The creative brain: where does inspiration come from?

Once artists are free to admit that they are crazily passionate about some thing outside of art, that still nourishes their art, you'd be surprised what you hear. I've learned that one artist gets most of her ideas not in the studio but in her garden, another was replenished with ideas by taking the same walk through town every day, another responds to stoop sales and street finds, another was into obscure horror movies, another horse-racing, another visited candy stores and bakeries, and so on. Also, while normal people may have to travel the world to get inspired, it doesn't take a lot to get a creative brain going. This passionate thing, therefore, is usually quite specific, controlled by a careful protocol, often quite secret, hidden, in the manner of Kepler's statement, "I live in a secret frenzy" - possibly the best two-word description ever of the creative brain at work (J.W. Connor, Kepler's Witch, 2004, p. 329), under the surface of an otherwise nondescript life.

This thing, in my view, is a reflection in conscious life and in art of the jumble of images in Andreasen's associative cortex that precedes a eureka moment: it sets the stage, creates a predisposition, for the eureka moment.

Essay by Robert Mahoney, "Eureka: The Creative Brain" from Accelerating on the Curves The Artist's Roadmap to Success by Katharine T. Carter & Associates.

For me, the thing that set off and inspired my Journey into Intimacy series was my desire to find a container, a tabula rasa, a safe place to let out my emotions. It was emotional pain that drove me insistently and unrepentantly to start this series. I literally RAN to find all my painting and drawing materials so that I could start creating BIG. This new series had a lot of emotion to express and capture and it felt BIG. So I grabbed a bolt of silk, attached it to the wall, set out all my acrylics, brushes, pastels and charcoal and began. That was in October of 2009 and I haven't stopped since.

Although the pain that initiated this series has gone away I find myself questioning what thing apart from my art itself, deeply and unconsciously informs my current paintings (still from the Journey into Intimacy series) now painted on canvas since 2012.

The first painting I'd like to explore is "Beginning to see the light" (see above). My emotions around this painting were intense. My best friend, a revolutionary, writer and fighter for the under-dog was visiting me at the time and she was working non-stop, hell-bent on saving the world and especially the United States. I was reading a book she loaned me by Chris Hedges called "Death of the Liberal Class", we visited Mexico (Tijuana), took walks in nature around my property and visited the vineyards nearby where my friend was appalled by the fakery and plastic-ness of the women she encountered. All the tensions and oppositions between the natural beauty of inland Southern California and the horrific damage wrought upon the women here who are madly creating a plastic persona to 'keep up with the Joneses' exploded into this, my first painting on a black gessoed background and before I knew it I'd painted my vision of this horrible beauty; a vision both intoxicating-ly magical and horrifying-ly frightening. The painting felt channeled; it appeared so suddenly and so brilliantly, capturing a split second fluttering in time where amidst the ruin of a culture I felt...something good. So that's why I paint and continue to paint and draw every day.

Verse to Image Exhibit: the poet has come back

My newest hand pulled fine art print is a combination etching and monoprint. It was created for the "Verse to Image Exhibition" at the Riverside Community Arts Association Center in Riverside, California.

This exhibit features members of the Printmakers Network affiliated with the Riverside Art Museum and explores the connections and spaces between literature and the plastic arts with displays of writing that have inspired the artists' works on view.

My print was inspired by Margaret Atwood's poem The Poet Has Come Back and by a quote about rebellion from Chris Hedge's book Death of the Liberal Class.

Atwood's poem talks about the god of poets having two hands, "the dexterous and the sinister" which actually refers to the left and right hands, something of great interest for me due to five years spent painting and drawing exclusively with my non dominant left hand in early 2000. Atwood's lines below were explored in the print I created.

The poet has come back to being a poet after decades of being virtuous instead...Welcome back, my dear. Time to resume our vigil, time to unlock the cellar door.

To understand humanities intuitive, 'primitive' past I looked to the earliest known drawings (and prints) created some 35,000 years ago in the Chauvet Caves of Southern France. (see image to the left) I also took notes and made sketches from Werner Herzog's 2010 documentary film, Cave of Forgotten Dreams for which he was granted the rare privilege of filming inside the caves.

I also investigated the groundbreaking work of archaelogist, Marija Gimbutas who explored Neolithic Goddess culture, mythology, linguistics and folklore in her book The Language of the Goddess. Gimbutas writes:

Hands and feet symbolize the touch of the Goddess; they impart her energy.

The color red is the symbol of life.

Figurines occasionally have enormous hands seemingly imparting divine energy or spells.

In the Chauvet Caves are walls containing two different kinds of palm prints, one kind was made by pressing the fleshy round part of the palm of a hand onto the wall's surface and the other by spraying the color red around the hand.

In my etching/monoprint I made a full hand print (in black) using my right hand to represent the left brain dominant, logical society of today and another print (in red) using the fleshy base of my left palm to represent the intuitive, right brained world of our Paleolithic ancestors. In between the two hand prints I printed an etching of a root like symbol to connect the two worlds; both the rational, present day society and our intuitive past.

It is important that we, as a culture are presented with a vision of this possibility. We need to acknowledge and face our shadow side, our fears, our left hand and yes, stand vigil at the cellar door so that once again the poet has two hands, the dexterous and the sinister.

This piece also symbolizes how important the role of the artist and our imagination can be, especially in today's society. By making our mark, by critical thinking, skepticism and risk taking I ask each one of you to consider how important art, the imagination and the artist can be in North America today.

We must always learn from and study the example of other peoples throughout the world, but we do have to analyze our own conditions here in the belly of the beast. We, as conscious artists, must combat the torrent of mind-control with a real alternative - murals, songs, dance, poetry that contain different values and have educational content as well as beauty...everything is political.

Miranda Bergman, Mural, Mural on the Wall from Art on the Line, Essays by Artists about the Point Where Their Art & Activism Intersect, Edited by Jack Hirschman

VERSE TO IMAGE EXHIBITION Riverside Community Arts Association Center Riverside, California Exhibition dates: March 22 – April 21 Reception: April 5, 6-9pm (during Riverside Arts Walk)

Discipline Required - Brainstorming in Process!

Discipline seems to be a key word for my process right now. The key is keeping Facebook time low! The computer world is insidious; it creeps into your life quickly and it stays there.

Each morning I sketch outside (plein air is the fancy French term for it) and have been focusing on still lives rather than landscapes as of late. My 2B pencil is put to work although I need to find a 6H to get really serious ;) It feels like I'm in training right now (athletic discipline required).

I'm also brainstorming; giving my corpus callosum a work out for a couple of prints I'm conjuring for an exhibit called Verse to Image at the Riverside Community Arts Association Center. I chose a quote about rebellion from Chris Hedges' book, Death of the Liberal Class and a poem by Margaret Atwood titled The Poet Has Come Back; both reference death. Somehow printmaking brings out the darker more political side of life for me. Prints are due mid March and making an etching can take a while so I'm digging in and going deeper with Atwood's poem for starters; perhaps the two will tie in somehow. I hope to post some photos here in the coming weeks so stay tuned.

Quotations of Interest (originally posted on my Facebook page this week)

"Unfortunately, many works sold at art fairs, and in the global market in general, promote cultural cliches or personal brands...Formatted for private collection spaces and museum galleries, this art is too often totally predictable and non experimental." ~ Hou Hanru, Art in America, Nov. 2011

"College Art Association is at the LA Convention Center. CAA is a front for Goldman Sachs student loan scam to keep young creative people broke and enslaved in debt. CAA is the Monsanto of Art, complicit in crimes against creativity. Top that rant!!!" ~ Matt Gleason (who was expelled from every school he attended according to his Facebook Info page...hmmmm, not surprising really, is it?)

California Alliance for Arts Education Webinar: How to work with your local school board to keep arts education in schools.

"All we have, as Vaclav Havel writes, is our own powerlessness. And that powerlessness is our strength. The survival of the movement depends on embracing this powerlessness. It depends on two of our most important assets—utter and complete transparency and a rigid adherence to nonviolence, including respect for private property. This permits us, as Havel puts it in his 1978 essay “The Power of the Powerless,” to live in truth. And by living in truth we expose a corrupt corporate state that perpetrates lies and lives in deceit." ~ Chris Hedges

How to Occupy

Utne Magazine's 10 Most Enlightened Towns to live in America

Hidden Truth

One of my best friends suggested that my newest painting series, Journey Into Intimacy is all about penises and vaginas. If so, than this latest in the series is right on target although that was not my intention when I started it.  But I can say that having one of my best friends, Tangerine Bolen, an academic activist, writer and founder of Revolution Truth stay with me for 10 days really changed my life and exposed me to the hidden, bloated underbelly of the capitalist system over-running our country; we are in a sorry state and we need to wake up. I recommend Pulitzer prize winning author, Chris Hedge's book Death of the Liberal Class and his Truth Dig column to get you going.

All we have, as Vaclav Havel writes, is our own powerlessness. And that powerlessness is our strength. The survival of the (Occupy) movement depends on embracing this powerlessness. It depends on two of our most important assets—utter and complete transparency and a rigid adherence to nonviolence, including respect for private property. This permits us, as Havel puts it in his 1978 essay “The Power of the Powerless,” to live in truth. And by living in truth we expose a corrupt corporate state that perpetrates lies and lives in deceit. ~ Chris Hedges, Occupy Draws Strength from the Powerless