The Eye Descending

...to bring to the surface our pure state from the primal to the Spiritual

It has been an obsessive pursuit, one that has led me to experience the ever greater discomfort brought about by the forces that serve to cultivate creativity in conformation to the machinery of art. Years of creative experimentation have shown art to be a rare element with its origins outside of my own thought, an element to be found, to be recognized, an absolute only to be marveled at. The process that guides this effort to bring this purity through to the surface has been one of relinquishing control, an attempt to bypass one's preferences, a means to make known that which we do not already know. What issues forth is a cleansed art. It resists absorption into what we have come to know as the "art world," a superficial construct shaped by market consciousness in which we act as consumers/producers in service of its appetite out of control. I look for this new found clarity that it may serve as an aspirant in rekindling within others, the experience of art's infinite nature, one unfettered by these corrupting forces.

...to extract the hand of the artist from the image, to venture outside of ourselves in order to bring inside what is not already a part of us

Striving for ego-less art is language not often heard in this century, where high profile, market-driven artists fight to see who can be the loudest amongst the shouters. This self-consciousness has been leading the viewer into an inbred funnel vision of narrower and narrower meaning; artist's obsessive attention to style and trend is now producing art about art about art. But ego-less photography is not the point here. It is simply to avoid this artistic pretension to which we are becoming so accustomed to, for it is in reciprocity to the degree of Truth in art.

The Eye Descending speaks to those who feel this discomfort, who know simply that there must be something more meaningful than what has been placed in front of them and who are struggling to break free. They need to remove themselves from the creative process and avoid expressing the "I" as we demonstrate our faith in art to reveal, or, more accurately, unveil the Absolute.

These images demand an unflinching eye; subject matter drawn at times from theaters of pain, theaters of absurdity, from states of existential anxiety. How does one resolve the seeming contradiction between its hopeful thesis and the dark nature of its content? It is the formalism that saves us. Art is a combination of form and content which, like two sticks together, can make for the light of fire. It is the form that dominates, not content. It is shape, not subject, that imparts the deepest knowledge. It is through the formal that art makes us aware of, and lets us share in, the optimism of its beatific nature. Our Faith is in form, our memory in content.

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