ART TEXTS
These philosophical texts inspired by mythology also function as imaginal explorations of aesthetic and spiritual themes. Read them a paragraph at a time and contemplate the ideas in the context of art and life.
Along with the philosophical texts there appears the occasional personal essay connected to creativity and art.
How I Became An Artist
As I huddle in the darkness with the blanket to my chin, three knives fly into the cabin door. Four flashlights switch on to see if the knives have found their target. A twelve year old named O’Mara whoops and jumps off his bunk.
“I got it. You guys are lame.” He pulls his six-inch blade from the crudely drawn red circle in the middle of the door. The other two knives have struck up high and to the right. “We do it again.”...
The Kos Project:
Healing Art for Humanity
This art project presents the notion of healing dreams through paintings and performance. The personal dream is connected to the social dream and to spiritual dream, and all are symbolically present in the gallery space. Art has many purposes—expressive,...
Art As Gift
In a downtown Vancouver bank, Tibetan monks create a sand mandala to relieve universal suffering and bring serenity. A Salish community on the West coast re-creates ceremonial robes and blankets as a step to reviving traditional dances and rituals and thereby bring...
Ariadne’s Realm
For those who know the Greek myth of the Minotaur, the usual heroes are Daedalus, the master artisan who creates the labyrinth imprisoning the Minotaur, and Theseus, the young Athenian prince who risks his life in entering the labyrinth and killing the Minotaur, the...
Persephone’s Smile
The myth of Persephone suggests three stages in creativity that can deepen our art practice. Persephone, daughter of Zeus and Demeter, is renowned for her beauty. She loves to roam in the fields and everywhere nature celebrates her presence with a profusion of...
When the Darkness Sings
There is a method in depth psychology called "gold in the shadow," which, if I understand it correctly, seeks to find value in what we often deem valueless: our ordinary suffering, our humiliations, our failures. In art practice, a parallel procedure is to maintain a...
The Wounded Artist
In Marrakesh, I once saw a dervish pass a long skewer through his cheek. He then stuck several needles into his palms. All the while, he wore a calm, if somewhat distracted expression on his face, as if his true interest were somewhere else and the impaling was a...
Riding the Dragon
The line in painting is always first and last a mark on the canvas, but the ancestry of the calligraphic mark, revealed in the process of creation, includes a deep connection with the processes of Nature, divination, and cultures across the world. The awareness of...
Crazy Wisdom
When did books on creativity begin coming out in droves? Certainly, there have been dozens of books in the last twenty years that promise to have us more creative if we just take the time to read that book. Some of the books are quite good (Michael Michalko’s CRACKING...
Between the Visible and the Invisible
In one of his letters, the great German poet Rilke writes, " we are the bees of the invisible. We frantically plunder the visible of its honey, to accommodate it in the great golden hive of the invisible."[1] The phrase, "bees of the invisible," describes one of the...
Aphrodite’s Gaze
We are so used to looking at the world and laying claim to it that our ideas about experience are predictably narrow. Nothing seems unreasonable about the notion that we use our thinking and our senses as best as we can to understand the world and to navigate it. Yet...
