Artist as Shaman My reason for being is to divine the hidden with marks made in a conscious effort to communicate through a visual language. The artist uses image metaphors that serve as access points to a cultural symbolism which is part of the complex connection of consciousness, which is the basis for and can promote community discourse. Hovering in the schizophrenic present in an attempt to battle the depthlessness of modern culture the artist as Shaman must create a life, create art, that recognises the unification of mind and body while understanding the intimate relationship the individual shares absolutely with all living things which are ultimately bound together in a symbiotic struggle. The artist as Shaman as Outsider uses self-knowledge as an instrument for living a life that is not fixed or enduring, but a human experience that is to be carried as far as possible while exploring the magic of art. The Artist as Shaman knows art to be a principal of magic; a way to imagine the life-source through cultural memory, through expressions of archetypal symbols. Drawing from a latent power (the reserves of force that are everywhere), the artist evokes this energy to make it serve his/her ends. Art serves these essential purposes: to contribute to changing consciousness and drive men and women who will change the world, even to achieve oneness with existence of which art is a material expression. Art is an intellectual process, the unification of form and content that will activate reflection. Art proposes a dynamic engagement of consciousness, communication and energy. Images of the figure come to be metaphors for existence, referring to basic metaphysical questions, the questions of being, essence, potential and action. Representation becomes existential documentation from the impossibly large past/present/future; a pastiche of intensities, swirled up fragments of a motif created out of the vast primordial soup. Figuration represents the individual (and implies narrative), the individual with great anxiety in the face of conflict and possibility; the possibility to be an existential hero or failed hero. Mythopoeic Artist as Shaman creates in tune with the energies of the universe and in harmony with the ancients while recognising the traditions embodied in the notions of peoples’ origins. To embrace and purse the secret meanings of the mystical is art’s task-discovery towards comprehension of the obscure. Art can tear us from out everydayness and award us with heightened awareness of the complexity of reality, thus providing the individual a power through the act of creative will.
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