symluminism - the extratemporal-transfinite in painting
PAINTING progressively becomes closer to and continuosly moves in the direction of source, of transcendence. From the first instant early man put to a surface a mark of his inner world, he sought to give form to the light of his spirit.
The symluminist painter holds that this original act, before the time of language, is the spring of all art and it is to this event/moment, beyond time, that the symluminist painter holds his stance as he commits his paint to the surface.
Through the progression of painting since the first marking, we now have arrived at the moment where a creation of new images is called for. -these no longer being records, explanations, definitions, of experience, thought, feeling, event or energy.
We have arrived at the moment of fusion of unmitigated vision with art itself -in resonance with the limitlessness, the clear field - dynamic stillness in the center of our inmost selves. The painting has always been contingent upon metaphoric representation of that which exists in the field of our perception. < re-cognization through re*presentation* >. Now, at this level so named symluminism, we have arrived at fusion with source.
Fusion with source implies that the painting is charged with and as vision, and that transcendence is present, in that the observer is both observing and has fused with vision itself. The origin of what is seen in the painting is the locus/dominion of Expansion itself. This locus/dominion of expansion is the precipice-view, which is the position of the symluminist.
In symluminism, the use of metaphor dissolving it's own "metaphoricness" -by virtue of fusion with it's source- makes way for its' first origin to reveal. This is the meaning of fusion in the symluminist painting.
This is beyond catalyst, vehicle, or medium which seeks to invoke ordinary recognition. This realizes the transfiguration of the dominions of perception, where origin and metaphor become one. When we are present to the event of the fusion of metaphor and origin, the doors of mystery open to us.
In the symluminist painting, the ocean of space and time exist in the event of the image, their visual structures leading us beyond their apparent parameters. This, the structure within which is contained these principles, becomes transcendence and liberation from the temporal, from metaphor, from the finite. -When source itself is reflected perfectly and purely in form, the limitless nature of mind is released.
When painting is organized in perfect confluence with source, that which is released has the power to alter the fabric of time, the fabric of the universe. When we are engaged in the limitlessness thus released, we see.
A Painter’s purpose is to communicate seeing. His language is Light. Light is the fluency of truth, the current that fills the world. When the threshold is crossed, the experience of Seeing itself is transformed. The shamans of the amazon are masters of the ecstatic state. They live in the dominions of light, and through their connection with the ancestors, the spirit worlds, and knowledge of the jungle, become as instruments, as lenses, which perfect the organization of light in accord with the principles of the divine. In their ceremonial practice, they become lenses through which the light of divine order pours into the world. The symluminist painter seeks to emulate and echo this in his act. When this -the aspiration to the order of original source- becomes manifest, everything becomes art, and art becomes everything. -In this we realize origin, or source, fused with life and being.
An effect of this is the dissolution of illusion, and the empowerment of the observer to “for-get”. Said “for-getting” has an effect on the oceans of time and space. The oceans of time and space become perceivable as an object, which we are "outside of", and can simultaneously "contain", in our perception. Time itself becomes perceivable as something seen through, as from above or outside it. From the stance of this perception, all contained therein can be changed, moved, unmade, recreated, annihilated, transfigured, transformed, renewed, brought back into confluence with divine order.
The state of this fusion is the referential source, the multidimensional, symluminous field of event that forms the painting. The symluminist perceives the ever-changing, the unmanifest, as the archetypal form in his works. Intrinsic in the archetype are the unbounded, the inter-dissolving of space, form, and light, and the auto-achievance of utter density, supreme light, darkness -(utter contraction of light), and the threshold between the temporal/extratemporal, and the finite/transfinite. From these notions are the material for articulation brought into the image in the symluminist painting.
Herein lies the possibility of evolving towards a domain that is beyond form, energy, space, and time. In this we become free to move through dimensions. We create in order to expand the universe/self, this manifestation expands and re-fills, thusly transforming the former constituents of the universe. The new universe arrives into being at infinite speed and degree, continuously, as it always has been. From the symluminist’s contemplation of the so-called “big bang”, this even is happening now, and now, and now, completely new, ever-occurring, for all eternity. From the symluminist perception, it is not, never was, and never will be, a point on a timeline as would be suggested. It’s very nature suggests that it seeds Time itself, and cannot therefore be originating from it’s own consequence.
At this "moment", it always was, and always will be arriving into being, it never was otherwise, and always will have been, and will be, origin itself issuing forth. Thus the symluminist painting seeks to provide a dynamic anchor in the perception of the beholder -in ever changing flux, in accord with the divine, as this is the condition which allows the portals of mystery itself to become opened.
This manifesto shows a possibility of becoming opened through beholding a painting created as such - by virtue of that we are manifestations of the mind of God, and instruments of the self-realization of the source of creation and it's mysteries. When a painting metaphorically mirrors -hence catalyzes- the ideas here brought forth, it is identified as a work of symluminism. The manifestation of light is the only objective and truth of the symluminist. The realization of divine order of light in painting and those that behold them, is the fulfillment the objective of the symluminist painter.
© Joseph Paul Eads – 1987-2008 all rights reserved