity but in most cases is a luxury; it too is a leisure activity. Is this not why art is considered a luxury by our culture, and its production a leisurely activity engaged in by someone with disposable time on their hands? Isn’t it assumed we have the option of feeling something about it?

          What do we loose by not "feeling" vision? Are there ways to preserve some qualities of the original animal sensations? Are there circumstances where some of these qualities are preserved, and if so is there a pattern them - threatening or otherwise? Do we need new words to describe these circumstances, or an incentive to identify them?

          On a train ride through an urban setting I am exposed to a plethora of decaying, rusting, atrophying, and deserted properties. I will also pass by some of the wealthiest properties in the country – the vast majority bounded by closely spaced 20 foot tall Italian Cypress (Cupressus sempervirens) used to create “living fences.” One set of properties is bounded by plants, the other by broken fences. Both settings provide visual fodder.

          Is there not an education failure here – one maintained over the 100 year life-span of the train? Which costs more – a fence or a few potted plants? Which lasts longer, cleans the air, provides shelter for wild life, and muffles sound?

          Visual deprivation is systemic.  Generally our understanding of it is defensive not introspective;  its pernicious affects utterly muffled.

Overcoming Silence, part 4: Visual Tap Root

          High-octane visual receptors place unique demands upon me.  I cannot escape the sight-seeing mode and have had to learn how to manage this condition.  The audio equivalent is a person who must wear hearing suppressants in order to tolerate normal levels of sound.  I-pod anyone?  A visually stressed environment imposes demands on me that are not always easily managed.

          I nurture a dialogue between perception and introspection in order to exercise and further develop my visual muscle – and it now bulges into other areas of thought. 
          The studio setting enables me to act and introspect simultaneously.  The two modes learn to function together like fraternal twins.  Artistic tasks are both creative and visual and because so have a creative and visual influence on my choice of introspective topics. 

           For me, introspective activity takes place in a visual format - it is neither unconscious nor verbal.  Conscious thought simply takes longer to emerge in a verbal form because it is originally incubated in a conceptual and visual format.  When it does emerge it tends to do so as a shape or is coherent on a visual level - in other words, it resists coming out either verbally or linearly.

          This interaction between artistic creativity and introspective creativity generates a bias in my mind toward the contemplation of forms.  More of my mind's resources cooperate in the creative effort and make their own specialized contribution to the process.  The maize of my mind's visual wires has responded to use by spreading their tentacles into every possible region they can. 
          Without the toil of artistic action the soil of my mind would never have become loosened enough to accept the penetration of new roots, feeding my visual tap root with nutrients from other regions. 

          Painting gives this mental activity a deep watering, pulling its influence out the hand and fingers, engaging the whole body in an extended applause for the wonderful gift of sight.  Thus I am inclined to forage for visual meaning, seeking an optically biased conceptual condensation of what I see.

          This combination of skills is unique to artists and their development intensifies the difficulty of communicating in other media.

Overcoming Silence, part 3: Visual Estate

          Other people can approach an artist's normal mode of thinking but never fully embrace it within themselves. Beyond the obvious genetic differences, the distance is confounded by the cumulative affect of visual concentration on the brain's structure. Most people can only visit the introspective position where artist's normally reside.

          An artist can never take a holiday from their vocation. There is no way to escape the exercise of their craft until their are either dead or go blind. Moving about in the execution of the tasks of everyday life exposes the artist to input that is either fodder or contamination.

          Visually speaking, there is very little nourishment to be found in man-made environments. Here to fore, plants have been the solitary component of our aesthetic insurance policy.

          Our Green inheritance pertains not only the environment but all aspects of how we management of our visual estate.

Overcoming Silence, part 2: Perception

The legitimacy of developing a systematic approach to the reading of art has been given a boost by new research being done in other fields - namely genetics and neurobiology.  In his book A History of the Mind, Nicholas Humphrey described how the human visual system works.

Fundamental to his argument, and germane to mine, is the proposition that the human visual system has two rudimentary parallel channels. 

One is the sensory channel, coming from the optic nerve, which translates information hitting the retina into a format digestible by the brain. 

The second is a perceptive channel which further translates information from the sensory channel into a format useable by other parts of the brain.

Apparently the perceptive channel will confirm its interpretation of visual data with the sensory channel before transcribing it further and passing information along to other lobes in the brain.  Given the specialized nature of perception, one has to conclude that the decision to act or to further contemplate the visual data is made in other areas of the mind. 

Perception, then, on its own does not generate introspective thought.

If the visual information warns the body of an impending life-threatening situation, the decision to act is pretty well guaranteed.  But if the situation is not life-threatening, then the decision to think further about what the eyes are reporting is totally optional.

All of which is to say that introspection is a voluntary response engaging a separate area of the mind.  It is a type of leisure activity.  It takes time.  And, because it is subservient to threats of physical harm, introspection is an act of thought which requires some means of controlling the input of new stimulus - otherwise the eyes would be a defensive organ and no more.

An artist is a person who creates his own visual stimulus in a setting where the distractions are controlled.  Every studio is an introspective laboratory and just as in any of the sciences some laboratories produce better results than others. 

The point is that what is for most people a leisure activity is a normal mode of functioning for the artist.  Truly there are other professionals who work under similar conditions but it is my intention to concentrate on those whose work product retains a visual format.

           With art and the artist the loop between sight, perception, introspection, and work product is as tight as it can get.  In the artist's case speech is another form of distraction.  Art illustrates an interpretation of life mediated by successive levels of introspection. 

   

Executing artistic expression while actively immersed in an introspection state is what accounts for varying degrees of artistic success.  The most profound work will succeed at capturing and conveying to a viewer a deeply introspective state.

It is the conveyence of this state which is so essential.  Art work which requires that the introspective state or intentions be explained has not succeeded in its visual capture.

Overcoming Silence, part 1

          As an artist I live with a visual bias. I am able to make full use of my temperament by responding in a visual form to information gathered through my eyes. I glean the most from my experiences by translating them into a visible medium.
          My experiences are not fully combusted until they are decoded, filtered, digested, and re-processed into a visual format. Without this processing, the wisdom to be gained from experiences would not be available to me. A different mode of processing life would simply be alien to me – and restraining my brain's particular mode of digesting life would have denied me access to its nutrients.

          I experience a genetic pressure to create. This pressure is a companion I wake up with it each morning and is an impulse over-riding all others. (Well, nearly...) It requires me to respond with the same sense of urgency as any other involuntary biological pressure. I have a mental hunger to create. Visual data enters my mind as a food and painting enables me to digest it.


          Painting has transformed my ability to transform raw un-processed data into a visual format. I paint a response to all the information available to me as a consequence of having lived. There is no doubt this translation process requires technical and athletic skills, but there is an equal demand for introspective and perceptive skills.
          If this were not so the painting profession would have died with the birth of the camera.

          Neither the object being painted nor my visual organs are capable of instructing my hands. My mind needs to interpret the visual information twice – first into a code unique to the mind and then into a set of instructions to my hand. In both instances the raw data is manipulated and massaged by my disposition.
          My temperament interjects itself into the act of translation. Temperament interceding on behalf of the individual is one of the features of drawing which accounts for the differences between two artist's renderings of the same object.

          However rudimentary my creative skills may have been in my youth, their breadth and influence has expanded over time. It seems like all other mental functions have become subservient to the visual cortex. Because vision has been favored by daily exercising it now dominates all my brain processes; it's the boss of my head. It's as if vision's network of nerves penetrates all the other reasoning centers. Every mode of mental activity must first receive permission to act and if its granted request does not eventually enhance my perceptive skills, I will give that mental servant new guidelines in order to improve its performance.

          The visual area of my mind won out through perseverance and reward. By the age of seven I identified a sensation of mental calm associated with the actions involved with drawing – the intense looking, the gradual accumulation of deep familiarity with the form being recorded, the thoroughly engaging concentration required to communicate the appropriate action to the muscles in my hand.

          On an intuitive level there was another order of learning going on having more to do with the outside world than with discovering an activity capable of engaging my whole body.
       
          Drawing set the tone of my future relationship with the outside world. It gave me a means of personally relating to the multitude of objects surrounding me. I could take ownership of them by drawing them without having to possess them.
          Drawing gave me free access to all the objects of the adult world, defying my utter lack of monetary power.
          Drawing refined my awareness of the physical attributes which distinguish one object from another. It also refined my sensibilities toward them and introduced me to a system of relating to a variety of objects - living, moving, inert, and rooted.

          I suspect my abiding affection for immobile objects is related to their cooperation with the needs of one who draws. Their natural propensity to remain still is in total agreement with my need for the time to carefully render form. I do not have to test their will or coerce them to sit still. I associate their stillness with my own sensation of mental calm generated by the act of drawing.

          This camaraderie established my early affinity for nature - both of us grew; plants got bigger and so would I, they flowered and I would blossom too. Art recorded my development in a self-regulating language system. It was the one area of expression where I was both teacher and student.
       
          I have now been working with a visual language system for around fifty years. On an intuitive level I am extremely familiar with it. Now, I will attempt to describe how a visual mental structure wields its influence and affects other modes of reasoning.

FILLING THE VISUAL GAP

An Artist's Perspective on Art

By Susan C. Dunlap

copyright 1989

Introduction

Art work is silent. It's silence challenges all who attempt to read it and is an omnipresent barrier to be hurdled. Two major difficulties emerge as a consequence of this silence. One is that, with rare exception, art historians study the work of deceased artists – a notoriously silent group of people. The other is that artist's have, in part, gravitated to painting as a mode of expression because of it's quietness.

Paintings talk back to the artist in color, form, and mood, not in words or some other form of audio communication. Over the long haul of a long career, the artist may loose verbal skills while gaining painterly ones. In any case he doesn't often stop long enough to thoroughly develop an artistic thesis or articulate precisely the nature of his personal compulsions – the very ones which drive him to create. The literature is quite sparse on this topic – hard to find and nearly nonexistent.

The principal goal of this document is to offer an artist's point of view and then use that point of view to suggest and justify a new way of reading art. The goal is to clean a dirty window that stands as an otherwise transparent barrier between the artist and those who view his work. The merits of considering a new approach to reading art are justified by the dynamic nature of it - it is continuously evolving which requires an equally evolving approach to understanding it.

In the first part I explain how my perception of life affects my experience of it. I describe how I relate to visual stimulus personally and make use of it artistically. This material provides a foundation to support the main goal and may help those who relate to the visual elements of life using a different premise become familiar with an artistic mode of perception.

The second part is devoted to applying an artistic point of view to the reading of art. Basically, gallery walls are adorned with framed books which can be approached in much the same way. Art work is a form of communication, documenting an individual's point of view and state of mind. Studying it is an effort rewarded by giving the reader an intimate glimpse into another person's perspective. Reading it exposes the broad dynamics playing themselves out in another person's mind and reveals areas where our response to life may be either distinct or synchronized. Even if I do not relate to the subject matter depicted or care for the selection of colors or have any desire to emulate the method of execution, I still do my utmost to decipher what it is that this person is communicating. In the end I believe there are advantages to approaching art as if it were a very private message from the artist to the viewer. Considering the lack of acquaintance between the artist and his audience, such bits of correspondence are indeed a privilege to read.

In the third part I apply the artistic point of view to an examination of various aspects of life we all share. What does life look like to a person when gazing through the artistic lens? This material is about what it means to be a sight-reading person foraging for visual stimulus in today's world. I suggest a way of interpreting the physical and artistic environment we have created for each other.

If for a moment we consider an urban space as a conceptual piece executed by a team of diverse artists, are we pleased with their work? Or do we routinely justify the construction and maintenance of spaces which are, visually speaking, full of weeds? Perhaps we actually model the urban environment after wilderness without even recognizing this is so.

The legitimacy of this material is based on the assumption that a visual read of the physical world is just as legitimate and important to understand as an economic analysis of the market-place. I interpret the work of visual entrepreneurs, giving it a linguistic struture that will enable us to take our visual temperature.