AN INTEGRAL CANVAS from A River Of One's Own

artwork by Jeff Lohrius

"All the arts derive from the same and unique root," wrote Kandinsky. As modern artists with inclusive intuitions, the doors to the root of our artistry can blow wide open with each of our courageous and expressive gestures. Though century of conscious effort to obliterate taboo has rather led to the discovery of new taboo, due in part to distinct cultures learning how to cohabitate, we do not want to blindly confuse informed with ignorant freedom, and we do not want to pretend that stages of development of artistic depth do not exist, because it is clear that development transpires, through multiple intelligences, with an affective/emotional sense at every step.

Yet I believe that the forward edge, or avant-garde, of artistic vision appears bound only by the artist's own horizons and capacity to be able to respond to that which lay behind every breath of lived experience. Artists have intuition and follow it through to expression and extension via courageous creativity. From planet-centric cognitive lenses (which transcend 'me' and 'us', to an 'all of us' sensibility), artists can responsibly embrace the planet's diverse and fertile source material and source understanding, reckon their discoveries with their own tradition, and echo experiences along their path in artwork, as emotional sense extended into form. In kosmic impulsion, artistic efforts align one's intuitive flows with the inherent energy that create the universe from an embrace of ecstatic love. At every moment of artistic development, intuitive consciousness can be represented in a discipline of art. Artworks can be amplifiers: of trauma, of society, of personality, of frailty, of beauty. Artwork is an exchange, for within the circuitry of whole consciousness, whole design, and whole perception is an electric spark.

Timeless experience in evolving form through interior and exterior awareness guides our technical palette to concretize commonly-held parts into wholes. As St. Thomas Aquinas said, "Art imitates Nature in her manner of operations." Hear glorious not only the natural world, but in fact the Divine within nature and within us. We tread interior terrain knowing that we possess the potential to manifest experience, to depict Nature, in any manner in which we are driven or called. Ananda Coomaraswamy said, "[Artists] impress on primary matter a 'world picture' already painted by spirit on the canvas of spirit." Or in my words: art is a state of consciousness that the artist extends through a medium into form. This applies to both traditional craft and avant-garde art, for the creator imprints their world picture (or worldview) upon what is make—this gets to the semiotic ordering and design of "parts into a whole". The difference between art and craft is that with craft, the creator can discuss intention coherently, whereas the creator of art cannot, because the most sacred assumptions have been given inquiry, on the edge of intuition, on the cusp between the familiar and the unknown. Instead of words that explain, the creator rather makes art, as aesthetic representation that coincidentally tells of mystery and meaning.

As we produce art, in fits and spurts, continuously or infrequently, spontaneously or in measures strokes, to audiences of large and small scales, what I suggest is that an artist's medium is a canvas. I mean a canvas in its physical and conceptual sense. Obviously a painter uses a canvas; I adapt that relationship to every discipline of art. Thus the tone-field is the canvas for a composer. The stage is a canvas for a playwright. Clay is a canvas for a potter. The screen is a canvas for a film director. And so on. Before the artist creates with it, the canvas is blank, empty, unformed, inanimate, silent. It awaits the artist's consciousness, which animates the canvas into a complexity of symbolization (or sign) of any order and of whatever tradition, style, genre, or discipline. Let me be clear: no correlation necessarily exists between the complexity of sign and its value or beauty. The Divine can be evoked by the simplest of artwork as well as by the most complex. In my field, music of the deepest variety can originate in any tradition, and any level of formal architecture. When skillfully framed, the soul connection, as W.A. Mathieu writes, belongs to everyone. We must be adament here, because chauvinism impedes experience, creation, and perception.

I suggest that not just any canvas lies in patience for creative forces to flow, but in fact an integral canvas awaits our river of sensual memory, humor, honesty, courage, and trust. It awaits our inclusive awareness. So what is this integral canvas? It is that which an in-formed intuition paints upon, itself made of spirit and ultimately framed by spirit, and rooted in translucent representation—in every direction, transparent to our inspiration, insight, and intuition in material, concept, and essence—an experience, extended as artistic consciousness. That is our ultimate medium, just beyond the horizon, just behind your breath.

MD
Chicago, Illinois
February 2005

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