Although paintings are done on a time continuum, like dreams they are outside of linear time. Some images come before the event they depict, and others are a portal to themes running for decades, journal entry, artist statement and insights from perspective over time. The images have been scattered through my abstract painting, small mixed media pieces and works on paper. Seeing them together is like lining up dreams or poems from several lifetimes. Over the years the themes and symbols incite new depth of reflection.
Blog #3B In-Bodying the Field: Fridge Field-trips-Soul Boat
Last week the In-Bodying Marking Circles we ventured through a refrigerator door for what we started calling a field-trip. It was an experience in the Imaginal Field contained in the body into Marking. Each of our trips was unique from a glass lemon-aide pitcher in grandmother’s fridge, to a trapeze artist in a circus, to the inside of a car. This week each circle had two guided field-trips initiated four guide’s patterned on their own journey.
Blog #3A Imaginal Field: Refrigerator an Archetypal Portal
Mark-marking this week continued to cultivate somatic intelligence as we access the Imaginal Field. By becoming-like other things, we expanded the felt-body response by cultivating vision into the unknown through imagination. It is an ancient portal that the age of reason has upstaged, and yet is alive in science and all the arts, music, performance, literature and every aspect of life that is carried to artistry, like architecture, landscaping, cooking, parenting or even politics.
In-Bodying the Field Blog #2D: Reciprocity, Shape Shifting
Shape-shifting may sound like an ethnographic study where a shaman transforms into animal, while in truth it is fundamental to our everyday experience. Shape-shifting allows for the ability to change form or identity at will. It is a part of spiritual practice, parenting, the arts and just about any aspect of life that is carried to artistry. Compassion and empathy are ways of shapeshifting.
Blog #2C In-Bodying the Field, Reciprocity: Flirting and Animism
There is a way to explore animism in the practice Marking by flirting. The definition of animism we are using it is the essence of an object or entity. It is the spirit that energizes, even if at first it is beyond our sensorial recognition. Rather than a belief we are cultivating more an attitude or practice as we become comfortable and adept in the Imaginal Realm. You could also say that it is a poetic approach. Poetry of the plastic arts, music, literature and performance all seek deeper and meaningful connection through the intelligence of the imaginal realm. Through marking we explore the reciprocity of the life and essence of the field in relation to flirting.
#2A & #2B Reciprocity: Coherency and Organizing Principle
In February we are exploring Reciprocity, the exchanging things with others. It is fundamental to the Marking practice and allows us to acknowledge the field as the collaborator in all our markings. We are inviting relationship with an animistic universe. The core of this point of view is contrary to René Descartes philosophy where he maintained that the only exchange is between humans as dualism of two finite substances, mind and matter. Many now in distinct fields like David Abram, ecologist and philosopher, Merlin Sheldrake, microbiologist and writer of history and philosophy of science and Arnold Mindell’s transpersonal psychologist, process therapist and writer for social change disagree with that limited view.