Becoming Animal

I'm sharing the words of writer, David Abram from his book "Becoming Animal An Earthly Cosmology" not only for your sake, but also for mine, so I will not forget them as they are a way of thinking and realizing our place in the world. Each day as I draw from life, outside surrounded by nature, birds, wild things and hot skies, and then later on when I paint abstractly, at home with ambiguity and passion's many flavours, I struggle to find a way to be in a world quite un-accepting of the artist's way. So it's writers like Abram who guide and encourage me with their ponderings.

The computerized mind when left to its own devices, all too easily overlooks the solid things of the earth. Skilled in the rapid manipulation of symbols, it neglects the stones and the grasses that symbolize nothing other than themselves. Dazzled by its own virtual creations, the digital self forgets its dependence upon a world that it did not create, overlooking its carnal emplacement in the very world that created it.

Bodily perception provides our most intimate entry into a primary order of reality that can be disparaged or dismissed only at our peril.

An addled and anesthetized numbness is spreading rapidly throughout our species.

There are those, however, who are not frightened of grief; dropping deep into the sorrow, they find therein a necessary elixir to the numbness. When they encounter one another, when they press their foreheads against the bark of a centuries-old tree, or their palms into the hand of yet another child who has tasted prematurely of wrenching loss, their eyes well with tears that fall easily to the ground. The soil needs this water. Grief is but a gate, and our tears a kind of key opening a place of wonder that's been locked away. Suddenly we notice the sustaining resonance between the drumming heart within our chest and the pulse rising from under the ground.

David Abram, Becoming Animal: An Earthly Cosmology

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.

Kathy Crabbe, Beginning to see the light, 2012, acrylic on canvas, 48 x 48”.

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.

Of gods and angels

Accessing one's inner male, testosterone subverted, not in producing war, violence, hate, but instead passion, love, intensity, driving, pounding, insistent, revolutionary, effecting change, mythical, noble, of gods and angels. "But love is not what you're thinking of" from "Please" by U2.

"If God would send you his angels" ~ U2.

I'm more afraid of lack then of plenty. Curing lack by giving.

Waiting for the painting to speak...telling me what to do next; what direction, what line, what colour, texture, flavour, emotion, it needs to express through me.

Angel wings like fingers, tentacles of fire and water, devouring, engulfing.

Of gods and angels - 3.5' x 3.5' - acrylic & pastel on silk

Wings of strength, like legs.

Musical Ambiance: "Zooropa" by U2 and "Pop" by U2.