PARADOX

I really like the writing of Michael Pollan in his book 'The Botany of Desire'. He describes 'the zone' of creative consciousness I've been pondering thus:

" What Nietzsche is describing is a kind of transcendence - a mental state of complete and utter absorption well known to artists, athletes, gamblers, musicians, dancers, soldiers in battle, mystics, meditators and the devout during prayer. Something very like it occurs during sex too, or while under the influence of certain drugs. It is a state that depends on losing oneself in the moment, usually by training a powerful depthless concentration on One Big Thing (or in the Eastern tradition, One Big Nothing)."                      

He also said " psychoactive plants are bridges between the world of matter and spirit, or, to update the vocabulary, chemistry and consciousness."

And this is complemented by another author Lorin Roche in 'Whole Body Meditations' who states 'There are times on the quest when what we need is the restful immersion in total darkness." He did not mean the darkroom, but it fits.

This is the appeal for me of the blackness in a photogram. In a world of overwhelming sensation, multiplicity and complexity; darkness is the antidote, the calm meditative space of emptiness to which I aspire. Emptiness is paradoxically also wholeness.

GODLIKE HARMONY

'Godlike Harmony' is the brand name of a set of cheap Chinese artist brushes I have. I love the name, for the way it infers smooth progress across paper and creative flow; that slipstream to a wonderful place where time relinquishes its hold and everything is animated and in dynamic relationship. 


You notice from this place  that connections previously unperceived become visible, extraordinary new meanings emerge via their strange and unpredictable juxtaposition. All assumptions are up for review. Perhaps this approaches  'beginners mind'; it is undeniably an opening to the energy of the unconscious. 


This is the central experience of art making for me - getting into the 'zone' where I can 'play', working with the elements I've assembled - surrendering the narrative that I've  followed closely during the hunt for the individual objects, extracting them from their original context and eventually allowing them to come to rest on the surface of the paper,  finding their own right and true location within the structure of the image.


This is the way I can 'collaborate' with the universe;  making images that, in a moment of exposure,  define the energy of the world.