Metaphysical Maps (27 to date) combine the precision aesthetics of antique maps with the looseness of abstract expressionist painting. These detailed and seemingly accurate charts of internal experiences expose a messy reality that lends itself to nothing like precision!
Some original maps were exhibited in the Hermitage Museum. Prints and some originals are available. The poetic power of art is the force, unlike the immediate but ineffectual force of violence that can change the world. Here I trace some of the artworks that have had a profound and life-transforming effect on my own life which form the very contours of my landscape. The shape of my life cannot be understood without the permanent effects of Mozart’s Requiem or Shakespeare’s Tempest, or van Gogh’s Starry Night. This is not an adventure for the timid. If one is to truly encounter art at depth one must prepare for the “clear and present danger” of change that is the constant threat of great art. We are called to the boundaries of life where opportunities rise to carve new paths into evolution and the future. “Metaphysical Maps” combine the precision aesthetics of antique maps with the looseness of abstract expressionist painting. These detailed and seemingly accurate charts of internal experiences expose a messy reality that lends itself to nothing like precision! Touching one another presents us with an entire language of human meaning, yet one in which we know very few expressions. Here the whole landscape of touch, with all its manifestations––Sexual, Violent, Ritual, Æsthetic, Play and Technical–– is mapped. Though we can name and find 10,000 different things in the hardware store, we have only a handful of “words” in our touch language. To me, this points out how rich could be such a language once we determine to explore and develop it. This diptych on parchment was a 15-year collaboration with the painter Cathy Weber. It explores the shifting weather, depths and complexities of intimacy. One side references the male, the other the female partner. The frames can be hung with different alignments, each lineup emphasizing a different aspect of how the couple interact and communicate. This dark map is a chart of the artist’s creative universe, a wilderness landscape which unfolds with its incentives, pastoral scenes, lurking monsters and dangerous whirlpools. Based on the real floor-plan of the creative center of the Tim Holmes Studio building, the creative space is thick with meaning about my creative struggles. For the traveler here’s a guide through the most complex of human innerscapes, the sexual arena. One can follow the traffic most familiar to our culture––between sex and violence––but diverging from that well-worn path, one can discover the subtler, more other-centered landscapes of touch less explored. I’ve become fascinated with a kind of psychotherapeutic element that results from the interaction between two people that develops when drawing from the nude. In this magical, insulated space, where both parties are really being their true selves in the presence of the strangeness of “the other”. This map is a depiction of that interaction, with all its mythology, from the perspective of the artist. This map is the above but turned upside down, done from the perspective of the model. What interests me about this encounter is that the ritual acts in a way like psychotherapy, allowing each party to access parts of their own unconscious that is hidden except in the presence of a reflective partner. In the case of nude modeling, both parties are exposed in a profound and truthful way, which can add up to a very powerful mutual encounter. A view of outer space showing a nebula in the shape of a human body maps elements of the body––the most beautiful form in all of creation! This parallels certain astonishing wonders of the universe in a suggestion of the endless unfolding of layers of meaning, each more encompassing and subtle than the last. Here is an invitation to see the cosmos in a plebian, mortal human body. Painted on an actual map of central Montana, this chart speaks to the monument of the pattern of unique pain in each person’s life. Each person’s tragedies carve an unique landscape, resulting in a potential to transform rage and disappointment into in compassion. Such is the case is this map, where the landforms reflect the rigors and sadness of pioneer life. We don’t often leave the monuments of our pain on the landscape around us, but they always rumble and reflect through the canyons of our lives. One artwork that I made especially for the exhibition I got to provide for the great Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia, was this Metaphysical Map. It is written in Russian cyrillic script, reflecting the names of the cities appearing (emotional states) in English. This is a map about how the world that you inhabit reflects rather accurately that of your own character. I hesitate to share such a lousy photo, but this is the only evidence I have of a Metaphysical Map painting I did years ago––one of my favorites–– based on the concept of living life as a numinous “game”, trying to find the mystical level of everyday existence, using the metaphor of the magical game of baseball, played in the celestial sphere. Every map by nature is at once precise and biased; it’s for us to determine how. Each of the Metaphysical Maps has a number of common features, such as a cartouche, scale, wind rose and comments and advice by the cartographer on how to stay safe in unexplored territory. We are called to the very boundaries of life, where the opportunity rises to carve a new path into evolution and the future. Based on a luminous poem by my friend Steve Palmer, the full title reads: A man must get out of his heart the thin height to leap into / Because a man is too dark for the air / And so must we leap with disbelief that we are not things of the sky.
