Artist's Statement
In 1952, age 21, I graduated from a four year drawing and painting program at the Ontario College of Art. I slowly found my visual art-making way over the years that followed in alignment with a quest for meaning in a contemporary cultural climate in free-fall from former traditional values. In the mid 1950s through the 1960s, I made an initial acquaintance with the work of Mythologist Joseph Campbell and Depth Psychologist Carl Jung. Building on these initial avenues of inspiration, other authors of significance ultimately led to an opening to the psychic domain where creative currents run deep. This continues to be the basis (with variations) on which the imagery evolves as new insights become available.
Coinciding with this tendency is an innate curiosity about the world I live in, that has in later years led to the need to know and to find answers to the big cultural questions of the day; a need that has its origins in introspective, intuitive promptings.
The need to understand, to know, has been especially acute in recent years in response to the radical paradigm changes in the artistic, philosophical, religious, social, political, scientific, technological and ecological aspects of our contemporary cultural milieu.
As cultural historian, professor of philosophy and depth psychology Richard Tarnas writes: “Ours is an age between world-views, creative yet disorientated, a transitional era when the old cultural vision no longer holds and the new has not constellated” (Cosmos and Psyche, Viking, 2006, p.26).
In my drawings and paintings, the diminutive, androgynous figure (whom I call Little Face) is on a transpersonal quest for meaning in a world of radical change. It is an embryonic thought-form that gathers sustenance from dreams of the natural environment while awaiting delivery into the embrace of an evolving, integral, world-centric consciousness.
My understanding of our contemporary cultural condition leads me to suggest that: When the elements of renewal encompassing body, mind, and spirit coalesce in an integral configuration, humanity will gain access to the next evolutionary turning of life’s dynamic trajectory.
I think of my visual art work as Postcards from the Psyche as the impulse for its production seems to arise from a spontaneous, subtle, benign, introspective source.
