12 x 16 Oil on Canvas. This series of work represents my pictorial offer stemming my research into the urge to enlightenment, shamanic ritual, superstition, mythology, theology, psychology, and religion. Rather than go after the straw men found in so many beliefs, the parallel natures of Jungian depth psychology and shamanic ritual from our collective past, both pre-historic and recent, is of utmost interest to me. These phenomenon, though rife with charlatans, represent the spontaneous emergence of the symbolic life. Even overcoming the loss of oral tradition, these symbols of the archetype insistently come of their own accord. They refuse to be denied.

In the paintings are shamans manipulating world trees, ladders and poles to move the patient through consciousness, unconsciousness, and transpersonal consciousness. The sacrifice shows the way as it returns to the realm where the lions lay with the lambs. Birds fly the seeker from the material to the spirit, Us divided, and Us reunified with our lost halves, our lost Self, our forgotten connection to the Earthmaker-- the Mandela of unity; the Soul Flower; Cardinal points on the corners; Pathways with instructions in languages we don’t speak. We needed the guides; the mythmakers; they are us.

Like fog shrouded mementos, and owing to their dream-like manifestation, there are no English words to describe this topic with precision; therefore it makes a perfect subject for the abstract representation of communication via wordless symbols, rather than the written or spoken language. Indeed, the seer sees only in symbols. Their genuine nature abides deep inside somewhere, overpowering the tendency of humans to seek easy answers. These symbols shatter barren idealism and replace it with poetically depicted, though ambivalent truth.

Modern man has instant access to vast knowledge, chafe, but little wisdom. A pretense to progress that dulls over with the patina of a language we don’t even speak. We’re a people willing to accept our Gods in languages we don’t even speak, given to us by robed traders in half-measures--mediators unintentionally robbing us of the golden ring of experiential conversion. Broken talismans hanging from chains, strung like rosaries.

Though the paintings necessarily employ “signs” with which we are all familiar, they are only tools at hand. Written language ill serves in the realm of the mysterious transfer from the source to the seeker. The means of transfer are archetypal in nature, and the symbols merely serve as the map. They are not the territory. The conflicted state of mind born of a sense of isolation, separation from the source, takes many turns and faces crises that do not yield to intelligence. The shaman’s journey, and subsequent role as guide, has been ignored, and graciously retired until bidden to return.

Modern man has faith in medicine, but not medicine men. Loss of soul is not among the topics rendered into the medical students’ mind. The machine age has made the machine the reason to go on building more machines. Renewal of the desire to question the reason for more machines is in order-- but not wanted.

Depicting the convincing, but illusory nature of duality in the human condition interests me above all else, whether it drives the person toward an intellectual solution from the psychiatrist’s chair, or the trance journey from the shaman’s cave. The fact that this unspoken need somehow gains supremacy over the day-to-day insistences reveals the foundational truth that we are spiritual beings having a physical experience. It spills over, prompting a turning away from the machine - in conflict with the inner man – precipitating the crisis that matters more than the next breath you take.