(Originally subtitled, “Massive Artistic Vision.”)
I am going to the city with a brilliant young woman who reminds me of Peter’s friend Julia A. I am thrilled to be going out with her. She is someone who never lost her way in life, and began unfolding powerfully in her early 20′s. She is bright, focused, cheerful, fun, gorgeous, and a snappy dresser (In Biodrama terms, a great Virgil!).
We visit the offices of a major graphics firm. We are convinced we could get a job here, and are working on a strategy for presenting ourselves convincingly. The large suite of high-ceilinged offices is bathed in earthy olive tones. These people are clearly creative pros. Everything about this place speaks of professionalism and commitment. We wander a bit in the main area, then enter a room on the left in which a mustachioed graphics pro is working with a lot of computer equipment. In response to his querying glance, I ask if we can look around and see how they do things. To my surprise, he says, “Sure, make yourselves at home.” They aren’t secretive around this place.
Back in the main room, several more people approach. We are introducing ourselves. The young woman feels more at home in this environment than I do. I really want this job. They are asking me questions about what I can do for them. I say I’m an illustrator with a strong background in fine art, I can design books, I can work with visual ideas to best express concepts and feelings, etc. Inwardly, I wonder if my computer skills are adequate. After all, I hardly know anything about publication software. I am mostly just an artist.
I think I should have brought my portfolio, but I had thought we were “just looking.” Yet here we are being interviewed! I think I’ll have to send them a copy of The Rainbow of Hope, but I am unsatisfied with the color printing in the book. My art lost a lot in translation, but maybe they will see enough anyway.
A scrap of paper on the large work table catches my eye with its beauty. I pick it up and study the colorful, rich surface. It looks painted, but I assume it is a digital product of some kind. I turn to one man and ask how they got that beautiful effect. He says he was trying to express a feeling visually, and I realize the colors are painted and he is an artist.
The young woman’s voice catches my ear, exclaiming about art she is seeing in the other big room to the right. The place looks like the old SF MOMA now, filled with massive paintings. She is exclaiming that the ones near the door are by Peter Holbrook (a Photorealist friend of a friend of mine), but I clearly see a different signature. These are impressive major abstract works, and the artist’s process is clearly visible in the paint. They are raw & direct – not polished or slickly finished. I can see what the artist was struggling with: The nature of perception, form and emptiness, tremendous passion, abstraction versus realism, the integrity of the paint, the integration of the figure with nature – the great themes of Modern Art! These paintings use a grid structure overlying massive, tumbled forms to show the overlay of perception and abstraction on the natural world; in other words, the nature of mind. Yet the grid is breaking up, failing, uneven and sinking under its own weight. Raw reality is breaking through the mind’s filters and preconceptions.
At the doorway, my friend Rob, the Photorealist painter who is my connection to Holbrook, is there with encouraging words, “Put your ideas on canvas and get them into a gallery!” I love the directness of this. Looking at the paintings again, I recognize these gestures, this aesthetic: I have wrestled with these concepts, but not succeeded so well. My younger years were too painful and fragmented to get great, integrated results, but I can certainly see what is right in front of me! Inspired, I walk into the next gallery, following the excited voice of the young woman.
This room is full of light, and larger than the first one. The walls are lined with enormous canvases, each one the record of a herculean yet somehow joyous struggle with a seminal idea, feeling or perception. This is Art like I always wanted to see and do. These guys have done it! I am beside myself with visual excitement. I am seeing something important: The excitement of these pieces lies not in polish or sophistication, not in grandness of conception, not in completeness (many look unfinished, like big studies), but rather in the raw sincerity with which the artist has grappled with his muse. About several of them I thought, “I could have done that, but didn’t.” About several more, I thought, “I had that idea but dismissed it as not good enough to do!” Now, I see they were all worth doing. I am feeling how much time I wasted; the utter waste in all that judging of impulses and holding them back. I know that in my depths, in spite of my dysfunction, drug abuse, and unproductive years, I was wrestling with what really mattered – The Fundamentals of Art. Yes, it was a Divine Madness, a worthy struggle!
My heart is full of a host of feelings raised by viewing all this art that looks as much as anything like the art I would have done had I been less depressed and shut down, more enthusiastic and spontaneous, less judgmental of myself – not holding back. As the young woman and I return to the first room, I feel I am seeing my old SOURCE, my primary inspiration. I say to her, “Somebody needs to know what I have wrestled with.” There is a strong sense that it’s not too late to be an artist – to express something into the world, and that major release will come through painting – being big and physical – rather than fiddling with a computer. It’s all so clear to me – the source, The Source, is inside me. I am divinely gifted and still capable of this raw sincerity, this godlike struggle. I am still capable of greatness.
I wander off into other areas of the offices. Someone has painted the entire place in an olive-themed abstract expressionist manner that is almost unbearably moody and intense, yet simultaneously brilliant and subtle. First, I enter an inner office/coffee room, earthy and warm, yet tragic and melancholy. Then a long, tall hallway with room after room opening off of it, all done in this same wonderfully mad paint technique. I am trying to reckon the impact of these rooms on human beings. I think it fantastically bold to challenge people to live, work and BE within these spaces, which are so far beyond decorated. Rather, they are wells of profound feeling in themselves.