“I shut my eyes in order to see.” Paul Gauguin

Photopasia Series, 50" x 62", acrylic on canvas 2014

Goethe's "subjective halos", phosphenes, entoptics, photopsia, awe and wonder. Toward a new series of paintings.

Series title "Entopic", watercolor, 6 x 9", 
Inspired by optical research by 
Hermann Ludwig Ferdinand Von Helmholtz.

One of the Ovato Tando pieces from over a year ago that
I am looking at toward a new series.
The format might be apt for this new interest.

“I shut my eyes in order to see.”
Paul Gauguin

While teaching concrete/non-objective forms of painting this week I realized that more than play, per se, more than conceptualism, historicism or ideology (all given due attention), my personal efforts in the studio—while informed by all of this—are at this stage in my career more toward a renewed experience of awe, wonder, aesthetic arrest, a peculiar form of ecstatic sensory experience that makes me feel most alive and present in the world—with a brush in my hand.  I return to painting for such moments of grace, moments in which I realize the limits of mind and intention, when I suspend mental chatter and reconnect to the primacy of perception in gratitude; the art as a vehicle, a meditation, a prayer that grounds me--and I hope others.

While laying in the sun with Isabel recently at Salishan on the Siletz Bay I enjoyed the flow of color on the back of my eyelids, the flow, intricate luminosity and floaters witnessed as a phenomenon worth noticing. Of course everyone has done so for fun, pressing here and there to create blushes and swells of color: orange, yellow, hot pinks, deep purple, etc... in fact Goethe wrote about it and other aspects of color theory in a work published in 1810. It occurred to me that it might be interesting to engage such optical phenomena as a point of departure, much as I did the water in the bay, toward a new palette with new inspiration, flow, luminosity...about the liminal visual realm between interior and exterior sight, possibly even bioluminescent biophotons, the leaky boundary that blurs what we normally consider distinctly different interior visual stuff and the visible exterior world.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18358594  http://5mp.eu/fajlok/bokkon-brain-imagery/phosphene_phenomenon_a_new_concept_www.5mp.eu_.pdf

Phosphenes, entopics

I remember in graduate school learning, though my old mentor Carl Hertel at Pitzer College, about optical "phosphenes", the geometric configurations that form under certain circumstances, such as when there is especially bright light, physical pressure on the eye ball, or when one is in an altered state of consciousness, or when configurations of light occur to consciousness while in total darkness.

Since there is a limited set of such configurations, some have speculated about its influence on early petroglyphs and pictographs.  Jungians especially are always looking for support for the idea of the "collective unconscious" that animates archetypal imagery.    I suspect most of this is what people call "seeing stars" after a trauma, a fall, light-headedness, drinking too much, drugs, sexual orgasm, etc.  Indeed.  While it is easy to attribute phosphenes to retinal nervous discharges, they nevertheless they give us insight into structures that are part of our shared makeup. (See this link for information about the science of entoptics, including muscae voliantes, photopsia and other related optical phenomena by Gauri Shankar Shrestha, Opthomologist.
 http://www.slideshare.net/GauriSShrestha/entopic-phenomenon-13491554)

Perkinje Tree

For many years it has seemed interesting to me that such configurations bear such a strong similarity to 17th Century yogic and tantric meditation watercolors. That the Tantrics sought ecstatic imagery is no surprise; apparently they believed in the healing power of ecstasy in all forms, most famously sexual.  While I do not see phosphenes nearly so sharply as they painted them, so delineated and crisp, so graphic, I do observe more organically-infused optical phenomena of a similar nature, optical phenomena I have yet to paint about.  Perhaps, if the ancients were correct about the influence of such imagery on the somatic state of the painter and observer, the work will be useful socially in the context of the gallery gaze, perceptual meditation, benign benevolence.

"The eye is a sense organ that can be readily turned off" (Oster 1970:83)

From Suzanne Carr, citing Oster and others: http://www.oubliette.org.uk/Three.html

Because these form constants and phosphenes are derived from the human nervous system, "all people who entertain altered states of consciousness, no matter what their cultural background, are liable to perceive them"



(Eichmeier and Höfer 1974; Reichel-Dolmatoff 1978)."As Knoll varied the frequency of the pulses the patterns changed, and by altering the frequency Knoll's group identified 15 classes of figures and a number of variations within each class. For each person tested the spectrum of phosphenes (the kind of pattern at each frequency) was repeatable, even after six months"(Oster 1970:85).

17th Century Tantric paintings

Increasing the pressure on the eyeball produces more dramatic phosphenes. One procedure is to apply the index fingers at the inner edge of the eyeballs and press in and toward the temples. The visual field lights up and then, as pressure is maintained for a few seconds, a scintillating design appears - a kind of checkerboard or shifting field of glowing dots, sometimes with elaborate substructures arrayed around a luminous centre. When the pressure is released, the checkerboard fades away, sometimes leaving the central luminosity. If the pressure is then renewed, a pattern of bright, irregular lines appears that resembles a system of blood vessels. When the pressure is again released, a fine filigree image appears and remains for some time. The checkerboard design is probably some manifestation of the orderliness of the neural network of the retina; it shifts in the visual field as the gaze is shifted. The filigree, on the other hand, may be generated farther along the visual pathway, since it remains stationary regardless of where one looks. However, there is a degree of individual sensitivity; some people can make phosphenes occur regularly with little provocation and after-images which last a long time, others cannot (Oster 1970:83-4; Brindley 1963).

I also am inspired by my old friend from graduate school, the German thinker Hermann Ludwig Ferdinand von Helmholtz (August 31, 1821 – September 8, 1894) who wrote: "Under suitable conditions light falling on the eye may render visible certain objects within the eye itself. These perceptions are called entoptical."

An additional reference from painter and former student Zach Mitlas:

"I’ve been reading your recent painter’s blog and I find your reference to phosphene phenomenon a very rich resource for your own continued painting project. It reminds me much of J.W. Goethe’s Treatise on Colour, (https://archive.org/details/goethestheoryco01goetgoog) especially his section on “Pathological Colour” (pg. 45 or so). Goethe makes references to various ways one’s color vision is affected in sickness or in altered states. I think you may find it interesting."

Thanks Zach!  To me, a somewhat better citation would be Goethe's previous section in the same treatise on what he calls "subjective halos", adding to Descartes' description of objective halos:

On the Bracken Line work to be shown in Costa Rica during August

While in residence giving workshops in Figure studies and a Master's class at the EMAI, the Santa Ana School of the Integrated Arts, I will be showing work from the Along the Bracken Line series shown in the posts below.  Artist Statement (English and Spanish versions):

Along the Bracken Line

This series of painting was inspired by the waters of Siletz Bay along the Oregon coast.  More specifically, it was inspired by the ebb and flow of salt water from the ocean and fresh river water as they ebb and flow transparently; as they mix in layers with subtle transitions in hue and intensity. Sometimes, the ever moving fringe between the waters appears as a meandering texture on the surface of the bay, known as a bracken line.  

The currents and layers of salt water and fresh water go one direction and yet the waves go in another, leading me to regard the visual complexity of this natural phenomenon as metaphor, as an analog of consciousness itself, of the flow of the mind with the subtlety suggested by nature itself; how states of consciousness and memory overlap and are sometimes transparent, sometimes opaque, often intersecting and sometimes entirely independent; how they overlap and co-exist, shift and merge, separate, how the mind coalesces and connects what it perceives to be immutable forms just before they again dissolve without a trace; my brush lightly touching, sometimes not touching at all as I wave it in motions above the surface.  Tentative assertions, more found than posited are yielded in transparent flux.  The mind not capturing, per se, not asserting but rather glimpsing what is held and released, like a fish, delicate and transient qualities that converge, for me, the physical and metaphysical worlds.

Aguas Salobres; confluencias

Esta serie de pinturas fueron inspiradas por las aguas de la Bahía de Siletz a lo largo de la costa de Oregon. Más específicamente, se inspiró en el flujo y reflujo del agua salada del mar y el agua dulce de los ríos que desembocan en forma rítmica ondulante, ya que sube y baja de manera transparente y mezcla en capas con sutiles diferencias en el color y densidad. A veces la franja siempre en movimiento entre las aguas aparece como un serpenteo de texturas en la superficie de la bahía, conocida como una línea salobre. 

A veces, las corrientes y las capas de agua salada y agua dulce van en varias direcciones, las olas van en otras.  Me conduce a considerar la complejidad visual y física de este fenómeno natural como metáfora, como un análogo de la conciencia misma, de los movimientos de la mente con la sutileza sugerida por la propia naturaleza, como los estados de la conciencia y la memoria se superponen y son a veces transparentes, a veces opacas, a veces se cruzan, a veces, aparentemente en forma independiente si no es ajeno el uno del otro; la forma en que se superponen y coexisten, cómo cambian y se fusionan, aparte, cómo la mente se une y conecta a lo que percibe como formas inmutables justo antes de que de nuevo se disuelvan sin dejar rastros; mi pincel tocando suavemente la superficie; arrastrando la pintura, sometiendo un pasaje mientras ilumina otra; algo hecho de varios naderías, ya en proceso, con lo que parecen afirmaciones como tentativas; cedido en flujo transparente. La mente no captura en si misma sino más bien que vislumbra y libera e inmediatamente su transitoria belleza, la pintura es una mera transcripción visual de lo inefable.      

Including a couple more pieces from last year in the Bracken Line series

Perhaps it has to do with the palette, perhaps the fluidity, but en even though these pieces are from last year they seem to fit well into the Bracken Line series.

Manganese Blue/Forest Light, acrylic on canvas with charcoal,
2013, 42" x 60"

Zinacantán, 2013, acrylic on canvas, 40" x 46"

On the Bracken Line (third set) inspired by Siletz Bay, Oregon

LINK to collaborative music video with Ruben Mills: Non-Duality of Sight and Sound

I am in the midst of painting a rather large series of work inspired by the Siletz Bay.  The following eight are small 11" x 14" canvases done at Salishan, Oregon during the past week.  There is a bracken line, the constantly moving boundary between ocean salt water and Siletz River fresh water, in front of our cabin on the bay.  It is often visible as it forms, slides along outside our window, then recedes and grows placid or turbulent, waves on ripples, currents going one way, wind waves the other; brackish waters.  

I am not illustrating, per se, and so in what sense is this natural ebb and flow inspirational?  On a formal level it is about layers and counterflow.  That is enough I suppose but I do think about all of this metaphorically, perhaps more specifically metaphysically: how states of consciousness and memory overlap and are sometimes transparent, often not; how they overlap and co-exist, how they shift and merge, separate and exist at times independent, other times inter-dependent of one another; how the mind coalesces and connects what it perceives to be forms from the soup of experience even as it dissolves.  Visual poetics that defy naming; flux and swell and illumination, obfuscation and elucidation, my brush tracing in process what appear as assertions ,more found than posited. 

Collaboration with Ruben Mills, video producer and musical composer

LINK: Non-Duality of Sight and Sound

Second wave of pieces for the On the Bracken Line series inspired by the Siletz Bay along the Oregon coast. All pieces are 16" x 20 or smaller.

On the Bracken Line, Siletz Bay, Salishan

Inspired by the ever-shifting push and pull of the brackish ocean and the fresh river waters.  Will post sizes and titles shortly. 

Composite of the series