Artist's Interview

J U L I O M A T E O

METAPHYSICAL PAINTINGS by Julio Mateo: Abstract Art Galleries - Artist Interview, page 1

Artist's Interview

By: Doug Dement
April, 1999

Q:   Metaphysics is a broad term that is generally defined as: "The investigation into how and why the Universe began. Metaphysicists normally theorize on the origins of the Universe but sometimes, scientific fact is the basis of an argument."
Your artwork is self-described as "Metaphysical Paintings." Using this train of thought, your work seemingly deals extensively with ideas on "Creationism." Generally, the scientific community accepts the "Big Bang" and Darwinist theories. Judeo/Christian ideas paint yet another story that has some scientific basis with the discovery of monogenist theories that describe "Eve" mitochondria. Those who promote New Age doctrine often refer to the Sumerian and Hopi records that surprisingly resemble each other a great deal. Truthfully, there are too many such theories for me to list here.
Through painting, you've been able to elaborate on these specific ideas. Is it possible that you can further describe your metaphysical beliefs here using words instead of paint? (Perhaps using examples from your paintings). I am curious how you as an artist define Metaphysics.

A:    As an artist, my work is based in metaphor. The formulation or even the illustration of a metaphysical theory, complete or otherwise, is beyond the scope of my work as an artist, which work is essentially of a poetic nature. As such, art evokes and rhymes; it suggests and ponders; it expresses and demonstrates; but it does so lightly, without holding too tightly to the philosopher's, or the cosmologist's, or the theologian's propositions, which are predicated on certainty: whether divined, reasoned, or supported by evidence.
      I do not see myself as a philosopher, a cosmologist nor a theologian whose work is involved with logic and reason, or with the proposition of theories based more or less on the scientific method, or on theological doctrine. The game for philosophers, cosmologists and theologians is to know and define objective truths to their best ability, commensurate with the limits of their respective disciplines. Art makes no pretense --in my view, should make no pretense-- to give us truths, objective truths, and suffers when trying. Art, at its best, is centered on the absolute freedom of pure creation, with inspiration, imagination, play, humor, and even whimsy for methodologies. However, let seriousness not be equated with depth, nor lightness with vice, for paradoxically in art's playfulness and disregard for reason lie deep truths about our true natures and God's.
       I use the term "metaphysical" in my work to signal my concern with matters unlimited, and in particular, unseen. I use the term in the sense that Aristotle meant "wisdom," "theology," or "the first philosophy," a discipline "to deal with the first causes and the principles of all things," including, in addition to material things and abstractions, "immovable substance," as well as the eternal, immutable and immaterial, and the divine presence.
       I mean the term to include, as well, spirituality in general and all "subjective" inner experience: feelings, thoughts, intuitions, mystical or inspired knowledge and experiences, as well as "being as being and the attributes that belong to being in virtue of its own nature," mind and idea, the soul, fantasy. In a broader context I also include under metaphysics other non-physical, conventionally unexplainable phenomena: magic, miracles, synchronicity, telepathy, teleportation, discarnate and extra-terrestrial beings, crop circles, mediums and channelers, these things falling more or less beyond the boundaries of scientific understanding.

Q:   Does your work attempt to illustrate the "origins/how-and-why the universe began," or does it only focus on specific aspects of manifestation?

A:   Regarding illustrations in my work of "origins/how and why the universe began," some of my works have been about that, but treated from a poetic, metaphorical point of view using the visual vocabulary of art. I have "played" in my work with different creation stories, such as Genesis, Darwinism and the Big Bang , as well as with other schema, such as the I-Ching's notion of Yin-Yang as a primordial polarity engendering all changes and things, and even some of my own devising, using pictorial and graphical elements alluding to sequential developments that lead to growth, permutations, operations in the mathematical sense, cycles and other such sequences, for my work has had a tendency to come in related packages of suites, cycles, series and sets.
      The point is that there seems to be a powerful pull on us to want to put it all together, as witness Einstein and Stephen Hawkins. There are as many creation stories as there are cultures, subcultures, clans, tribes and nations. And no doubt even more. What distinguishes my work from philosophers, cosmologists and theologians is that to me they are stories and patterns, more or less compelling, more or less interesting, but not theories, nor truths.

      Like the mandala, creation stories bring a sense of wholeness and completion, much as the golden section and other sacred geometry proportions do. This satisfying sense of having a handle on things can be seen as mysterious evidence of a higher intelligence at work, and therefore reassuring, or it may be seen as a source of power and control, and thus equally reassuring and satisfying.
      From the standpoint of art the use of cycles may be seen as formal or compositional devices, like repetition, development and counterpoint in music. They can also be more than that, as can the creation stories themselves, having higher octaves of meaning, subconsciously, or superconsciously pointing to things we as souls may have known but forgotten. And, indeed, that is one of the implicit intentions, or motivations behind my work: the demonstration and bringing to light of certain "archetypes," or schema which despite their spiritually vital power we as a culture may have forgotten, but with which we find strong resonance. In this sense they may serve as means of healing, restoring to our collective and individual consciousnesses vital pieces of our beings, and bringing us perhaps a greater sense of wholeness, integration and conscious awareness.

Q:   Is the overall goal of your work in this life to illustrate a complete metaphysical theory?

A:   At this point it may be fitting to point out that the works displayed on my website are ten to fifteen years old, and that the ideas that engendered them are close to twenty. Nonetheless, in retrospect it seems that I was always in the business of making "Metaphysical Paintings," though I did not call them that then.
       My work since 1978 has been concerned with, well...metaphysical ideas, usually centered on questions of Creation, such as: the metaphorical correspondence between artist and Prime Creator, and between art and natural creation; the creation of something out of nothing --that is, absolute, rather than derived or evolved creation; the process of development and continued creation beyond first impulse; the nature and origins of the creative impetus; the issues of absolute freedom implicit in creation, and the implicit problem of choice; the role that art may play, as a microcosmic metaphor for cosmic creation, in informing us about the methods or "mechanisms" of natural manifestation; and the contemplation of the process of creation in terms of its ability to reveal the Creator, or to enable the Creator to know itself through its creations.