So 2013 starts with the completion of a few leftovers from the previous year, a couple of 8x10s and smaller pieces that I was working on. This is going to be a big year for me, and surely there will be more to come.
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"Feral Monarchs" Series
Feral Monarchs was a group of renderings I did early 2013. I had some card stock paper I found at Texas Art Supply that I'd saved for about a year. I knew I wanted to use golds, sepias, and whites on the boards, but was working on so many other things at the time, that I kept putting it off. Finally, in a small window of the Spring of 2013, before I started on the Spectrum series, I had the opportunity to play with these palettes and mottled oil boards. I was very pleased with the outcome. My personal favorite is "Guardian of the Gate of Horn" which is a nod to one of my most beloved fiction authors, the late Robert Holdstock.
SPECTRUM: An Archetypal Journey of the Psyche
The idea for Spectrum emerged from my desire to experiment and challenge myself. Knowing that my unconscious can furnish a seemingly endless supply of subject matter, I wondered if I were to throw ink with the idea in mind that that these images could somehow form a narrative, what would my unconscious provide?
In March of this year, I packed my supplies and took them with me to the Joseph Campbell Foundation's annual workshop at the Esalen Institute in Bug Sur, California to answer my question.
Because I had never done a series in Constellationism before, I decided to make the series cohesive by not only using a uniform size paper, but to to have the colors progress through the color spectrum. Aside from those factors, I just had to throw the ink and trust that my unconscious would give me provide the materials to make it work.
During two late nights, I threw ink for twenty pieces; in each one I found a strong and vivid image to be rendered pulled out of the blotting. Fourteen of these pieces comprise this series. I returned to Houston very excited about the months of hard work ahead.
Obviously, the end result has been rendered by my hand, filtered through my conscious (and unconscious) thoughts while I worked on each one, so naturally, there are echoes of the content and context of my mind (such as The Hero's Journey, Kundalini Yoga, Jung's process of individuation), but those, of course, are simply my interpretations.
I invite you to open yourself to the experience of letting the images affect you, however, subtly. As you progress through the series, can you find your own narrative in the dreamlike forms? What journey are you on? Answer that, and you can become the hero of your own story.