Art and Infinity
For a long time, I needed to process a discovery. I did not want to return to the performative, to that lower spectrum of self-awareness. Although within the performative there is self-awareness, it is of a different kind. It is the awareness formed through training. How to hold the brush or the pencil. What marks to make. How much pressure to apply. This is a living skill.
This technical command, along with the choices of colour, gradient, light and tonality, shape and form, brings us into the space of illusion. We develop the perspective of three-dimensionality on a flat surface, unaware perhaps that this can invoke in the viewer a hyper-dimensional response. A holistic reaction of the organism. It touches places within a person they may not even be cognitively aware of.
Artists who explore this dimension become more conscious of it and its implications. To others it may seem philosophical. To the artist, it is magic. It is the awakening. It is the purpose behind the process of making. To liberate perception. To unlock abilities not only in the practitioner but in those who follow in their wake. Those who appreciate the painting because it stirs something within them.
What is it that is stirred? The artist keeps this secret. To speak of it openly invites accusations of insanity from those who have no idea that such a thing even exists. To them, it is fiction, superstition, or worse, arrogance. In the same way, a layperson cannot comprehend the mechanics of an advanced technology performing miracles in their hands.
One who has awoken within, through discipline and study, becomes aware of how things interrelate within holistic reality. How they affect the self and others. Such a person becomes distinct from the mainstream. The mainstream may bask occasionally in the glow of this work, but they are not yet ready to become a source of light themselves.
Artists are not holy by default. They become holy through the study, which makes them a conduit. A channel. A portal through which something flows into the world. The artist becomes the tool. And there is a wrestle. A struggle. A question of power. Who should be in control of such a tool? What will the artist shape or sculpt or compose to awaken others to that freedom? And are the others yet ready?
The artist taps into Infinity. Creativity is Infinity filtered into the finite. Creativity is an action. A process. The symbol for creativity is a sieve. There are grains in the sieve. The artist pokes holes with their fingers, opening some, closing others, guiding the flow of raw, primal Infinity through a device that can be steered.
It takes great skill to even recognise that this is what art is. It is deified as a concept because we need a language to approach it. Others might use the image of a paintbrush, a chisel, or a musical instrument to symbolise art. These are the tools of the practice, the shaping elements. But it is through this disciplined practice that one begins to become aware of the source of art itself.
For this we need another symbol.
Our interface is the sieve. It is like a gold sifter in a river, separating water from dirt from gold. It gives form by isolating elements. That is the end result of organisation. Infinity appears chaotic. Creativity deals with chaos. On one side of the sieve is an organised structure with frames of reference we can relate to. On the other side is the raw source. Unformed. Creative potential. Infinity. It flows as an energy that affects us. We can tap into it. But we must use a sieve. A framework. Otherwise its immensity will drive us mad.
If all the holes are blasted open, too much flows through. We cannot discern anything. It becomes damage, flooding, a mess. If only one or two slits are open, we get a minimal and restricted view, too ineffectual to comprehend what truly lies on the other side.
The artist becomes a student of the occult. The artist sees things that others do not. I do not like to say that others cannot see it. But in practice, this is often the case. If you were to travel to a distant land where the people speak a language you do not understand, you would find no meaning in the mouth-noises they make. So too it is with vision. Perception.
A circle of master artists rarely speak of such things. Not only for fear of offending others, but for fear of retaliation. To say it aloud is to risk persecution. To remain silent is to leave the path unmarked for others. It is the artists dilemma. It holds responsibility greater than a layman can accept.
And yet, step by step, the power of art liberates the mind. It increases awareness of what lies beyond our perceptual restrictions. We may be limited now, for our own protection. But through our own actions, a time may come of greater freedom, of acceptability and understanding of the nature of this thing.
This time may not come in our future. It may lie in our collective cultural past. A time we can access once we bypass the limitations we take for granted. It is timeless, rationally so because time is itself merely a format. Infinity is beyond that. To delve into infinity takes us outside of limitation.
We are dealing with cognition, perception, awareness, imagination. Not as fiction, but as practical tools to expand human comprehension of the divine. Of material physics. Of spirituality. Of energy itself. On the other side of that mesh, the laws of physics do not behave the way they do here.
This is why, with awe and respect, we pick up a pencil. Why we train our reflex. Why we dedicate ourselves to draw from that well, as accurately as we can, to invoke the portal. This is not a casual gesture. It is a vast responsibility. One individual may contain the power to change the fate of centuries. To influence countless others by capturing Infinity and binding it into form.
Critics call this arrogance. Those who are aware call it passion. They call it understanding.
The purpose of this manuscript is to focus the reader’s mind. To act as a lens. A sieve. A pineal gland. A way to aim into the infinite. Our actions are our creativity. In this ritual of making, we serve the God. By whatever name we call it.
Within Infinity, every potential must logically exist. We need only the windows through which to travel there.