2005-01-25

The subject of visual arts in postmodernism. (3)

Having given the general background, the worldview that I explore in my visual works, let's come back to the visual creation process itself.
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First comes meditation.
In the comments accompanying my acrylic 07, I describe meditation as follows:

" Meditation is accomplished in a context of retreat deep inside yourself, far from the noise of the world. It requires total relaxation of the body and absence of the mind.

The physical relaxation is the easy part. Stopping all thinking and forgetting about all accumulated knowledge and social bonds needs real humility and much patience.

After reaching total absence of the mind you are plunged back in the age of babyhood this is when you reach total innocence. Total innocence frees the links between yourself and the whole of our universe. You are now in contact with the ONE, you are part of it and everything shines with clarity."

Those last two elements are central to my approach to painting:

* clarity of thought: I don't need to think about what I'm going to paint, it's there in my spirit and when using a brush it simply comes out on the canvas. I could as well use another medium but for now I feel good with brushes but who knows what medium I'll be using later on.

* babyhood innocence: I do not like voluntarist painting, I feel, it is uniformly stiff having an air of "out of reality" a little bit as if water was climbing the cliffs. What I like is the feel and innocence of water flowing along its natural downslope.
Children paintings often reach that grace and meditation permits to reach the innocence of a baby at whatever age. When using a brush the content simply comes out on the canvas without any sign of having been imposed by will.

For sure meditation does not come out of the blue.
You are scanning yourself. Your ideas are flowing, like a visual show, out of your memories and then rapidly fading in pastel clouds towards the light of absolute tranquility.

Meditation starts with the scanning of our accumulated ideas and experiences that's indeed the raw material upon which meditation is acting. This scanning retains the building blocks of our thoughts that it substantiates in a moving flow, of forms and colors, that transforms and transforms towards absolute nothingness or absolute tranquility.

We should be absolutely conscient at this point that total clarity and babyhood innocence do not infer that the quality of our thoughts and of our actions should have been by any means transformed. No, we remain who we are, we have just been illuminated by our discovery of the sequential logical path followed by our own thoughts that's what is illuminating. In a flash of truth we discover our own limitations in term of our understanding of the whole from which we are a particule. Total clarity about who we are and what are our limitations that's what drives us towards the point where tranquility set's in.

Meditation does not render you, as of by miracle, a genius it only helps you in being quiet and clear minded. Meditation is a technique of self discovery it does not change you into something you are not. It just shines total clarity in your spirit which gives you absolute tranquility.

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