Flashback... 2010, An Honest day's work

Duchamp's Christmas

2010 was a tough year.  There was not a decent job to be found.  Those who did hire took full advantage.  I poured an epoxy resin countertop at a lower hourly than the Brazilian cleaning crew got.  Other jobs that year involved asbestos, rat shit, and a drunken plasterer.  It was the year I perfected the persuasion of payment by implied threat.  

By August, I finally found an honest day's work in the business of Christmas decoration refurberation and installation...Go ahead say that 10 times fast...

It's a job that rings with sentiment and delight.  I know there will be fond memories years from now, when I have forgotten the dank basements, filthy garages and critter-full cavities we worked in.


Just as things were looking up, the roof to my apartment gave way.  The roofers didn't check the weather that day and left the roof open during their lunch break... There was a flash rain storm exactly then.

My roommate and I moved within a month.  I hoped to make a getaway during the holidays.  A wonderful man offered to take me to Fla. to meet his family.  Two stops from our destination, he was pulled from the train and deported back to Argentina.

2010 was a very tough year.
 

Picasso as a Kitchen Towel

My first introduction to modern art happened in the kitchen at a very young age. A kitchen towel with the Picasso's "Bouquet" print always held my attention. I wanted to like the towel, who doesn't like flowers-right? But I found the image strange. At the age of 6 or 7, Picasso bothered the Hell out of me.

The hands are disturbing. The grip is a strangle hold. The flowers are sparse and sad. The thin stems have the delicacy of a tree trunk.

It's funny what sticks with you. Another thing Picasso rolls through my head is his quote, "Good artists copy, great artists steal." What a jerk...

The culmination of these two Picasso thoughts jumped onto a canvas when I was asked to paint a purple orchid series. I was stumped at first, not because of the orchids, but because I never really work with purple. Thanks for the help Picasso!

I don't steal...I just paint what I wish other artists had done. My "Bouquet" is still in the works.

Sketches to Paintings

Sketches come from bold, reactive play with simple carved form into the oils with charcoal fast and dirty. The palette is less complex than the painting. But don't kid yourself, I can fuss for days on the sketches too. I never know when my next studio time will be. Some of the sketches are precious to me and wait for years before a more substantial object is made.

Sometimes the painting is a close reinterpretation. Hummingbird Girl sketch and "Hummingbird Halo" have many of the same elements. The palette and lighting are deeper. The hummingbirds achieve a different spatial tension and movement. The painting also introduces a woman with smudged lipstick. It's a small detail. The little details are gifts to the viewer who keeps looking. It broadens the story.

Other times the essence of the sketch sketch evolves dramatically. "Eaglehandler" portrays a very plain girl with an enormous, rather well behaved, eagle on her ungloved hand. The sketch does not have the visual tension of the actual scenario.Eagles are big raptors that should not perch on anyone's hand unaided.

The following painting, "The Facilitator", creates a more engaging situation and the title adds nicely too. The woman is more refined, the eagle, more raptorous. Adding the titmouse in her right hand would be trite if I kept the eagle's original stance from the sketch. It would have been titled "food chain". Eye contact is skewed between the main players, so motives remain veiled.



The talon to bare hand reveals the nature of the relationship between woman and eagle. In the sketch, it is also the weakest point...It's a mush of charcoal and pretend. The painting shows less mush and more pretend.

In the works..

The back is key--It must show tension and strength without being over-defined or "muscly". The back must portray the emotion, give as strong a visual cue as the face...so the hair is short. In combination with the passive hand, the message is mixed. I'm still working the nuances. Then, back to the herons...

The subject is Eve. I didn't know it when I started the painting. It was just some odd idea of a nude woman surrounded by herons. I liked the ambiguity. It was a little too ambiguous - so I set it aside for awhile. During its quiet time, I finished many other paintings, including "Exiting Eden". The man's back faces us, shoulders rounded, as if he just heaved a heavy sigh, or got the wind knocked out of him. The emotion is in the posture. I didn't know it was Adam until I had to give it a title.

The seed for this painting is a little note I wrote many years ago... "Where does a good man go in the face of a gathering storm?"..but I don't feel like going into that when someone asks what the painting's about.. Both painting and note work well with the biblical themes. I like to think the Bible's first couple were good people. Good people make crummy decisions sometimes...sometimes it happens when they think they're trying their hardest.

"Exiting Eden" brings me back to the Girl with Herons with a new understanding of the dynamics of the image. She cannot be languid, the birds too romantic. The posture is the expression of a greater story... Almost the opposite of the "saint" series, which are all about the serene face.

In the works...

Here's a painting that's been lurking in the studio for a while. The image shows a group of herons surrounding a nude woman in the soft light of dawn. It is part of the "Exiting Eden" series.

The first incarnation, on the left, has "morning colors" that are almost too soft... It seems too fluffy and romantic for the theme.

So I visited the other extreme with harsh lines, muted color, and high contrast...that's the disaster on the right side.




Going from one extreme to another leads to a beautiful in between. Scrubbing out layers, re introducing line, and reshaping form, all bring movement into the composition and reveal the character of the medium... The paint has probably set enough for me to dive back in now...

The Copenhagen Neuroaesthetic Conference

The philosophers and psychologists all talk about the beauty and pleasure art brings. They attest that pleasure is what drives the production of art. Where can my send a letter of dispute?...after I wrote this I realized I had more writing to do...

This past Sept 24-26, 2009, the University of Copenhagen hosted their first Neuroaesthetics Conference. I found out about it last March and went through a lot of trouble, ie. reading, to put together a poster submission. My reading was unstructured and all over the board. I made it fit.

As the second week in September rolled around, I knew it wasn't happening. Understandable. I haven't written a science anything since high school. Of course I was out of my league. They were rats for not at least sending a rejection letter, just for courtesy's sake.

Late Tues. night, Sept 15th, I get the e-mail: Congratulations. You're poster's accepted. The conference is next week. We had some technical problems..Sorry. !!!
Sept 16, finish painting living room/juggle Credit cards, buy a ticket, Sept 17 finish painting the livingroom for real, take down my largest art show, Sept 18, pull out notes from March, relearn, Sept 19, borrow a mac, learn mac, make a poster, Sept20 print poster, pack. Sept 21, leave.

What follows is the most wonderful time of my life, which is why I have no idea how to write about it properly. The conference organizers are Soren Kaspersen, Jon O. Laurig, and Martin Skov. The quality of company and conversation throughout the presentations and into the pubs is of a rare caliber.

A whole review is being written by a much more knowledgeable participant. I will revisit different aspects of the trip in a more stream of conscious way. The speakers are amazing. The subject matter is intriguing...and sometimes a little over my head. I will start with Helmut Leder's talk...tomorrow.


My reading:
My favorite, Gerald Edelman, neurobilologist writes on "Neural Darwinism" and consciousness. Denis Dutton is a philosopher whose book, Art Instinct, is a dry read with ideas that stick. James Elkins, an art historian delves into the element that triggers people to weep before works of art in Tears and Pictures. He came up w/a tidy list of visual triggers which I reviewed and discarded as I welled up at the MET in front of a bunch of Monets... so irritating... Jonah Lehrer has great articles in SEED magazine. Of course it all starts with Semir Zeki one of the forerunners of neuroaesthetics.

Old Sketches, New Saints

I know a woman who works every day. She ends her shift by taking her granddaughter from her daughter. So her daughter takes up where she left off...and vice-versa. She says identity theft was the best thing ever happened to her. The culprits took out a loan, paid it on time, and for the first time in her life she had good credit.

I know a man who bets on horses based on their horoscopes and the stars (the horses' horoscopes-not his.) I don't think he gets accurate birth dates as he still works at the lot.

I worked with five brothers from Brazil who couldn't get back home for their mother's funeral.

My bank tellers bring their kids to work on Saturdays.

Life is a challenge daily, here. These are the people I gauge my perspective by. During the time around Katrina, these are the people I really started to watch, mostly because we were all in the same boat.

Painting Fly Away in response to the Katrina Disaster got me looking at Medieval woodcuts. I felt like I was living in the New Dark Age. I blamed the government for a landscape of fear, war, misused religion and unchecked business. Working in the airport didn't help matters. (At the airport, there were a lot o people in my "boat".)

The cool expressions of individuals in peril, suffering for their belief repeat throughout medieval texts. (Such familiar faces like those I work with) Thick lines of the wood cut and the stain glass window create bold simplification of both the serene face of the saint and the symbol of the story. Out of context, it's anyone's guess what dangers the story holds. I like this aspect quite abit.

This group of sketches use the idea of the saint and symbol without a back story. The placid composure of the subjects make potentially alarming situations ambiguous. They are contemporary subjects, those who take on any challenge and make it through the day and keep a poised demeanor for the sake of those around them, their children, job, for their own sense of control. They are not allowed to panic.

Slowly but surely these sketches all became paintings. You'll see why I couldn't leave these guys alone.

Fly Away Fly Away, Weathering the Storm

Many artists pick one subject or style and "explore" it to death. The galleries like this. Retail says, if you sell one thing, have similar stuff for people. People like familiar.

My paintings share themes but are often different in content and style. Painting time is lean. My work schedule has never been pretty. This leads to small paintings, slow evolutions for larger pieces, and ideas that sit in wait.

I revisit an older painting for the path that leads to paintings I've just finished. Even if I have new ideas, the older ones demand completion.

I am wary about telling this painting's story. It's not pleasant.

Aug 2005 Hurricane Katrina-(you see?)
Me - working a restaurant beyond security in the airport- Logan Boston Int.. All four TV screens on CNN's blow by blow Katrina updates.

The Delta jet shuttle between Boston and NY is the regular audience...very nice business suits. I go home via Paul's Parking Shuttle...very different shuttle... sometimes the breaks don't work. At home I continue to watch and cry for a hopeless situation. How terrifying - no escape!

I begin my painting with a bird on the wing with the storm at its back and a woman gathering unripe oranges from a potted tree. Birds and flowers are the key in many of my paintings. Wild vs. Tame..The wild can flee at least.

As the newscasts continued, the line between survivors and sufferers was clear. It is money. Apparently birds aren't the only free things...so are the wealthy. A new heightened awareness of such divisions filters into my daily life. I watch the business shuttle crowd back and forth, blithely batting at their blackberries waiting in line to jump to the next city. And the airport workers, many from hard luck parts, thinking an airport job was golden... it had benefits ..but fighting every day for that extra shift, figuring out child care or bills or how to change their life either by school or a race horse. I am one of them. If anything beyond the regular happens- our lives turn upside down. A missing babysitter or a car problem puts a job in jeopardy. The job is everything, no matter how horrible it is.

My painting grew business men...and a plane.

I don't think I finished this until 2007. Touching the painting made me sad. The philosophers and psychologists all talk about the beauty and pleasure art brings. They attest that pleasure is what drives the production of art. Where can my send a letter of dispute?

I often wonder why I paint such things. I called on a higher power for a proper finish. The painting emerges from a watery wash of bright reds to rich dark earthy tones, thick lines, ...Diego Rivera used these heavy lines in his paintings of peasants, farmers, business moguls, politicians, the poor and the powerful...It is appropriate. I think he would approve. I wanted him in on this painting.

On the way through this painting all related things showed themselves. As I watched some struggle, I saw strength. As I watched others create turmoil, I saw their weakness. The political system in place did homage to the Dark Ages with Intelligent Design and religion as righteous mask to underhanded business.

This painting leads me to ideas of medieval thought process in contemporary times. My next paintings lay in wait of a day off.

Holiday shopping that saves the community

One of the coolest organizations I work with is Somerville Local First. Their mission is to create a financially stable, self sufficient community by strengthening support for the local business owners.

The 10% Shift idea states that if everyone in a community shifts their spending habits a little, employment, wages, and local output will increase by thousands without a cent of tax relief help. The statistics seem unbelievable!(but they're published in Business Week.) It is not about spending more, but buyng everday purchases at locally owned shops instead of huge corporate shops...and no everything- just 10%.

I know my weak spot is Home Depot. I have also scouted out a small hardware store near a locally owned coffee shop I love - Perfect! That's all we have to do - find those small businesses, adjust our habits, and keep our money in the neighborhood instead of tossing it all into giant faceless heartless corporations.

If you have questions, 10percentshift.org, or visit Joe(and some of my paintings) at the SLF's "pop-up" gallery space/office, the Prospect Gallery in Union Square, between the post office and the Independent Pub. Please come celebrate the gallery's show closing at the end of December, the 30th, 6-9.

This is especially important this time of the year. Your gift shopping can make or break a business. Lets keep our money where we can see it...in our towns and our independent businesses.

Why I'm a crummy blogger

I'm a crummy blogger because I actually have great adventures all the time and I have a really wacky job too. I just don't follow up with the writing part...no tiny laptop, no i-phone, no attention span for computer glowing screens. In between adventures I clean my apartment (because adventures inevitably lead to giant messes) and try to paint or at least organize the next adventure...

For the past year and a half I work as a scenic painter for film and TV. This is very exciting to people who like celebrities. It is exciting for me because I get paid a living wage to mess with paint. I won't go into any job details as I am forever signing contracts with threatening verbiage in them about the consequences of leaking important confidential information about their top secret projects... like the next "great" re-make or the latest chick flick...very important stuff.

The top picture is in a Navy yard studio in Brooklyn. Behind me is a classic water fountain they imported from Italy for a show. The middle picture is a carpet of plastic green turf, thousands of dollars worth, that covers a naturally sparse Essex County lake front. The turf will be lightly shredded to make it "naturally" uneven and then sprayed w/shades of green and brown to make it "naturally" toned....naturally! And lastly-a big fake tree.

Bouncing between NYC and Boston, 12hr days, sometimes 7 days a week is tricky. Reading takes the place of painting. Not best sellers though..Things like Dr.Edeleman's Wider than the Sky about consciousness, D.Dutton's Art Instinct and E.Dissanayake's HomoAesheticus. An LA boss of mine loved to give me shit about being smart at coffee break(of course I corrected him...It's pronounced "Smott" around here.)

TUESDAY NIGHT, 7-10

I have more interesting things to write about than openings, but my beloved day-job as a scenic painter is keeping me very busy.
And, with Diesel Cafe hosting my paintings through September, my walls are strangely naked. I've started to spackle and paint my apartment, one naked room at a time.

Please come visit me...

OPENING: Tuesday, Aug. 25th, 7-10, 27 Elm Street, Davis Square, Somerville MA 02143
http://www.diesel-cafe.com/

It's great to show all of the work in one space. I'll bring my latest sketches too, if they're dry.

Why art...

One question that haunts the painter is, "Why?"...Why the effort, the allocation of money, and energy? It is the question that leaves every art student speechless and every professional stammering about feelings. Every once in a while I take a break from the studio and tackle the question.

What type of vocation is this, an artist? No structure, save the restrictions of the medium and the voice in your head that says “Stop, before you ruin it!” There is certainly no financial security. Making art is scary. The artist creates in pursuit of the perfect translation of information, from the intellect to the physical. There is only the drive to reinterpret life.

There are the life basics: food, shelter, reproduction. This is survival. For most animals, motion deals strictly with acts of survival. For the human animal the drive to create products outside of a given natural environment seems both unnatural and human at the same time. This strange use of energy defines the quality of life, how one survives and grows. The artist observes the existing structure with a critical mind, internalizes the experience, personalizes the idea with an individual voice. The input transforms into the idea. The idea evolves into a plan. The plan sets the cue for motion. The motion results in the creation of a product.

The product is a visual constant with an emotional trigger. Art introduces emotions, ideas, and experiences that open up new paths in ways of thinking. Visual experiences create a space for emotional and intellectual research and reevaluation of hypothetical experiences.

As an artist, I am not a natural. With each painting comes more experience with the medium and new visual possibilities. The new possibilities make a beginner of me all over again. A successful image needs balance between message and medium, familiarity and ambiguity. This balance allows my voice and the viewer’s own interpretation to be equally valid. The figurative nature of my work makes it accessible. Subjects such as birds and flowers are traditional visual symbols. Where subjects portray ambiguity, a figure looks away, the medium gives direction. The character of the charcoal and the color of the oils offer a distinct voice and tone.

Part researcher, part storyteller, I offer my personal vision to the community. The work does not demand a one-sided spotlight, but invites the viewer into an intimate exchange of ideas. The work invokes participation and interpretation. It is a dynamic visual dialog. This is a special type of social interaction, one that looks for immediate emotional and intellectual response.

Emotion controls attention. Attention controls sight. Sight controls movement and action. Every action is proceeded by motivation, a plan. Every action brings one into a new environment. Every environment induces a flurry of thought, recall, mapping, and adjustment. Art provides a stimulus different from those in the natural environment of survival. Art invokes social interaction different from the interactions of basic survival. If emotion drives our thought process, art brings it full circle. Art is not a decoration. Art is the equipment that aids our evolution and provides a higher quality of life.

Avalanche Phoenix

Anyone who does any type of business with me knows that I will not take calls on a good beach day. I owe any shred of sanity to quiet beach days alone. Friends know to invite themselves only if they can wake up early enough. I don't wait around.

My winter sanity, however, became an issue until snowboarding saved the day! Even in July I like to slip back into winter memories of snowboarding. Maybe because I've only eeked in two beach days so far(and one of those days involved a hoody and pants.)

Core77's competition for snowboard designs didn't help. This is my design submission. The phoenix is a great beast, a bird that incorporates themes of death and rebirth from fire and ash. This design takes the idea of the phoenix and replaces fire with snow and ice... the avalanche phoenix.

The most important part of the design is that it works in both directions. If the rider has the bird in front, it seems that the bird is diving down the mountain, or better yet, flying off the the half-pipe. If the more abstract avalanche side of the board is the front, the powder kicked up will meld with the nose and it will look like the phoenix is actually breaking free from the snowy mountain.

This design is a bit of a tribute to those who have been taken by avalanches. It is not anything I could even imagine.

Pablo Neruda Series, Ode with a Lament

Ode with a Lament

Oh girl among the roses, oh pressure of doves,
oh prison of fish and rosebushes,
your soul is a bottle filled with thirsty salt
and your skin a bell full of grapes.
Unfortunately I have nothing to give you save fingernails
or eyelashes, or melted pianos,
or dreams that spring gushing from my heart,
dusty dreams that run like black horsemen,
dreams filled with velocities and misfortunes. I can only love you with kisses and poppies, with garlands wet from the rain, looking at ashy horses and yellow dogs,
I can only love you with waves at my back,
between vague hits of sulfur and distracted waters,
swimming against the graveyards that flow in certain rivers
with wet grass growing over the sad plaster tombs,
swimming by submerged hearts and pale registration lists of unburied children.

There is much death, many funereal events
in my forsaken passions and desolate kisses, there is the water that falls on my head
while my skin grows,
a water like time, a black unchained water,
with a nocturnal voice, with the cry
of a bird in the rain, with an interminable
shadow of wet wing that protects my bones:
while I watch myself, while interminably I look at myself in the mirrors and in the windows,
I hear someone following me, calling to me with sobs
with a sad voice rotted by time.

You stand over the earth, full
of teeth and lightning bolts.
You spread the kisses and kill the ants.
You weep of health, of onion, of bee,
of burning alphabet.
You are like a blue and green sword,
and you undulate at the touch, like a river.

Come to my soul dressed in white, with a branch
of bloody roses and cups of ashes,
come with an apple and a horse,
because there is a dark room and a broken candelabra,
some crooked chairs that wait for winter,
and a dead dove, with a number.

Pablo Neruda

Fenway

I was having a "Nancy Drew" Moment as I began my Fenway story. Truthfully, I'm more apt to have Columbo moments. Check all your pockets one more time and the final clue appears, mystery solved, nice and easy.

This ending couldn't be any easier. The culprit bypasses any direction from the art pick up area by leaning over the counter and demanding the paintings. In a well dressed well behaved crowd of lawyers, artists, and government officials, who thinks twice?

I certainly didn't think twice about leaning over the counter and demanding my paintings because I wanted to leave and get tacos. .. That's right, I am the culprit...
I didn't think twice about leaving without checking on the bidding status of anything. I had seen maybe three bids on a room of over eighty items. I knew art sales were low in all of the past year's auctions. It was general knowledge that noone is buying art these days, and my price tag was a bit higher than some of theother work. And because I had spent my night roaming the ballpark instead of networking and paying attention to the event like a good little artist, the event coordinator almost had a heart-attack when she could not produce the painting for the most gracious couple who bid on it.

Mystery at Fenway Park!

It is a gray and foggy night in Boston's Ballpark. The city skyline is barely visible from the third base line. The Red Sox are happy to be on an away game. Inside the old 500 Club is another story... music, fancy dresses, art and memorabilia from wall to wall and martinis in plastic cups...It is the auction for the Arts&Business Council.

It is a perfect opportunity to network, sell paintings, and promote the importance of fine art in the Boston community. I do none of these things. I am tired. My week began on Saturday and filled itself with 10, 12, and 15 hour days of movie set painting (glorified house painting). You can take the girl out of the paint, but sometimes you can't get the paint out of her hair, even for the most prestigious events.

I grab my plastic cup martini and my cohort for the evening and dash off to the Green Monster to take pictures of the beautiful misty park. We romp around the park testing security.(It was very tight.)

While we run about the park, a couple visiting from Michigan scour each piece for something special. They make the rounds quite a few times and continually return to one painting. They read every word of every bio. They compare and still return to the one piece. They make a bid. And because as many art auctions, there are few bidders, they win the piece at a good price. It is my piece. And at the end of the evening, confident in their purchase, they go to claim the new prize, only to find the work is gone and missing!

At the end of the night all of the artwork goes to the bubble-wrap station. There is a strict procedure before releasing the artwork....How could the paintings have been taken?

The culprit walks free into the night unnoticed, puts the paintings in the trunk and is off.

On my way to the car after post show tacos and beer, I notice a message from the show coordinator in her very French accent," We don't know where your paintings are! They have been stolen and sold!" I don't understand, maybe it's the the accent...
To be continued...

The Tulip Gallery opening is postponed from this Thursday to a date in July yet to be decided.

More time to paint and make monsters!



If you would like to view the work before the opening, contact me to set up a time.

Pablo Neruda Series

Drunk with Pines

Drunk with pines and long kisses,
like summer I steer the fast sail of the roses,
bent towards the death of the thin day,
stuck into my solid marine madness.

Pale and lashed to my ravenous water,
I cruise in the sour smell of the naked climate,
still dressed in gray and bitter sounds
and a sad crest of abandoned spray.

Hardened by passions, I go mounted on my one wave,
lunar, solar, burning and cold, all at once,
becalmed in the throat of the fortunate isles
that are white and sweet as cool hips.

In the moist night my garment of kisses trembles
charged to insanity with electric currents,
heroically divided into dreams
and intoxicating roses practicing on me.

Upstream, in the midst of the outer waves,
your parallel body yields to my arms
like a fish infinitely fastened to my soul,
quick and slow, in the energy under the sky

Pablo Neruda

Unicorn Tapestries I. The Fountain

The Unicorn Tapestries at the NY Met are the source of one on my most terrifying childhood memories. I watch, alone, in an enormous room as an unstoppable throng of murderers dash from wall to wall on a bloodthirsty search for the delicate unicorn. The lopsided battle and generous bloody details are a little too much for a soft-hearted five yr. old who has no curiosity for historical symbolism. My wailing forces my mother into an early exit.

Almost thirty years later I find myself working in Manhattan for a small stint. I revisit the scene of the crime, curious about a memory's accuracy. I am way off. The room is a far cry from the enormous sunlit corridor my kid-brain made it out to be. It is a tiny dark room. The tapestries fill the walls. They are enormous. The tightness of the room makes them even more overwhelming. I cannot focus on a whole image at once. And then, I squat down to the height I would have been, and it all comes back.

At 5'7" I can barely take in all the details of the tapestries. Half the height makes the viewing more intimate. The lower eye level pulls you into very specific details of a busy composition. Pulling the other elements together becomes a great effort. Unfortunately for the five year old me, those details are often the bloody ones.

The first wall sets up the drama. The image is an elegant circular composition around the fountain. The hunting party arches over the top of the tapestry while an assortment of wildlife, all hunting possibilities, rest in the foreground at the bottom of the tapestry. A lower perspective cannot see an entire composition. As far as the young I am cconcerned, I too am a possible target for the hunt. I am eye level with the beasts. I also hide behind fountain and shrubbery from the looming hunt party passing by.... And if it wasn't for that jerk in the yellow socks....


Unicorn images may be subject to copyright.

My First Science Paper:

Artist as Society’s Catalyst for Intellectual Evolution

(A lot of people got a kick out of my first science paper ever. I'm still taking suggestions - D'Lynne I know you're out there. This is my submission to a neuroaesthetics conference in Denmark...)

The first homosapien to transition to higher consciousness may have been the artist. 40% of our brain’s neurons are dedicated to the visual brain. It is a particular individual that is predisposed to physically reinterpret the effects of visual qualia into an original product. This product, visual art, nurtures the growth of complex ideas through neural connections. Society’s visual citizen provides the community with a necessity, the neural catalyst.

As others create schedules based on daily needs, the artist stops and fixates on visual stimuli not connected with immediate survival needs and actions. This qualia observation connects with memory, emotion, or hypothetical ideas and induces focused reentry. This contemplation breaks the individual from the “remembered present” through active intellectual investigation.

The artist translates the perceptual memory and related ideas into visual metaphors to be reinterpreted by an audience. Many layers of visual content create ambiguity that calls on all parts of the viewer’s brain to interpret meaning. Art does not cater to just the mid-brain (emotional brain) as traditionally believed, or even to specific areas of the brain. Viewing art caters to the process of reentry. It strikes the cerebellum with an emotional jolt. It calls on the cerebral cortex to assess novelty and reassess expectations. The reentry connects new visual info to the viewer’s personal intellectual history. A concentrated gaze allows for contemplation of constant stimuli. This constant puts saccades and the brain’s need to constantly construct time/space to rest and allow other areas of the brain more activity. The viewer instills a personal timeline, unlike the spoken/written language which structures the release of information in grammar and controlled time sequence.

Since it marked a turning point in evolution and intelligence in early homosapiens, art has never faded as a sign of humanity and communication. The more we study the workings of the brain, the more we know that our thoughts are emotion and metaphor based. The more we learn about our physical realities, the more we may find that the written word may not be enough. We may need a visual aid that touches all parts of the brain at once. Preparation through surrogate experiences, reassessing expectations, and the quieting effect of the visual constant are all ways visual art readjusts neuro-pathways and the individual’s thought process. Visual contemplation of artwork is the catalyst for complexity of ideas and with it strengthens society with innovation.