“Early Paintings” – An Appreciation 30 Years Later
Two weeks ago I started to publish the paintings I did from 1981 to 1990, on Flickr and in my Facebook account, one picture per day. I take them in a random sequence and give short comments.
Though the beginning of this phase of painting was quite sudden – I experienced a tremendous inpour of energies 6 September 1981, when I first came into contact with the Great Invocation given by Master DK, using it in meditation – I had painted already since my school-days in the early 70ies, first influenced by drugs and psychedelic art as well as surrealism. I dissolved all these pictures in the early 90ies – feeling that they were too imperfect and chaotic. I realised only some days ago that in these early images there were colour elements and motives which still appear in a transformed form in my recent paintings.
The pictures are all expressions of a long inner spiritual search for light and an oscillation between eastern and western expressions of wisdom. They reflect inner experiences and phases of growth. Being entirely autodidactic, I felt that my technique was always far from being perfect, just an outflow of creative expression and a search for manifesting light / fire on paper.
Many of the pictures of this cycle came out with a great inner intensity and a desire to “paint in fire”. Often they were done quite fast and in a kind of rapture.
During the 80ies and 90ies I hardly met an understanding from the persons to whom I showed the pictures and I wondered what they were good for – just filling the basement. In the spiritual group in which I was during the 90ies they were considered with distrust, as an expression of personality. So my wife and I dissolved nearly all of the paintings in 1997, only photos of the originals remained. I kept the photo documentation in a diary. But also this book carried for me some kind of a stigma. I wanted to throw it away and told Sri Kumar about it January 2003 in India. He said, don’t destroy it, give it to a friend for safekeeping. And this I did.
It was only in January 2009 again in India that, for the first time, a young lady showed a deeper interest in the pictures, and I told her that I’ll give her the diary as a present. I asked the friend who had it to send it back to me – after 6 years of safekeeping. But before I could give the book to the young lady a strange violent confusion made it impossible. So I started scanning the photos and presented a selection of them at the 100th May Call celebration in Engelberg, Switzerland.
November 2009, the young lady gave me some deep hints as per the paintings. This first appreciation opened my inner doors to a creative expression which continues since then – a restart after 19 years of pause. The contact, however ended a short while afterwards, again with some strange violent confusion, so that the diary with the pictures is still with me, but no longer belonging to me.
The pictures of the “Early Paintings” are from scans of the photos. I tried to work on them a bit, but some weren’t very sharp. I’ll continue to publish them over the next time, not more than one per day. It is an “appreciation” 30 years later.
Choir of Angels, 10 Nov. 1981 – 30 years ago. A4, liquid glazing paint
P.S.: I only realised this morning (27th Nov.), after having slept on it, that there is a pattern behind the paintings: Like Brahma, the Indian god of creation, destroyed various of his creations because they weren’t perfect, I destroyed the very early paintings because they were too dark, filled with expressions of anguish and inner strives – though inner seeds remained, silently continuing to sprout.
Also the next series, which now are being published, was destroyed, but there remained outer seeds in the form of photos, from which these pictures now got restored. The first (I think 18) pictures of the present series, Images of Synthesis, I gave away to the young friend immediately after having painted them, just keeping the digital version. Since the contact with her broke down, I then kept on putting away the paper versions into a folder directly after painting and worked on the digital version. So the digital image became for me the “quinta essentia”, the end-product of an alchemical process of refinement, where the matter undergoes a process of fiery destruction to later get distilled and potentised to the final perfection.
I also realised that after the close of the cycle of “Early Paintings” there were some intermediary and very ephemeral images drawn on a blackboard and wiped out a short time later. Below you find one of these drawings, which mostly I didn’t even document with a photo. You find a detailed description of the symbolism on Flickr. See also on Flickriver.
Globe Chains – Incarnations of the Earth. Blackboard painting, 1991
November 28th, 2011 at 2:13 am
om
very interesting, as usual.
I found it also very much close of my own history, though psychedelik experiences weren’t from the 70’… 🙂
I did also burn one material one day, (one i realised during the Aries month that wich i discovered that i had always kind of dark in my art production. That is why i like to create during one month only so that i see what I am during this month and how i grenerate stuff during this special time-energy… every time it’s very much interesting)
But mostly, i do only spiritual and magical artwork for my own, kind of a special piece done for personal evolution, own mandala and so… done with power & intention.
We could say it’s a positive affirmation created in an artwork manner… for fun and enlightment!
Namaskaram Master
November 28th, 2011 at 2:16 am
please send me an invitation on FB on my name : sebastien peltier, I try to reach your name from FB but 0 occurence comes!
I reach your page from your link but i can’t reach you from your name to request friendship! strange!!!
still your mercury disorder??? 🙂
Peace