“More Than Meets the Eye”
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I am excited to announce my new series of paintings, “More Than Meets the Eye.” However, these are much more than art. Within each one is a revelation, an understanding, and a model for creating a conscious visualization of everything we seek to have or hold dear in our lives.
I was inspired by the beauty of each scene, and it was a joy to execute the work of such wonderful scintillating visions. However, there is a great deal more going on than meets the eye. Although each of these paintings seems to be the result of natural perception and careful rendition, none of them would be possible without conscious and deliberate integration from a consciousness that knows how we see and where “seeing” comes from. Each composition is built around at least 5 perspectives, which emulates the spectrum of multi-peripheral vision. What this accomplishes, is it stimulates the mind into admitting its active and major role in orchestrating all our perceptions.
We actually SEE with our total consciousness, not our eyes, which are only data gathering instruments. Normally the mind is lazy when looking at a picture, and allows the eyes to casually review the shallow spectrum of information presented on a two-dimensional surface. This is why pictures do not wrap around us, excite our imagination, or stimulate multi-sensory experiences. By imitating the way our mind integrates streams of perceptual data, it becomes actively engaged, and suddenly we are not only seeing a stream of water, but we have many added sensations of its flow and coolness. With flowers we have a sense of fragrance, and with sun a feeling of warmth.
Perhaps the most important contribution these paintings make to students of spiritual growth and consciousness is that they provide contemplative models for how to envision the life you want to be living. It is important to “see” what you want, whether it is more happiness, better health, more abundance, or solutions to a problem. The major cause of our disappointments, when our visions do not materialize, is that we do not know how to create the complete vision—one our heart, mind, and all of our senses can BELIEVE IN!
Have you ever wondered how you actually see? And, if what you think you see is really the same as it appears? If you have gone so far as to ponder such thoughts, you are among the very small minority of people who are really conscious about their lives. No one has the definitive answer to such questions, but asking them is what moves our consciousness to a higher, more responsible level. Our perceptions are awakened from the sensory driven world of conditioned and memorized responses, and we become the lucid beholders and creators of a world informed by consciousness, curiosity, and creativity.
In many ways such a question is part of the prodding any artist makes of nature. Years ago I learned to look way beyond the obvious appearance of such things as surface colors. I did not settle for the stereotypical green in tree leaves, but also found violet shadows on their underside, complemented by sparkling lemony highlights. Actually, on one tree there may be hundreds of shades of green that could be discerned in spectrum analysis. This is what artists like Van Gogh and Monet called to our attention over a hundred years ago. They saw way beyond the ordinary veil of casual perception.
This could be called innocent perception, but it is also a cultivated practice of allowing perception to be the gathering arm of consciousness and stretching beyond our former reach. The ongoing search for consciousness directs all of our perceptions. What we are not ready to hold in our consciousness, we simply do not see. As Magellan sailed around Cape Horn, he and his men saw the native people on shore seemingly watching them also. However, no records (oral, written, or artistic) of the indigenous people contain any report of such event ever happening. We might casually assume the passage of a great ship with billowing sails would be so strange as to become the subject of legend. However, the truth is, if a perception has no context in which to fit in our consciousness, it is more likely to be disbelieved, filtered out, or simply forgotten. This, indeed, seems to be the case in that historical event.
Historically, it has always been the societal role of artists to prepare our consciousness for that which will soon be gathered and assimilated through experience for the advancement of understanding. From the ancient caves of Lascaux, France to the mathematical interpretations of the universe in Mandelbrot sets, art in its highest expression is a map of our consciousness.
Only in certain periods of history has art been associated with luxury and aesthetics, and that is far from being its primary value. The fact is, by exploring our consciousness aesthetically, we can enter sensitive dimensions of personal awareness and map a possible new future before we have all of the facts and experience to justify it. Great art was never meant to be "interior decoration" but rather to be seen as a "master teacher and inner explorer" to live with and learn from, so that we can, ourselves, see more profoundly and create our own world to be as we envision it to be. Consciousness is not optional.
Whether high, low, programmed, or comatose, we all have some level of consciousness. Our personal and collective evolution (not to mention survival) is a direct result of how much responsibility we assume for the evolution of consciousness. Actually, our greatest creation, our MASTER CREATION, is personal consciousness. Consciousness is a gift from God, and the greatest power we have for exploring and navigating life. However, it is our responsibility to awaken, develop, and use it for the betterment of life. Consciousness is a very big subject, one which always exceeds our explorations of it. Ironically, however, consciousness is an inside job of personal responsibility. It is not about what and how much we know. It is how we relate to life as a QUALITY OF EXPERIENCE. It is about how masterful we are in creating a meaningful relationship with life. This is such an important subject it will be the subject of my next book, entitled “More Than Meets the Eye.” So much of consciousness is pre-verbal or non-verbal, it would be impossible to explore the subject completely in words. The outer frontier of consciousness is actually intuition, and spiritual, and sensory exploration. These are the things we often brush aside as “the intangibles,” although they are the very heart and power of how we move forward. In esthetic and artistic expressions they are unavoidable.
Truly, I think this is how and WHY my work in spiritual pursuits, and my work as an artist, are inseparable. That union has been a catalyst for the most important contributions of my life. Now, there is another one I hope you will take to heart and benefit from as much as I have. In order to examine the inner workings of consciousness and develop the vision necessary to complete this series of paintings, I also developed a technique of contemplation that is so powerful it can envelop one’s life and bring new possibilities into very real focus. As Jeshua said, whatsoever you truly believe can be made real. Now I have walked through the valley of this wonderful revelation, and look forward to sharing it with you. You don’t need a paint brush or a piano to be the artist of your own life.
These paintings are a visual road map, and a demonstration of how it is done. Then the goal is to make this ability living and real in the spectrum of your abilities and consciousness. Consciousness shapes our days and our experience, and everything we see—not the other way around. This is what I hope to show you through the paintings, the inspirations, and through the writings (as they happen) about “More Than Meets the Eye.”
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