On
Vision Paths.
'When you see a new trail
or a footprint you do not know,
follow it to the point of knowing.'
(Uncheedah. Grandmother of Ohiyesa.)
'The Tao that can be talked about
is not the true Tao.'
(Lao-Tzu.)
Sometimes, (not that there are any other times) i find myself immersed in paint. Not literally but contemplatively. And the living room is very quiet, but for a bright fluttering fire in the grate, and it could be three in the morning. I might have been at it for nine hours,
(not that there are any other hours). I'm at a solid round oak table populated by nothing that's not either directly useful or aesthetically fascinating. Sipping tea, with an anglepoise lamp strategically aimed over a small canvas in a halo of peaceful light.
Meditatively rolling a bit of tobacco in a whisper of thin paper. "Huh!"
I hear you say. Compare that with the carbon monoxide car you drive. Addicted to petrochemical oil wars desecrating indigenous native families. We're all in the same boat.
Sometimes, it's always now, and simply this. Pausing with not a hint of haste. Pondering the next part of the process. (Not that there is anywhere in the now for 'next'.) I'm very methodical, in an intuitive way. Very long sighted too.
Yet here i am, poring over microscopic features and nuances of a small area of paint like a satellite Earth probe.
All the same thing. No matter what your zoom, from sub-micro to cosmo-macro, talking of dimensions. I'm focussed in the south quadrant of the medicine wheel, the 'close-to' place of the mouse nibbling the ear of wild grass and the big wide world is a peripheral concept.
What i make, needs to be scrutinized up close, because that's where it is created. Not, stand back as if to evaluate and miss all the minute subtleties of a poetically rich terrain. Since, immersed in the process i might have overseen the terrain forming out of nothing for fifty or a hundred hours, till it's as fine tuned and integrated as it can get.
And you say,"hold it up over there", and miss the whole bloody thing.
How can i ever explain? Seeing in depth with feeling is something quite other than just pretending to look, in order to form an opinion. Hard look to you i say.
Often, and it's always now, i'm thinking, but not thinking at all, just fully attentive in the timeless continuum. Scanning the whole, surveying brushwork like looking for the needle in the haystack. Monet didn't bother about any needle, just did a brilliant job of scanning truth to perception of the haystack registered in the finer frequencies of his retina. Rods and cones and exquisitely pitched complementaries. The truth that dark shadow is seen as red when the sun is directly on the retina. So paint it the exact tone of red. (You can check this.) Really seeing the process of seeing, and not faking it. The term,'impressionism' was originally coined and delivered as an insult, ('mere impressions'.) But impressions impressively true to perception nonetheless.
But, brushwork! What a profound subject.
How do i talk about something i'm so familiar with, that's first, not second nature? Any more than most people couldn't even draw their own face accurately from memory let alone their best friend, without resorting to vague caricature. Seeing... is not just looking. When 'you' are looking, the 'you' consciousness is blocking seeing.
It was in art college that i first heard anybody refer to 'paint quality'. Even if a bit pompously pedantic, it didn't go amiss. There is such a thing. Ask Rembrandt. I carried on from there. Already sensitively aware that there is a poetic language of substance and how it's applied. It was a phase of earthy revelations arising from the deep, during hours spent in the library seeing every kind of painting for the first time. Awe inspiring seismic activity in consciousness instantly recognized and assimilated as my own resonance.
And through that lens i continued to discern on a sensory feeling level how substance resonates with the inner being, so to speak. Ancient universal symbols and evocative earthy textures emerged through my doodles. Many of which i now recognize in genuine crop circles and paleolithic stone carving. It's in the genes.
I knew that's the substratum for what goes on,on the surface.
That's where the creative impulse is. In the depth. It's another world. Or more accurately, a finer focus on 'the world' that's already apparent.
A drab grey wall can be loaded with meaning, that doesn't 'mean' something other than the perception of what it is. Significantly evocative might be better. People rarely talk about such things. It's just a boring wall on their way to a stoned movie.
If you're at all curious, (an indispensable trait) about what is meant by 'brushwork', there's a lifetime of discovery in store. One thing it is not, is, just an effect, or an affectation, or even a knack. That may be clever but not profound.
China, for instance, has the most refined and evolved tradition of 'the way of the brush'. I discovered that via the library in my teens. It is such that an aware practitioner can discern your character from a single stroke or mark you make with a brush. That's the nature of their ideographic language. How much more so when sustained through a flawless seasonal depiction of wild misty mountain landscape scroll with zero alteration (which is not possible with sumi ink on silk, or rice paper). That is, no mistakes or hesitation, and all
as fluid and flawless as a flowing stream, and every single brush mark both spontaneous and right on target. That's not clever. That's being so at one with discipline that you can abandon thought of discipline and play, and still not lose uncontrived naturalness of perfection. It's not contrived, it's beautiful naturally.
Flawless essence. That's not just knowing the Tao, that's being it.
Just as everything 'else' already is. The way of the sword, the way of the brush, the way of the world of nature, from which it is impossible to deviate. Deadly serious. Yet playful.
And there are many related variations in diverse cultures. Similar discipline and discernment applies in 'western' art. In whatever medium, oil, acrylic, clay, wood. Whether 'abstract expressionist', an
american explosion in the medium of paint in the 1950's, the landscapes of John Constable, the applied substance as much as the memorable imagery, the dance of light and shade, Blake's visions, ("where the light and dark is put is as important as the colour"), Monet's truth to perception,( If the distant house you see is actually a specific kind of blob then paint that, never mind 'house', paint what you see.) And Van Gogh's charged and rippling streams of strokes, wild energy contained, barely. It's the feeling in how it's applied that you feel. The feeling has to be there as a primal dynamic, you can't fake feeling. Even if actors seem to, they have to invoke existing feeling.
Subtle variations of everything are limitless, you couldn't put them in a box, no box is bigger than everything.
Oh but i almost forgot. The main point. How would you know an authentic Tao-flow-patterning from a total chaotic mess? There is no dividing line between one and the other. Only gradation and it's subjective not objective.
Familiarity for one thing. Fine-tuned discernment is another. Organically natural freeform integration looks like a mess to someone who's eye, heart, hand, and intellect are not integrated. What you see is what you are. Integrated or not. You can't change the beholder. But you can give clues, demonstrations, comparisons. That's what i'm doing. And obviously vibrational frequencies are contagious. Like resonates with like.
One seeing is worth a thousand pointings. Study nature. See interrelationships. Join up dots where there are no dots. And know when it's arbitrary and when it's not.
Words can only point, or evoke. That's why there's poetry. Words evoking more than themselves, echoes of something elusive, deeper. But firmly, finely held in the word structures sounding as themselves.
If you're doing it for some ulterior reason you're not doing it at all. Singing is for the singing, sound is for the sounding. Playing with the substance for what it invokes as itself, is magic. Art is the exploration of the magic of life which is inexhaustible.
Often i am quietly amazed by what i witness happening through a small fine brush. Because i am fully focussed to the degree that i know when it's not it, yet have access to a discipline to magically rectify that.
Evocation and wonder. The magic of innocence. The wisdom of not knowing. The flavour of feeling. The slightest inflexion has significance. You notice it in someone's eyes or voice. Isn't that true? It's the same wherever you allow full attention. When the 'right now' is that important for you to experience. Whether an emergency or creative expression. It's a questing. Following a chosen path to see where it leads. Here's a song i wrote....
'On Vision Paths'.
><><><><><><><
I am walking in a sacred way
following vision paths
leaf smoke in autumn dusk
feathers woven with amber
><><><><><><><><><><><><><
Walking lightly without tracks
hidden path to a timeless place
where firelight and candles flame
wild eyes smiling in silence
><><><><><><><><><><><><><
The foxy wood is alive with paths
fur and feather magical signs
spirit voices running water
wild geese flying in dreamtime
><><><><><><><><><><><><><
rainbowmaker.
'When you see a new trail
or a footprint you do not know,
follow it to the point of knowing.'
(Uncheedah. Grandmother of Ohiyesa.)
'The Tao that can be talked about
is not the true Tao.'
(Lao-Tzu.)
Sometimes, (not that there are any other times) i find myself immersed in paint. Not literally but contemplatively. And the living room is very quiet, but for a bright fluttering fire in the grate, and it could be three in the morning. I might have been at it for nine hours,
(not that there are any other hours). I'm at a solid round oak table populated by nothing that's not either directly useful or aesthetically fascinating. Sipping tea, with an anglepoise lamp strategically aimed over a small canvas in a halo of peaceful light.
Meditatively rolling a bit of tobacco in a whisper of thin paper. "Huh!"
I hear you say. Compare that with the carbon monoxide car you drive. Addicted to petrochemical oil wars desecrating indigenous native families. We're all in the same boat.
Sometimes, it's always now, and simply this. Pausing with not a hint of haste. Pondering the next part of the process. (Not that there is anywhere in the now for 'next'.) I'm very methodical, in an intuitive way. Very long sighted too.
Yet here i am, poring over microscopic features and nuances of a small area of paint like a satellite Earth probe.
All the same thing. No matter what your zoom, from sub-micro to cosmo-macro, talking of dimensions. I'm focussed in the south quadrant of the medicine wheel, the 'close-to' place of the mouse nibbling the ear of wild grass and the big wide world is a peripheral concept.
What i make, needs to be scrutinized up close, because that's where it is created. Not, stand back as if to evaluate and miss all the minute subtleties of a poetically rich terrain. Since, immersed in the process i might have overseen the terrain forming out of nothing for fifty or a hundred hours, till it's as fine tuned and integrated as it can get.
And you say,"hold it up over there", and miss the whole bloody thing.
How can i ever explain? Seeing in depth with feeling is something quite other than just pretending to look, in order to form an opinion. Hard look to you i say.
Often, and it's always now, i'm thinking, but not thinking at all, just fully attentive in the timeless continuum. Scanning the whole, surveying brushwork like looking for the needle in the haystack. Monet didn't bother about any needle, just did a brilliant job of scanning truth to perception of the haystack registered in the finer frequencies of his retina. Rods and cones and exquisitely pitched complementaries. The truth that dark shadow is seen as red when the sun is directly on the retina. So paint it the exact tone of red. (You can check this.) Really seeing the process of seeing, and not faking it. The term,'impressionism' was originally coined and delivered as an insult, ('mere impressions'.) But impressions impressively true to perception nonetheless.
But, brushwork! What a profound subject.
How do i talk about something i'm so familiar with, that's first, not second nature? Any more than most people couldn't even draw their own face accurately from memory let alone their best friend, without resorting to vague caricature. Seeing... is not just looking. When 'you' are looking, the 'you' consciousness is blocking seeing.
It was in art college that i first heard anybody refer to 'paint quality'. Even if a bit pompously pedantic, it didn't go amiss. There is such a thing. Ask Rembrandt. I carried on from there. Already sensitively aware that there is a poetic language of substance and how it's applied. It was a phase of earthy revelations arising from the deep, during hours spent in the library seeing every kind of painting for the first time. Awe inspiring seismic activity in consciousness instantly recognized and assimilated as my own resonance.
And through that lens i continued to discern on a sensory feeling level how substance resonates with the inner being, so to speak. Ancient universal symbols and evocative earthy textures emerged through my doodles. Many of which i now recognize in genuine crop circles and paleolithic stone carving. It's in the genes.
I knew that's the substratum for what goes on,on the surface.
That's where the creative impulse is. In the depth. It's another world. Or more accurately, a finer focus on 'the world' that's already apparent.
A drab grey wall can be loaded with meaning, that doesn't 'mean' something other than the perception of what it is. Significantly evocative might be better. People rarely talk about such things. It's just a boring wall on their way to a stoned movie.
If you're at all curious, (an indispensable trait) about what is meant by 'brushwork', there's a lifetime of discovery in store. One thing it is not, is, just an effect, or an affectation, or even a knack. That may be clever but not profound.
China, for instance, has the most refined and evolved tradition of 'the way of the brush'. I discovered that via the library in my teens. It is such that an aware practitioner can discern your character from a single stroke or mark you make with a brush. That's the nature of their ideographic language. How much more so when sustained through a flawless seasonal depiction of wild misty mountain landscape scroll with zero alteration (which is not possible with sumi ink on silk, or rice paper). That is, no mistakes or hesitation, and all
as fluid and flawless as a flowing stream, and every single brush mark both spontaneous and right on target. That's not clever. That's being so at one with discipline that you can abandon thought of discipline and play, and still not lose uncontrived naturalness of perfection. It's not contrived, it's beautiful naturally.
Flawless essence. That's not just knowing the Tao, that's being it.
Just as everything 'else' already is. The way of the sword, the way of the brush, the way of the world of nature, from which it is impossible to deviate. Deadly serious. Yet playful.
And there are many related variations in diverse cultures. Similar discipline and discernment applies in 'western' art. In whatever medium, oil, acrylic, clay, wood. Whether 'abstract expressionist', an
american explosion in the medium of paint in the 1950's, the landscapes of John Constable, the applied substance as much as the memorable imagery, the dance of light and shade, Blake's visions, ("where the light and dark is put is as important as the colour"), Monet's truth to perception,( If the distant house you see is actually a specific kind of blob then paint that, never mind 'house', paint what you see.) And Van Gogh's charged and rippling streams of strokes, wild energy contained, barely. It's the feeling in how it's applied that you feel. The feeling has to be there as a primal dynamic, you can't fake feeling. Even if actors seem to, they have to invoke existing feeling.
Subtle variations of everything are limitless, you couldn't put them in a box, no box is bigger than everything.
Oh but i almost forgot. The main point. How would you know an authentic Tao-flow-patterning from a total chaotic mess? There is no dividing line between one and the other. Only gradation and it's subjective not objective.
Familiarity for one thing. Fine-tuned discernment is another. Organically natural freeform integration looks like a mess to someone who's eye, heart, hand, and intellect are not integrated. What you see is what you are. Integrated or not. You can't change the beholder. But you can give clues, demonstrations, comparisons. That's what i'm doing. And obviously vibrational frequencies are contagious. Like resonates with like.
One seeing is worth a thousand pointings. Study nature. See interrelationships. Join up dots where there are no dots. And know when it's arbitrary and when it's not.
Words can only point, or evoke. That's why there's poetry. Words evoking more than themselves, echoes of something elusive, deeper. But firmly, finely held in the word structures sounding as themselves.
If you're doing it for some ulterior reason you're not doing it at all. Singing is for the singing, sound is for the sounding. Playing with the substance for what it invokes as itself, is magic. Art is the exploration of the magic of life which is inexhaustible.
Often i am quietly amazed by what i witness happening through a small fine brush. Because i am fully focussed to the degree that i know when it's not it, yet have access to a discipline to magically rectify that.
Evocation and wonder. The magic of innocence. The wisdom of not knowing. The flavour of feeling. The slightest inflexion has significance. You notice it in someone's eyes or voice. Isn't that true? It's the same wherever you allow full attention. When the 'right now' is that important for you to experience. Whether an emergency or creative expression. It's a questing. Following a chosen path to see where it leads. Here's a song i wrote....
'On Vision Paths'.
><><><><><><><
I am walking in a sacred way
following vision paths
leaf smoke in autumn dusk
feathers woven with amber
><><><><><><><><><><><><><
Walking lightly without tracks
hidden path to a timeless place
where firelight and candles flame
wild eyes smiling in silence
><><><><><><><><><><><><><
The foxy wood is alive with paths
fur and feather magical signs
spirit voices running water
wild geese flying in dreamtime
><><><><><><><><><><><><><
rainbowmaker.
artwork
: Silent Circles, martin law, July 2008
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