When I was abnormaly small and young, my dad to stop my fidgeting would set me in the library with the largest book he had, placed in my lap. This happened to be Janson's History of Western Art. Not surprisingly the first illustration was one of those grand bison from Lasceux, a work made between 15 and 20 thousand years before Christ. At the very dawn of our humanity was a depiction acurate enough for a zoologist,symbolic enough for a Jungian and with a vitality worthy of a Baroque master.
The first colour plate was the show off portrait of Georg Gisze by Hans Holbein. Holbein was saying to potential customers not only can I depict hair, metal, crystal and deep space but I can show pschycological depth, throw in facial stubble and do it with a lumonosity that will take your breath away. However as a small child all I saw was magic. A flat panel could be painted in such a way that it evoked a world.
When my ambitions as a musician collapsed, when my father collapsed, when my desire to be a hippee collapsed, when art school collapsed, when my attempt to be a modern artist (to whit conventionaly abstract) collapsed, when, when, when, etc, etc, etc, there I was 33 years ago at the beginning of myself with Janson's figuratively sitting on my lap. Myth, symbol, the morphology of the world and magic. I have been fabricating worlds ever since.
I sometimes think of myself as a mapmaker mapping the caverns of my own soul. A good map is never the teritory but can be a reliable guide to the geography of our deeper natures. If an artist isn't a mapmaker, a shaman, a magician, he is just a spinner of high priced consummer goods.
I confess to you my limitations, it's hard to map the devine, the deep. I profess my desire to continue trying , my profession is that of artist.
