Personal Mythologies

Sacred Codes

This week, I remembered that our director Laurence Caruna, had given us a pdf of a draft of his latest book (as yet unpublished), Sacred Codes, a Treatise on Visionary Painting (which will consist of 3 volumes  – drawing (376pp), underpainting, painting).  I’ve been reading that in the mornings instead of practicing drawing with youtube.  What I’m reading right now goes very well with what we’re doing in class.  For instance, his chapter on Egyptian art and his experience exploring the temples there brought back memories of a vivid Egyptian past life vision I received during an Inca Whistle Vessel blowing ceremony I was fortunate to attend in Saskatoon years back. That had led to my creating a clay set of scarab-shaped divination runes and connecting to the team behind the book “Egyptian Scarab Oracle” who gifted me with a copy of their book so that I could complete my set of runes.  It’s like pieces of a puzzle coming together – being here now in Vienna is part of all that – one more step in my personal and spiritual evolution. So much to be grateful for!

Personal Legend:

What a treat!  In class yesterday, our teachers David Heskin and Aloria Weaver shared how their environment, experiences, travels, and beliefs have helped shape their art and how our unique legends and symbols can feed mythologies that extend far beyond the personal and into the universal. For example, although this collaborative work (see below) was created for a specific thematic exhibition, it includes imagery from their lives: statuary they encountered while traveling in Europe, scientific discoveries related to symbols that had emerged in their art, a crop circle that they visited in England, the Japanese earthquake disaster, planetary movement, etc.  In a way, this is very personal work for them, but those viewing it don’t need to be familiar with the specifics to tap into the universal meaning of the piece.  I don’t do their presentation justice, but if you’re interested in learning more about them directly, their presentation at the 2013 Electric Universe Conference on the meeting of Art & Science can be found at: http://www.davidheskin.com/electric-universe

We then spent several hours journaling in response to a long list of questions about the Self, Self & Origin, Self, Origin & Future,  Metaphysical Beliefs, and the mythological archetypes in our own personal story.  I greatly benefited from the more relaxed pace of this day as it gave time for reflection and integration of what we were processing.  I even spent an hour lying on the floor staring at the ceiling and remembering inspirational moments in my life and recalling significant steps in my spiritual development.  I’m not known for my memory, which helps me live more in the moment – but this exercise was so very useful in helping me remember how blessed I have been in my spiritual / personal growth work – from my Catholic upbringing to experiences in nature, books, yoga, and workshops in energy healing, new age philosophies, Tibetan/Peruvian/African shamanism, and so much more.  Life itself has been an amazing teacher; I’ve definitely had a rich life, which has fed my own personal legend. Story-boarding some of that was our afternoon task – one that will help feed both our imaginations and the imagery in our paintings.  I’m happy to report that drawing came much more easily today (the fact that we only needed small rough sketches was a part of that, but also because I was in a very relaxed state and started off by drawing one of the sigils I had created the other day specifically for that purpose).

Ah Vienna!

On what may appear to be a completely separate note (although who knows  – it may infiltrate the imagery in my art some day), I’m really grateful that our school is in the First District – so rich in history, architecture, and visual stimulus. It’s easy to vary my route slightly and discover completely new worlds.  Plus now that it’s dark when I leave class at 6pm, I’m also noticing window displays more – check out these 1,500 Euro shoes and yet another desert-focused installation – this model is a lot slimmer, maybe because she’s balanced her diet of sweets with roasted chestnuts (I keep picking up chestnuts off the street, but just because I like to hold them).