Immaculate Perception

Kafka wrote that the act of reading is “an ax for the frozen sea in us." The same may be said of the act of painting. For that matter, a blow to the head or a great kiss may be necessary to bang the blind side of possibility. A resoluteness that the Moment (Augenblick) is in the immediate happening. The sudden manifestation of our work liberated from the obscure circuit of its hiddenness.

Higher than actuality stands possibility. The prospect of the painting’s awakening to the basic truth of its imaginal form. And while opportunity may not always be ready, knowing what the work lacks, the situation arises for chance that recognizes surprisingly faultless channels. An infinite series of transpersonal appearances shot with oracular action. The transformation of desire (the eros moment) into a raptured departure that makes artists of us all.

There is an immaculate perception. An upcasting and gliding of spotless actions that are the seeds of a powerful yield. The innate capacity to become or to do something specific, like a rosebud’s becoming full flower. The pure potency that cannot be identified prior to the act of creation. A clean ocean rush that does not possess a whatness but only a thatness. Both a scattering and shining of the visionary recital that is a coming-into-being simultaneously. Roethke’s “the dazzling dark behind the sun”.

A child-like spirit, a wise blindness becomes the bearer of every possibility. Nothing to be taught because nothing needs to be attained. If one wishes to understand how to paint, simply never be for or against anything that appears. The mind that is not afraid of contradiction, allowing the unconscious to play its essential role, is able to dance in a coincidence of opposites.