This image takes me back to Chejudo, the Japanese name of a small island off the southern coast of South Korea. Basaltic stacked boulders as fences crisscross the terrain where trees grow horizontally in the wind. At the center the island is a huge volcanic crater. From the rim you can see the sea on all sides with agile mountain goats dancing on the rim. The wild horses there were brought to island in ships by Genghis Khan in the Goryeo Kingdom, 918-1392.

When I was there staying there in a Buddhist temple, adjacent was an indigenous woman shaman who I found as I wondered at night looking for the chanting ritual of the nuns. She was a mudang who performed her nightly rituals by firelight. Like shamans all over the world, the mudang shape-shift into animals for knowledge and power. Later in a thatched house with basalt bolder walls I found something like a shaman museum filled with dust and spiderwebs. The fish-shape objects in a variety of carved materials is similar to Yin or Yang of that iconic symbol. It is a shape that finds its way into my paintings. I can feel the smooth polished shape, that represents the soul, in the palm of my hand before I recognize it in paint.

 

Late one night in Kyoto at a public bath in the entertainment area of Gion, in a beautiful old bathhouse a wall was constructed down the middle, compliments of American occupying troops, to separate the men from the women. Some women must have recognized the voices of the local yakusa as they shout for them to come over to our side. After much taunting and conversation back and forth a couple of young gangsters came over in loincloths to display their ear-to-toe tattoos. Even the older women clapped and hooted in delight.

Japanese gangsters represent the underbelly of an ancient structure where exhibiting bravado with a particular flavor identifies oneself.  This ruthlessness is juxtaposed to the practice of traditional tea ceremonies where brush calligraphy and even sword work are said to embody the same principles. Today, arising from the warrior’s code, suicide can be considered a morally responsible decision. There is an archaic stance that can for a moment flash in a small boy, a shopkeeper, a policeman, or even an animal.

In this three-paneled painting, the bushido bravado that is ever present in Japan yet mostly invisible takes the shape of a raven opening his wings to expose amulets of power. The four-legged red creature is highlighted from outside the frame— young, innocent, and vulnerable. This creature has appeared in my painting for decades taking on various guises. This time a catalyst to the underbelly of the Raven-warrior.

 

The horse, an animal in a willing relationship with humans amplifies power, speed, and beauty. This red horse responds to a ritual Hopi rattle, one of the oldest living cultures to have lived continuously on the same land. They are a people deeply religious, with ritual ceremonies guiding most aspects of their lives. This rattle was made for a baby to call for protection from the ancestors.

This painting arose from a family trip through the Southwest.

 

The checkered floor always suggests the world of duality. It is promising in that frogs of transformation at the base of the tub are intermediaries of the bathing device on the floor, but I cannot enter the place of relaxation, cleansing, and ritual because it is divided. Still, the bath is asking for some action on my part.
 

 

In the painting, we are positioned precariously on the top of a fruit ladder in the wind. We are considering moving across the country to construct a Zen Buddhist temple in Taos with local adobe and traditional Japanese temple carpentry. A decision of a radical life change. Again, a Hopi rattle flies through the air activating instinctual indigenous culture across time that feels more like a personal tutelar guide in the threat of modernity.

 

Up close the pig aggressively complains to a fledgling eagle focused on something outside of the frame. Perhaps both are in the fledgling stage before flight. The Flying Pig is a creature with origins in Greek mythology, legend and folklore, originally a winged boar offspring of the Gorgon Medusa and brother of the winged horse Pegasus.

The three signal a crossroads which I can feel in my body with the psychopomp shinning the light across the court catching this earthy angry sow looking to an  awkward baby eagle without much power but incredible potential.

 

We had recently come from the animistic country of Japan where everything is alive. A child on a train carefully takes off her shoes before standing on the seat. She arranges her shoes knowing how they like to stay together rather than achi-kochi. All gardeners know the spirit of a sick tree can be moved with some coaxing to a healthy tree before the tree is cut down. Throughout the country not one grain of rice left is ever left unfinished in a bowl of rice. Just as Rumi knocks the chickpea back into the soup pot to continue the alchemic cooking for which we have all signed-up.

 

Archetypes are universal, across all cultures, yet have a deeply personal essence to be explored as we often do not acknowledge, consciously or unconsciously, those with which we are most intimate. These constructions of our basic drives, foibles, and potentialities are core to human behavior. Greek myths offer classical expressions of archetypal behavior, some convoluted and dramatic and some more subtle, all have psychological truth in the context of the human psyche. In marking we are particularly interested in the archetypes that govern us and our culture as they are the currency of all the arts.

In the studio each of us began a practice by acausal means, like picking a Tarot card, to reveal a personal archetype specific for this time to prime synchronicity, assisting to loosen the collective paradigm as we develop a deeper rapport with the relational-field and trust alternate ways of knowing, his is a part of our on-going discussion of the overarching archetypal forest-of-art with its enchantments, perils and opportunities for transformation. We are cultivating what Josh Schrei in his Emerald Podcast on the Forest calls the “protocols or attitudes and procedures for safe passage”. We are learning that these protocols require deep attention, heart investment, commitment, care, love, work and awareness of the web of relations in the animistic universe.

The images accompanying this text may help to illustrate the protocols that developed in the creative process. The first image, a toothy non-descript animal flanked by a young girl shadowed by a red fox, with her hands on the beast’s jaws was an odd painting of several years ago. It was cartoonish and I painted over it several times, once even taking an electric sander to the surface. The icons, however, kept reasserting themselves.

When I pulled the Strength card from the Tarot deck, symbol of inner strength, I realized this image had a message. It was the image of a young woman opening or closing the mouth of a lion. In my image the primal power of the beast seems to be from another dimension. It was transparent and on a different plane, legs dancing above the grass. The figure of the Red Fox is a personal daimon which sneaks into much of my work, extending like the young woman beyond the picture plane. None of this was intentional. Eventually in the last iteration a tri-fold figure was enshrined within the animal revealing itself as the Hierophant, which, according to the Tarot, is the spiritual aspect of the masculine. It emerged from the Beast signifying an intermediator or what I think of as the organizing principle or higher guidance. This was not only important to this image but shed light on several other paintings where this tri-fold image has appeared.

The dynamics of the organizing principle is one of the most important protocols in the forest, for it speaks to a higher principle to which we have allegiance. In an OEITH Podcast by Duncan Barford he refers to the Hierophant via Paul Verhaeghe saying, the difference between power, a two-party relationship, and authority, three parties, is that the Organizing Principle is the representation of goodness and truth and the renunciation of personal power. The Hierophant is not a figure of authority but, rather, a figure that knows where authority is to be found. Through research, reflection and physically marking, this understanding was brought home in a way that was before just conceptual. This process stimulated the important understanding from where inner strength comes. Other experiences in this endeavor confirmed that one of the perils in the forest is the blinders of personal aesthetics which can stop or stall the development of the work in its tracks. Here, we are practicing as not the sole agent but allowing other forces to work, to trust the images that arise and give freedom to become a navigation of the forest. This kind of process leads to a wealth of insights, lending flexibility and curiosity that allows the emergence of what exists. Thus, painting is not a product but a process that belongs to a greater mystery.