Activation

I have struggled with Art for most of my life.  I was raised in an art household, and I loved drawing and creating. I went to a highschool specialized for the arts.  I learned art history, drawing, sculpture, painting, print making, pottery.

I remember how amazed I was as I learned about Gothic cathedrals. The majesty, the monument to human engineering and artistry.  A work of generations!  Books in stone, containing in their walls and windows, in their proportions and design, the esoteric mysteries of the world.  A monument to the creative spirit. Michaelangelo, his divine visions and inspired art, masterpieces of form and color.  The beauty of the great masters!

I remember dwelling in those lofty realms that uplifted the human spirit. I remember wanting to be like those great men of vision- aspiring to be a fit vessel for the divine.  To bring to others what these luminous visionaries had brought to me.

My education continued.  We started into modernism, and post- modernism.  The romance slowly faded.  Art had become a commodity.  It had become jaded, cynical; cut off from the creative source by denying God when it denied man-made institutions, it withered into a hollow shell.  The artist lived for himself, trapped in the confines of this prison of matter, devoid of meaning or spirit.

Following highschool, I enrolled in the Ontario College of Art and Design.  I still held to my ideals, I knew deep down there was a higher source of creativity, an inspiring power which granted gifts of vision.  I wanted to learn the tools to one day express that Light, if I was to be so gifted with Illumination. I expected proper training.  What i got was more post-modern excrement.  Tradition was a thing of the past.  God was dead.  All that was left was a barren shell of culture.

i tried to force visions- I tried to take heaven by storm.  I tried hallucinogenic drugs to blast the doors, I tried dancing, derangement of the senses.  I did everything I could, screaming to that darkness to let in the light.  there was only silence.

I was shattered.  My expectations for myself as an artist were high- my spirit and my heart longed to create works of epic beauty. I could not live up to those aspirations, or so I thought.  So I quit.  I walked away from art.  I walked away from a life time of hopes and dreams.  The art of post-modern western civilization had broken my heart.

I went into the sciences.  I sought meaning everywhere else.  I looked in psychology, in biochemistry, and eventually came to Media Studies. The power of human creativity.  I began to realize that there IS a Power in us, manifesting itself.  It comes out through out imaginations, and is made real by our actions.  But I was still lost.

During this long dark period of separation from my own creative source, I finally came by true Teachings. I found my way to a pure stream of the Western Mysteries- Magick, gnosticism, alchemy, hermeticism, tarot.  I began studying Buddha Dharma, and vajrayana.  I did less and less drugs, began to meditate, undertake Ngundro practices, Tarot study, and I began to find something much deeper, buried inside myself; in the one place I refused to look, the place I was afraid of the most-  my art

Now, I stand at the beginning of a new life, a new undertaking.  I haven't drawn in 5 years. I have barely produced any art at all in this time.  After dropping out of art school, I got a whole other degree, a B.A.  but now, now that my life has crumbled, I found a big hole, a longing.  My misery for all these years was a longing to create, to make art, to learn to draw like the masters.

So I undertake that now.  I am putting aside everything else in my life and undertaking a quest, a mission, to Mastery- mastery of my Mind, of my Spirit, and of my artistic tools.  This blog will document that goal. I will post my drawings here, my observations, my thoughts about art as I familiarize myself again with this way of looking at the world. I will post images and artists that inspire me, I will talk about my attempt to make my art a path of spiritual awakening.

I am aspiring to get back to art school, but i need a portfolio in the next 4 months.  So I will be preparing that, and I will blog that progress.

If you are reading this, I thank you for your interest.  It is my sincere aspiration that this blog, and the example of my life, might help other struggling artists out there know that it can be done.  All it takes is practice.  Keep drawing.  keep creating, more and more and more.  There is no replacement to continuous effort.  I am terrified of being wrong, of making bad art- but I will keep creating until I make good art.

Let this be a testament to the Spirit of Art.