biography

Unsatisfied with the results of my early Catholic indoctrination and then studying many of the great Western philosophers while pursuing my BFA and MFA, I ultimately found the thinking of a handful of esoteric Existentialists most appealing. Still largely unfulfilled, though, I learned of, and began to dig pretty deeply into, much older Eastern forms of thought. Meditation remains, since that initial glance Eastward, a daily routine that limits for periods of time the constant random bombardment of external stimuli, while at the same time, quieting the discursive internal banter that distracts from maintaining clear and consistent observational awareness. 

For a period of time, the quieter I could make my mind, the more I felt I understood reality as it truly is. I noticed too that painting, though a more unintentional and casual form of this meditation, and done in addition to my more formal practice, also benefited greatly from this enhanced clarity and sensory awareness. My paintings were improving along with my general understanding of the world around me.  For well over a decade I practiced painting and mediation exclusively in this way, progressing steadily, but eventually realizing I was on an unsatisfying and surprisingly dysfunctional path. Something important was missing; I couldn’t just unplug and expect to attain comprehensive understanding, which I have come to learn relies, in no small way, on the very things from which I had unplugged. Yes, I had accomplished a degree of awareness and heightened perception by limiting distractions. Unfortunately, though, I had also come to relish the resulting quiet, though hollow, transcendental detachment even more than the greater understanding that would later come with deeper and more purposeful engagement with my codependent conscious cohabitants, objects and phenomena.   

The Mādhyamikan branch of Mahayana Buddhist philosophy rejects the idea that things, phenomena and consciousness have inherent existence or that they truly exist independently and unto themselves. Accordingly, there is no absolute (without solution) existence of any kind for anyone or anything. Nothing exists by itself- every brush stroke is essential. A convenient term used to describe this radical interdependence, Dependent Origination, is explicit. Everything depends intrinsically and completely on everything else to originate and to exist. This may also be understood as Non-dualism. Taken to its epistemological conclusion, the idea has profound and far-reaching consequences, and yet for me,  it’s also an idea that increasingly has become beautifully and plainly irrefutable.   

A self centered approach, I would eventually realize, would not lead to satisfactory understanding; I would need to intuitively engage with…well, everything possible, and much more deeply than I ever had imagined. Ultimately, I would actually just need to recognize that I /we was/were already engaged with everything and everyone else on a level nearly impossible to fully comprehend, save for those who have  become ultimately enlightened beings. Embracing this idea of complete interconnectedness, not just theoretically or intellectually but experientially, leads to the profound conclusion that since what you think of as yourself depends entirely on everything else for its existence, then your ‘self’ as a separate entity doesn’t really exist. For that matter, no ‘selves’ exist. No things exist independently either.   

Mādhyamikan awareness fully grasps that everyone and everything exists as an ultimately undifferentiated gestalt community of wholly impermanent things and consciousnesses. In a real sense, being deprived of any permanent independent existence means they actually do not exist at all. This lack of existence is perceived of and described conventionally by Mādhyamikans as emptiness. And while this philosophical insight may seem completely counterintuitive while also far too esoteric and immaterial for use as a central feature in an artist statement, it remains principal to my life and so by extension my art. Aware of irrevocable membership in this great ‘whole’, there arises a compulsion to live more compassionately, harmoniously, carefully and thoughtfully. The alternative finds us doing harm either accidentally, though careless or self-centered action, or purposefully, by generating anger and strife. Ultimately, my art, and the purpose I understand it to serve, reflect this perspective.    

Meditative exercises have evolved over centuries to help understand and reify our non-dual nature so to perfect our actions in order to take full advantage of and celebrate this unconventional understanding. One very useful exercise engages in what turns out to be a futile and often disquieting epistemological search for an existing and identifiable ‘self’, beginning first by simply disqualifying selves as physical objects. Do we fit the definition if deprived of limbs, torso or head? Just as, is a table a table if it has been disassembled and shipped to various far-flung locations? In which box does the table then exist? Each physical component of our bodies can be broken down into smaller and smaller bits. The smallest bits, we learn from quantum physics, exist as rapidly changing waves or fields of energy, rather than substantial matter, whose hardness and density that we seem to encounter daily, betray their true hidden and purely ephemeral essence. At this subatomic scale in which lonely particles move and magically appear and reappear randomly within vast fields of space and energy, where do we end and our surroundings begin? Our ‘selves’ are not found in the material.  

You then might easily presume ‘self’ is consciousness? So then, what is consciousness if there is nothing to be conscious of? Once we stop being aware of a particular thing, do we also cease to exist until another object or phenomenon captures our attention? If so, then self depends upon things to be conscious of and therefore can not be an independent entity. Also note that as consciousness moves through time, it remains ever changing. This is most obvious when we look at pictures of ourselves as young children. We barely identify with how that hyper simplified earlier version of ‘self‘ may have understood the world. If we observe even more closely, we also realize that we are not even the same self from seconds earlier. Experience transforms, in some cases completely and in a flash, as with a stroke, marriage, drug trip or near death experience. Consciousness is not ‘self’.  

Are selves then composed of feelings or emotions? If so, should we not have more control over these things? Would we ever choose to be sad or mad? So why then do we allow ourselves to exist in these painful states? Surely if our selves are our emotions, then we would be their master and consequently choose to be happy all the time. These meditative exercises represent just a handful of paths one might exhaust on the futile quest for an independently existent self; there are countless others that all eventually lead to better come to fully grasp the unfamiliar but ultimately true reality of selflessness.   

What does this paradigm shift away from a ‘self’ oriented perception to an ‘other’ oriented one mean on a day to day practical and experiential level? Primarily, we are induced to act more self-sacrificially, putting the welfare of the infinitely more numerous ‘other’ ahead of our once myopically prioritized single ‘self’. If you’re an artist, it means making and doing things that reflect that transfer of focus. Again, most basically, I paint things that demonstrate to me in real time this quality of profound interconnectivity, and not because I necessarily set out to do that, but simply because that is now how I better understand the world to be and I’m just…well…painting...   

So, while I’m painting things that naturalIy demonstrate my perception of interconnectivity, the act of painting also conveniently helps reify that perception by closely observing, imagining and physically creating those connections in paint. I do it also presuming that on some level, the resulting paintings themselves create a record of those observations that may be useful to others who might be encouraged to appreciate this miracle of interdependence…and maybe even be inspired to act accordingly…or maybe not…