The function of art is to open for us the doors that lead to the other side of reality.
Octavio Paz, What is Art? – Octavio Paz and Art
This year I have learned much. I read several books about physics, cosmology, the mind, consciousness, and artists. I seem to be centering on the surrealist. Octavio Paz’s book, Alternating Current, moved me more in that direction. It seems he was a friend of Andre Breton.
Breton being best-known as the co-founder and chief apologist of surrealism. He wrote the Surrealist Manifesto of 1924, in which he defined surrealism as “pure psychic automatism.” Paz brought to the table helped me understand how the unconscious was tied to the automatic writing/drawing process. Not sure where I am going to go with this. Right now, I am reading, Concerning the Spiritual in Art by Wassily Kandinsky. I am finding how closely some of the ideas spoken both by the Surrealists and presented in Kandinsky’s book are very close to ideas and beliefs of the Religious Society of Friends.
As I was creating the work above, it occurred to me, one dot made by my pen can influence or change the composition. The substrate could easily stand-in for the universe…. the dots, the individuals that exist within, and how one dot and every dot… or every person contributes to the whole. By the decisions we make, each of us changes our surrounding environment or the universe in some small or big way.
This is nothing profound… Just thoughts and where I am at in my journey.