I am part of a group show in downtown San Jose this month (Feb). One of the pieces I entered is called "Fragments of the Wetlands", one of my earlier charcoal pieces. When new viewers first encounter Dynamic Symbolism, they frequently discover images in my paintings that I had never seen before, but recognize when they point them out. My art inspires different interpretations across a variety of cultures. At the show opening on the First Friday Art Walk in San Jose, people pointed out a heron, birds hatching, claws and tusks, a knight on a charger, feathers and insects... Many people interact with Dynamic Symbolism in this way and see what they are accustomed to seeing.
To me it represents the grey areas between profit and environmental disaster. How much are we willing to let go?
How is this interaction with my art is created? That is a question that I strive to answer. My research has led to Carl Jung’s discussion of dream symbols and the collective unconscious. The symbols in my art resemble his description of archetypal symbols in dreams. Jung wrote about his discoveries in psychology stating: “The more civilized, the more unconscious and complicated a man is, the less he is able to follow his instincts. His complicated living conditions and the influence of his environment are so strong that they drown the quiet voice of nature. Opinions, beliefs, theories and collective tendencies appear in its stead and back up all the aberrations of the conscious mind. Deliberate attention should then be given to the unconscious so that the compensation can be set to work. Hence it is especially important to picture the archetypes of the unconscious not as a rushing phantasmagoria of fugitive images, but as constant, autonomous factors.” Dynamic Symbolism directs my attention to the unconscious, and natural and animal images move through my paintings. The best description of what I do with my art, Jung states in Man and His Symbols, Approaching the Unconscious, “Archetypal forms are not just static patterns. They are dynamic factors and manifest themselves in impulses, just as spontaneously as the instincts.”
