Bookmark 2022

Reflections on Showing at the BMA

Since 2014 I’ve been posting the holiday bookmarks I make for family and friends. My idea was the gargoyle was there to watch over your book, so the image was just the gargoyle. For the last six years I’ve been putting my gargoyle in a location of significance that year. It started with when I was in NYC to be part of a panel at Columbia University. The Empire State Building was centered in the view from my window, and it was clear that year’s character belonged on the ledge outside. This year’s holiday bookmark celebrates a landmark in my life for the widest audience I’ve yet had for my work. In the time since four collage paintings and six drawings of mine have been hanging in the Baltimore Museum of Art, my appreciation of this privilege has been growing. From the initial joy and wonder to increased satisfaction, to amazement and gratitude, my attention lately has been on the number of people that are seeing it. And hopefully thinking about it. This has always been the focus of the series that the four paintings represent. (All of that group, a series spanning decades are posted at visualcommentary.blogspot.com) Protest comes in many forms, and I’ve always known that images are powerful, combining emotion with idea to provoke the minds of others. The opportunity to affect people’s point-of-view with my own feeling and research about injustice and the destruction of the planet is deeply moving. My craftsmanship builds my authority and makes my commitment to these issues visible. To have it available on such an esteemed platform is a joy beyond description. The best summary of those feelings is the drawing before this post, “Crest”. What has always mattered to me is what I want the work to communicate. At the opening I saw that it was. And better than that, each person I spoke with had a view enriched by their own experience that took their reading of the work in individual directions. Everyone takes their own meanings from what the work shows. Those ripples are what counts. The drawings included in the show can be seen at various places on this blog and are a bridge between the protest series and the personal emotional weather that dominate this blog. The duralar over the sky represents the detached mind more preoccupied with its own ideas than the surroundings and underlying emotional state. This show, up until mid-March, is without a doubt the most exciting thing to happen in my career. Naturally this year the gargoyle had to be at the museum to express the daily joy it represents for me. Print it and cut it out, then for protection sandwich it between two pieces of clear contact paper. Use it to mark your place in what you’re reading, or if you read on-line, it can watch over an important book you keep.

Crest

Enlarging Thinking

The wave of recent books about the dominance of the brain’s left hemisphere over the right has led me to think we have much greater capacity of mind than we realize. We have been limited by twentieth century models of reality that focused on what could be labeled, categorized ,and analyzed without the input of perceptual intelligence and the overview that underlies wisdom. In his powerful book “The Master and His Emissary” neuroscientist Iain McGilchrest traces the history of world cultures through the lens of which hemisphere of the brain seemed to dominate in each era. Not as simple as the verbal side and the image side, in addition to words and symbols, the left analyzes what’s material and concrete, while the right hemisphere starts with the perceptual reality that sees the whole of where we are. He sees the intensifying domination of the left hemisphere as a dangerous trend that overlooks important situational qualities. The ecology of the world needs the overview to understand the complexity of the relationships between pressing issues. What’s brought our planet to such crisis today is a habit of thinking that only concentrates on parts of a situation. This attitude grew from thinking of the world and universe like a machine. This suited the dominant left hemisphere which sought to handle everything with what it could identify, classify, count, and fix. By the late twentieth century several philosophers suggested it was an untenable model and that we should be thinking in more organic terms, the way one thing affects other things from human industry to nature and weather, the whole inter-related organism of being. As part of the organism model of reality, everything is interdependent. Reality is greater than just what we can identify and grasp. Our model should include the intricate web of relationships within an always unfolding state of being, from the individual to the universal level. Looking at art builds awareness of this crucial property of consciousness. Now that the science behind visual intelligence is available, we can better integrate the powers of the right hemisphere with the left for a more comprehensive understanding of our situation. Teamwork between hemispheres can balance our approach to the serious problems of our time. Spending time with art is always a dialogue between hemispheres. The right hemisphere responds which initiates thought in the left strengthening the communication between them. The left hemisphere tends to disregard the emotions, but neuroscience had found that emotions coordinate cognition. Aware of the overall meaning of a situation emotions initiate thought in relation to the response. By beginning with the sensation and feeling which stimulate the thoughts that connect to them, art strengthens the link between hemispheres.

Inner Truth

The Space Between Words

Over the time that I’ve been teaching it’s been easy to observe how dependent we humans have become on what things are. In a discussion of work a disagreement would crop up that turned out to be because of the words they used. The feeling they were talking about was the same, they just used different labels for the things they identified. The dominance of the written word has allowed truth to be twisted by verbal fluency. Semantics scholar Bruce Powers wrote “…For thousands of years the left hemisphere has suppressed the qualitative judgment of the right and the human personality has suffered from it”. A google search will find several recent books advocating better use of both hemispheres. In his book, “The Alphabet Versus the Goddess” Leonard Shlain noted that the rise of written language was accompanied by the rise of hierarchical societies. Once something was written down the idea existed outside the thinker. This led to disputes about which ideas were right and who had authority to decide. Nobel prize winning scientist David Bohm also saw problems with the dominance of language. Reflecting on the revelations of quantum physics, he felt that words did violence to experience by unnaturally dividing it. The act of labeling and naming of individual objects pushed them apart and emphasized their separation. He felt that naming also led to more sense of separation of the self from the rest of reality, with a feeling of not being part of it. This artificial division led to what Gregory Bateson saw as a mistaken sense of the human individual as separate from their environment. Our dependence on it is as thorough as organs in our body on each other. They have separate functions but depend on each other. So do we. We are a part of a homeostatic organic whole in a constant state of adjustment. Zen teacher Thich Nhat Hanh used the term “interbeing” for the multiple ways things are connected and dependent on each other and the importance of being grateful for a world that supports and enfolds us. We are learning about interconnections that open new questions. Quantum physics and the wave nature undercut the rigid separation of objects, an illusion partially due to our need to label. In her book “My Stroke of Insight” neuroscientist Jill Bolte Taylor described one of the effects of the stroke in her left hemisphere as losing the sense of a clear boundary between herself and everything around her. Without the naming and separating function, things lost their individual identity becoming part of an inclusive continuity. More time with art reinforces feelings of things together. The act of looking at art reaches out at the same time it stimulates personal thoughts and feelings offering a place of re-connection.

Deliverance

Visual Growth

Philosophers of embodied meaning draw authority from discoveries in neuroscience which underscore the body as infrastructure for all interaction with the world, the basic relationships to which everything else is compared. It is the basis of our involuntary reactions to the organization of our surroundings. This human heritage is why art from anywhere can move us. The structure and feeling of an image corresponds to the way we relate to the physical world. This common physical heritage is a bridge between cultures. This is why art offers an opportunity to heal artificial divisions between different groups. It’s in the depths that we are the same. At a time when so much attention is directed at surfaces art reminds us of what is beneath opinions and trends. Neither hold any weight next to heartbreak, loss, confusion, triumph, and love which feel the same to all human beings, though strategies for coping can be quite different. Understanding how others cope is often the subject of literature. Their stories give a glimpse into other minds dealing with the struggles of being human. Reading work or looking at art from other cultures show the underlying connection beneath surface differences. Recognizing a feeling prompts a personal story connected to that feeling, reinforcing the shared center. Differences are important if we don’t want our minds to go to sleep. We don’t really take in the familiar so it’s easy to sleepwalk through life if not exposed to enough variety. Instead of making so many distinctions between people according to their variations we might reframe that as how each personal is exceptional. As citizens of one planet, we need to work together. Art is a way to get to know other people we might not cross paths with in life. Variation stimulates the mind and enlarges perceptual sensitivity. Embracing diversity enlarges our conceptual framework with more types of imagery to visualize with. The internet puts art from all over the world at your fingertips and show you more of who you are under the surface. It’s a chance to strengthen the perceptual intelligence essential to any approach to an interconnected world.

Bureaucratic Nightmare

Visual Choices

I was looking for something else when I came across this painting by Roberto Matta and it made me laugh out loud. Some, maybe most, laughter has to do with other things. The painting is far from funny. I’ve always found it somewhat sinister. The laugh came from recognition. It has such a similar feeling to a drawing I just finshed about all the bureaucracies I’ve been struggling with recently. The laughter of recognition is spontaneous and relates to present emotions. Norman Cousins wrote extensively about the importance of laughter to health. Besides the physical health is the improved mental health and sense of connection, the “I get it” effect. Images prompt associations from our own past experience that shared similar places or moods. Different times in life have different emotional weather. Art builds awareness of these shifts in mood and underscores the most significant aspect of the feeling. We may think we are looking for our favorite paintings, but the eye wants to stop at what is most balancing to the moment. Perception has its own priorities. It stimulates related thoughts and, helps integrate the different pieces of our subjective life as a whole. The overall sense of the painting is an opportunity to think about how a painting we are drawn to balances us in some way. Laughing at the Matta painting signified its relevance to my state right then. Unlike my difficulties with automated systems, the sense of ill-will and impending torment in the image seemed to express malign intent. The intent was different but the similarities were in the sense of dread. Where we gravitate changes with how we feel, and the Matta painting connected to emotions I was trying to express in my own drawing. This propensity for pre-conscious visual choices can be developed consciously. Whatever we are involved with is led by visual choices. Perception has the background understanding of the entirety of our circumstances to focus attention where it’s needed. How to make use of this was recently brought out on the public radio program “Hidden Brain”. On an episode called “You 2.0- The Mind’s Eye”. Emily Balcetis discusses her work on the importance of our visual system and how to use it to improve performance. Her book “Clearer, Closer, Better”, looks at the relationship between conscious use of visual focus and success. With a technique she called “materializing” she adapts visual techniques that top athletes have been using for years to focus visual attention for other purposes. Likewise, emotional balance will seek out the imagery that reflects what’s significant for us at the time. The choices made when looking at art builds self-understanding. Because the feelings are shared with the artist, there’s consolation and acceptance of the difficult feelings that are part of being human.

Delay

My scanner won't connect to my computer. Since my essay to be posted today referred to the drawing, it's all pending until I resolve the issue.

Early Difficulty

Expectations

Lately I’ve been working my way through the Ted talks that focus on the brain. What they all stress is the role of patterns. Life is action. Knowing where any given pattern of action is headed is the general objective. The measuring and naming we’ve been so consumed with is just description. It freezes the continuous motion in one place and time. As David Bohm once pointed out, the concern with the names of things that results from the dominance of noun-centered language took the intellect down the rabbit hole of believing things are more important than events and treating ideas as fixed things. Bohm felt that the truth of any theory required an aesthetic judgment. This depends on relations within a context. The emphasis on relations in the visual arts can build awareness of context and sensitivity to significant patterns. The brain recognizes overall shifting patterns through the feeling of what’s unfolding. You can’t understand the way the brain works just by thinking about its parts or its chemicals. The flow of energy is an action involving many parts. Now that imaging techniques allow us to watch it we might take serious steps in understanding it. Patterns create expectations. Expectations are a primary requirement for perception. Inability to see at birth is more a matter of having no previous seeing to inform what is sought, than of any problem in the system itself. The system is there to be primed with the features of the world it will need to decode. Caretakers, as patterns of movement from above, lay the groundwork for the meaning of above and below with its emotional tone of dependence. The further association of light above and needing light to see builds the positive nature of “up” in our minds. In later life, we conceive of an improvement in our condition as “moving up” and a host of other familiar phrases. This need to “rise above” negative patterns is one of the essential points in Alfred Adler’s philosophy of motivation, that the difficulties of life can be the spur to achievement and high expectations are more conducive to accomplishment than low. When he coined the word “lifestyle” he referred to the patterns of action in an individual’s life and eliminating the ones that are self-defeating. Humor resists expectations, twists away from the predicted meaning. Illusion is a close cousin, running against the expected direction. Surprise stimulates dopamine which stimulates more curiosity. This is why the cultivation of humor and the pleasure of visual illusions is so good for our minds. It opens the mind to the new and promotes flexible thinking.

Last Resistance

The Pleasure of Improvement

I don’t usually write about the drawings I post but since this is the third time I’ve posted the drawing above I’ve already let viewers in on the process and what I’m demanding of it. Over sixty hours of work later I think I can finally let it go. Each time I posted before, I could see, once it was on the screen, that there was more to do to make it look as heavy as I wanted. For a while I’ve had this quote from Leonardo da Vinci in my mind. “The depiction of volume is the supreme mark of skill.” It’s harder than it might seem, with extremely subtle variations in light and dark that the eye doesn’t normally pick up. With many years of this behind the scenes goal, I’ve discovered ongoing challenge, pleasure and opportunity to reflect on what the depiction of volume communicates. With increased illusion of volume, the sense of weight grows. The idea of weight as serious shows in the many metaphors that reflect that attitude. What is heavier requires more of us, a burden, a mood, a responsibility. Surrealist use of illusionistic volume to portray psychological reality added a necessary seriousness to the absurd and implausible. The stronger the sense of volume is the more it’s felt in the body, as a real presence, and engaging the body is always a goal in illusion. As I’ve said to my illusionism classes, one of the benefits of learning this skill is that it can always be pushed more. In my study of brain science one thing that stood out was the idea that the brain rewards learning. There are lots of routes back and forth from the frontal lobe (most evolved mental properties) and the nucleus accumbens (primary pleasure center). It’s a pleasure to get better at something. Building knowledge and skills are our human survival tools. The involvement of video games is spurred by the pleasure of improvement. It doesn’t really matter at what. To push beyond past limitations takes involvement and concentration and that’s what’s being encouraged by the brain’s rewards. We’re meant to increase our capabilities and whether it’s improvement in a game, on an instrument or at baking, brain chemistry is there to reward achievement. We don’t have a good word in English, for satisfaction in the process of getting better at something. Not pride, though that may be a side effect, but joy in the act of stretching ourselves, in our participation in our growth. The state of flow is our best concept to appreciate it as an end in itself. The pleasure of improvement is in the doing, losing oneself in the process. Work done well is its own brand of happiness.

More Resistance

This is a continuation on the drawing posted in February. And isn't there yet. I always see new problems when I post it. Watch for the change.

Perceptual Intelligence

The heartbreaking pictures of the devastation in Ukraine, can be seen as the world body wounded and broken. The ugliness of the destruction testifies to what Alan Watts once said. “Morality is the aesthetics of behavior.” We recoil as the harmony of a functioning society is being wantonly destroyed. The outbreaks of violence all over the world are grown out of a pathological model of realty that sees reality as a machine where everything is stuff that can be possessed and exploited. Not caring about the history or the people, lives are destroyed for access to resources. This attitude of seeing the planet as a giant pool of raw material to use up interferes with the balance of the all-inclusive organism of the planet. The disconnection and imbalance reflects a psychological imbalance grown from an alienated worldview. Chief Seattle said, “The earth does not belong to us, we belong to the earth”. Organic intelligence is alert to the health of the whole. Since everything is part of an intricate network of interrelated systems, staying aware of the totality is necessary to moving in harmony with the flow of being that’s happening all around us. This comes naturally if the underlying model of the universe includes us as part of an organic whole. If we’re disrupting other aspects of the overall system we’re like a cancer, growing without heed of the damage and pain we cause, sucking up vital resources without regard to the host. Much of what divides us and keeps us from acting together is imagery that places us outside of things, casting us as the one that tinkers with the machine. This is the same image as religion’s large-scale Maker, which also puts the traditional God outside of us. It is more sensible to think of ourselves as growing from the planet like all of nature, not made by something external. The Gaia Hypothesis came out decades ago. James Lovelock’s conception was of a self-regulating quality in the earth itself. Just like the adjustments made in our own body, it responds to imbalances. This universal motion of homeostasis exists on every level and in every system, adapting to change to restore equilibrium. Persisting in the belief in man’s dominion over the earth may lead to the earth itself wiping out the source of destruction, us. The materialistic world of separate things has resisted seeing our interconnectedness because it’s a threat to a competitive attitude. Accumulating and controlling more of the planet does not serve the good of the whole. The narrow sight lines of a competitive stance focus on the end result and miss many of the consequences of that single-mindedness. This is where looking at art can help. Art puts the emphasis on the whole and what it expresses. It tunes attention to the big picture, so important to a cooperative attitude that sees relationships in the specific contexts and not categories and labels. Collectively, our different perspectives offer more choices and possibilities for solving the serious problems that we should be facing together. Putting the many ideas of the group in service to the world body is a collective effort that could revolutionize the way we live together.

Blister of Hope

Learning from Nature

Though flowers in February still seems soon it feels good for things to be showing life again, to be able to sit outside with nature after so much time indoors. It’s not an indulgence. It’s good for my health. When I first picked up the book “Ecopsychology” in 1995, it was a new idea. Since then there have been more books and lots of studies about the benefits of nature for health. A paper from YaleEnvironment360 on ecopsychology pinned down a specific dose, 120 minutes a week in nature for improved health and well-being, from a study of 20,000 people. Traditionally it was thought that the benefits were visual and primarily psychological., but Japanese researchers believe that inhaling aerosols from trees increases the level of Natural Killer cells (NK) which fight tumors. Nature is a multisensory environment that allows us to feel part of it, immersed in the sounds and smells as well as the natural beauty. Many hospitals integrate nature and art with their landscaping, windows and interiors, because the benefits have been known for decades. Though the studies of similar effects looking at art showed that natural scenes worked better for mental health than abstraction, abstraction has such a range of possible feelings expressed it resists being treated as a category. I think the sense of harmony is most important. A very recent study showed that looking at fractal images was calming and theorized that fractals are like looking at nature, the same form at different scales, different size leaves on a tree like different iterations of the same computerized pattern. Its branching has similarities of form between systems of blood vessels and systems of waterflow on the earth’s surface. We are calmed by the harmony of similar form. It is through fractals that we see order in chaos and a world that is fully intertwined, repeating the same chords at every level of reality. It’s a matter of perspective. The benefits of attunement to nature include learning from nature’s design. It has inspired new ways to work with and draw inspiration from design in nature. An early example of biomimetic design was Velcro, inspired by the microscopic hooks founds on the burrs that stick to fur and clothes. The field has spread to competitive swimwear inspired by sharkskin and looking at spiders for designs for a Mars Rover. Looking at order in the seeming chaos is an issue of scale where order shows with the right perspective. Taking a step back is a phrase that recognizes the need for distance to get a broader view of a situation. There is so much fragmentation in our world right now. Finding a broader perspective could remind us of our connectedness.

Resistance

Diversity and Intelligence

“Wisdom is directly proportional to the size of the group whose well being it takes into account.” Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, The Evolving Self Gregory Bateson defined information as “the difference that makes a difference”. When a new bit of knowledge or experience actually changes the way we view the world, it enlarges the scope of our understanding. The world is full of untapped sources of knowledge from which to build a bigger picture of reality. No one view can see it all. Each individual story has something to teach us. When someone else’s background is radically different from our own, we can learn more than we might from someone similar to ourselves. Though it may feel good to have our view supported, growth requires variety. When something different feels true but challenges our view, we need to adjust our model. This is difficult and is why there’s often resistance to a new truth. Rejecting what doesn’t fit an existing view, using up intellectual resources in the effort to discredit what doesn’t match the existing outlook, is protecting a limited picture. The right/wrong way of seeing interferes with acquiring new information. To not get bogged down in defense of one way of seeing frees valuable mental resources for accommodating more, sometimes contradictory, ideas in the mind at once. This and a tolerance for uncertainty are characteristics of high intelligence that we would do well to cultivate. An appreciation of difference leads to the intellectual enrichment of us all as we come to understand how personal experience forms every individual viewpoint. An overview requires as many perspectives as possible. Prejudice regarding what’s different may start too young to remember, but looking at art from different groups can open up experience and be a pleasurable way to get to know another’s way of thinking and feeling. Understanding that every point of view produces valid assessments of some aspect of reality welcomes the many ways of seeing that have been ignored in a world where power has decided what is true. Diversity is important for a robust ecology of ideas. Just like a larger gene pool creates hybrid vigor strengthening survivability, so can a larger pool of ideas invigorate the world of mind. Restricting oneself to a limited group is restricting the growth of personal intelligence. Intelligence is increased by every different perspective added to our worldview. Problem-solving teams in a workplace were found to be more creative when there were different cultural backgrounds in the group, not just because of the different choices from the different experiences offered, but because everyone’s limits were loosened by the variety of approaches, everyone felt more free to think something new. In his book, In The Mind’s Eye, Thomas G. West suggests that the skill of the future won’t be having the right ideas, but ability to revise our thinking as new information flows in. He feels we need to develop “the ability to model reality in our mind” as an on-going project. Hanging on to one model of reality inhibits the ability to grow. Letting go of the idea of one worldview that holds for everyone makes it easier to ride the flow of proliferating information and adjust our image as necessary. Expanding perspective will bring wisdom to our approach to the future. In honor of Black History Month here are artists I love that help me see into another group’s perspective. 1-Njidedeka Akunyli Crosby 2- Henry Osawa Tanner 3- Huey Lee smith 4-Fabiola Jean-Lousie

Syncope

Re-Connecting

Art does not show people what to do, yet engaging with a good work of art can connect you to your senses, body, and mind. It can make the world felt. And this felt feeling may spur thinking, engagement, and even action.’ – World Economic Forum, Why art has the power to change the world, 2016 This capacity to create connection makes art valuable for healing, both in the individual and between populations. The connection made to the full self is an integrating force. Healing the world depends on first healing the self, but the engagement with art is connection to the outer world as well. It’s where the deep inner life and deep outer world meet. It joins two cerebral circuits that usually operate separately. Most of the time we are either attentive to the outside world and its demands, or to the inside world with its needs. Art is the occasion when the two are alive together. Multiple websites about art and healing point to art as a way to unify body, mind and emotions. Though most sites concentrate on making art, looking at art can get to feelings a person may not have skills to express. Our natural urge toward balance will look for the art that has meaning for us at the moment, a recognition that can be stabilizing. Seeing art that moves us is connecting to the artist as well, not just seeing personal feelings expressed but feeling them shared. Recently, a friend told me of an experience she had where an abstract painting made her weep. Talking with the artist about it later, she discovered that it had been done shortly after the artist’s mother died. Responding so intensely is cathartic. People seem to seek out the strongest feelings. It may be why the drawings I did after my father’s death and over my mother’s slower disappearance are among the most visited on this blog. Recognizing the presence of those feelings claims a deeper self. Perception is always scanning for what we need. Finding and responding to art is part of the mind’s homeostasis, using what will balance energies by giving attention where it’s needed. Looking at art is both stepping back and seeing within. Knowing oneself is an important step to understanding others. Not recognizing feelings leaves them growing below awareness until they explode at the wrong targets. Art can provide a clarifying mirror that connects to the feeling level of our species. The author of the quote at the top, artist Olafur Eliasson said in another part of his paper. “Art helps us identify with one another and expands our notion of WE from the local to the global.” We are at a necessary threshold for the reorganization of our worldview. With personal transformation, we can make a start to changing the world.