Artist's Interview: Part 2
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Q: Your work seems to deal extensively with geometric shapes. Through my studies, I've seen many references to sacred geometry. One definition of sacred geometry is as follows:"All things throughout our universe seem to follow the same fundamental blueprint or geometric patterns. These geometrical archetypes, reveal to us the nature of each form and its vibrational resonances. They are also symbolic of the underlying metaphysical principle of the inseparable relationship of the part to the whole. It is this principle of oneness underlying all geometry that permeates the architecture of all form in its myriad diversity. This principle of interconnectedness, inseparability and union provides us with a continuous reminder of our relationship to the whole--a blueprint for the mind to the sacred foundation of all things created. We call this blueprint 'Sacred Geometry'."
Another description begins with:
"Sacred geometry is NOT a branch of mathematics. If anything, it's the other way around. All through the ages, and all over the planet, people have understood that the manifested universe that we experience was created out of the Great Void by Pure Spirit moving in certain simple geometric patterns. For thousands of years, this knowledge has been passed among initiates in secret societies. As we approach the Consciousness Shift, this knowledge is being revealed openly.... All through the ages, all over the planet, Sacred Geometry has been taught as a special understanding about the process of Creation. "This leads me back to your work. In the previous question I asked how your work deals with creation. What conscious connections exist between your paintings and the study of sacred geometry? Your Ode to Nature series reflects many of the ancient symbols such as the flower of life, tree of life, fruit of life, seed of life, etc. Are you knowingly using ancient symbols of creationism in your work?
Also, the above definition of sacred geometry mentions "archetypes." Your Rhapsodies series "...celebrates the process of creation from the metaphysical level of archetypes to their material manifestation in the universe of form." It's these similarities that lead me to assume links between your work and the study of sacred geometry. If possible, could your explain in a bit of detail your perception of sacred geometry and its relationship with your work?
A: In the late 70's and early 80's I was much taken by sacred geometry and its promise of holding, and perhaps even yielding the keys to creation. As part of that I was interested in and studied, as well, the morphology of natural forms in relation to sacred geometry. The correspondences I found between natural forms and geometrical and mathematical figures such as spirals, fibonacci sequences, close packing of two- and three-dimensional forms, spheres, star shapes, wave forms and so on was excruciatingly tantalizing and intoxicating. I felt there was intrinsic meaning in these relationships and manifestations: a kind of code that could be deciphered, and which if properly understood would reveal the secrets of creation and God knows what else.
Concurrently I was much taken by Bach's music, which seemed to me a perfect musical equivalent to the processes and visual forms I was noticing as well as to the convictions and conclusions on the ways of natural creation which I had first distilled and then condensed from my observations: rigorous simplicity, the utmost economy of means, utterly self-evident principles and operations all of which had as much to do with the limitations imposed by the three-dimensional nature of space, (or in Bach's case, the musical scale) as with a kind of compulsive inevitability inexorably playing itself out in a grand pageant of cyclic time. It was a glorious conception: Nature (and Bach): both of them austere, noble and sublime, and all the more so for their inscrutable simplicity and detached disinterest. Both of them both beautiful and brutal in their disregard of merely human sentiments and interests, yet all-nourishing, possessed of a higher, deeper wisdom than is our usual lot.
I spent much time contemplating these beautiful forms and resonances, and admiring the harmony, formal economy, purposefulness and elegance that as an artist I found there. I spent further time speculating on and finding meaning in them, distilling my findings, putting them through a process of a kind of multi-generational feedback loop, inbreeding and hybridizing the forms and ideas, reducing them, combining them, dividing them, multiplying them, and then distilling them some more, finding basic principles and correspondences in them to such things as alphabets, DNA molecules and a host of other archetypal-type systems.
Eventually I arrived at what I considered to be a kind of vocabulary of elemental, or archetypal graphic signs, shapes and symbols possessing certain irreducible forms and identities, and able to interact with each other to form more complex, compounded forms-- somewhat as letters or ciphers combine to make words or numbers.
These elemental graphic forms possessed in equal parts abstract geometrical elements and "natural" organic qualities. In them the idealized, abstract, "digital" (if you will) principles of sacred geometry interacted with Nature's "stuff" and "analog" processes to yield flexible, organic hybrids with simple and clear geometric structures animated by flexible, expressive execution capable of dynamic expression, while retaining their meaningful qualities as signs and symbols.
In 1982-84 I executed In the Garden, a suite of drawings summarizing and exploring some of the graphic possibilities of this elementary formal vocabulary which would form the basis of my work for the next 15 years, including all the works in my website. The In the Garden drawings are a culmination of my work with sacred geometry and natural morphology and the beginning of the next phase of my work. My interest in sacred geometry reminds me somewhat of Picasso and Braque’s infatuation with Cezanne's work leading to their development of Cubism: when seductive, not quite understood ideas led to feverish creative activity that had little to do with the initial source, but which nonetheless, in ways peculiar to art, resulted in fertile artistic ideas.
To be sure, this work was itself predicated on my works in graduate school, during the late 70's, where I gave up my apprenticeship to the art of established masters to start literally from scratch, at the very beginning, at the core of all that I felt was my originality, at the point of first impulse. I determined to make artworks that arose from within the void of my inner self, even if that meant that I would begin with inchoate, spastic scribbles.
As to sacred geometry, I never came to firm conclusions about its ultimate meaning aside from its beautiful and beguiling symbolic constructs which seem to appear everywhere in creation, from sub-atomic particles to galactic spirals to inspired visions, and which seem to carry profound mystical and esoteric revelations. The question, for me, of sacred geometry's position in the scheme of things as the master code of creation did not resolve itself beyond the poetic/artistic range of simili, metaphor and correspondences.
More and more I feel sacred geometry to be a created scheme, a grand and beautiful creation story, an effect, even, of space and eucledian geometry, but not the ultimate blueprint which all of creation must follow. Creation, it seems to me, is much vaster than even that most beautiful and interesting meta-scheme, sacred geometry, the ideal and beauty of which I continue to hold dear.
In the Beginning there was Formlessness, then Rhythm, then the Directions: the Horizontal, the Vertical, the Diagonals, the Top, the Bottom, the Left, the Right.
And Rhythm knew the Directions and begat the Curve.
And the Curve knew Rhythm and begat the Wave, and the Spiral, and the Loop.
And the Loop became the Circle, and the Circle begat Space.
And Space was manifest and embraced all Forms and Formlessness.
And all else followed: "Like Nature."
Q: Historians and art historians in particular have often had to think about structured time. Your cycles also deal with time in a visual sense. If you had to comment on the use of time references in your work, what might you say?
A: Whatever time element might be implied in my works would be of a now-time nature,that is, as a comprehensive whole, where everything is happening simultaneously. Although my works tend to come in related series I do not ordinarily think of them in terms of time. In some series the sequence of the artworks is important to the degree that a key element in the suite is a developmental evolution from one piece to the next, as for instance in some suites of prints (eg: In the Beginning, a suite of twelve large drypoint-monotypes metaphorically tracing the manifestation of the universe of forms from its initial state of formlessness, or The Marriage of Heaven and Earth 1 a suite of 60 drypoint-monotype prints suggested by the "Increase" hexagram from the I Ching). Perhaps The Easter Cycle paintings may also imply a kind of stations-of-the-cross sequencing, beginning with the first painting, a serene, Appolonian image, and ending with the last one, a kind of transcendent, insubstantial one, primal and archaic; suggesting the transmutation of flesh into spirit; the other paintings in-between perhaps indicating different phases, passions or mortifications.However, my other painting cycles tend to be more non-hierarchical and non-sequential, though sequential patterns may be always be found if one intends to. I do number the paintings within each series, but more to be faithful to the order in which they were created than to imply a chronological sequencing. In truth, I have felt this detail of keeping faith with the paintings’ chronological creation to be perhaps an interesting footnote for future scholars who may be interested in the development of my work in detail, much like Picasso’s habit of meticulously dating all his works, and even any subsequent changes to them. This numbering, however, is extrinsic to the works as such. In general, most of my series are intended to be seen either in part or in whole, and in any combination. In fact, I enjoy seeing the works in unexpected sequences or pairings as the different combinations can be surprising.
Q: As a metaphysicist, one assumes you have theories about space-time and dimensional structures. Einstein's theories on relativity first mention space-time and the fourth dimension. I am curious if you have any thoughts on history, time and repetition?
A: My sense of historical repetition is that it is the effect of a kind of dialectic operating in cycles which are rooted in human psychology. Because we live in a polarized, duality-based reality we seem to be continuously undergoing a process of swings between antithetical poles resulting in new syntheses to which we then find new antithesis, and so on. The mind's dissatisfaction with things as they are drives us to seek their opposites until a wistful desire to return to our previously abandoned "golden age" brings us to seek the original pole; only now it's somehow changed: familiar, yet different.
That history seems to repeat itself, I think, speaks of the persistence of the archrtypal dualities which we share through our collective unconscious, such as freedom/limitation, control/chance, excess/scarcity, simplicity/complexity, reason/emotion, expansion/contraction, and so on.
In other words, it seems we take certain paths as far as we can until we tire of them for different reasons, and then our wish to "return home" sets in. We never do find our original "home" -- it doesn't exist anymore; everything changes-- but on our way looking for it we run across some interesting adventures and places which we eagerly explore until in turn we tire of them, the desire to return once again setting in, etc.
