Neolithic cave paintings and sculptures of aurochs and other game animals show us evidence of spears thrown at them, as if they were hunted. These simulated hunting rituals practiced by Cro-magnon Shamans reveal to us civilization’s earliest workings of Sympathetic Magic. Seeing and experiencing one’s own spear thrown into an animal, one feels, and visually creates attainment in the mind. The method of leaving reality, by way of the imagination, generating and releasing thoughts into the universe, eventually affecting reality. With the involvement of art into these rituals, the magic then takes on a greater strength.
Growing up in Brooklyn, I would only see a few stars in the sky due to the surrounding well lit city lampposts. Only when I would leave Brooklyn and it’s street lights behind, would I be able to see the lights of the heavens. These visual memories were the beginnings of my connection with the cosmos as a means of escape. For this series, the stars in my zodiac constellation have been replaced with gemstones. Employing these ways of thinking as a means of evading the slums and advancing into the stars.
2009
Enamel on paper, 24″ x 20″
AQ21
2009
Enamel on paper, 24″ x 20″
AQ20
2009
Enamel on paper, 24″ x 20″
Detail of AQ20
2009
Enamel on paper, 24″ x 20″
AQ19
2009
Enamel on paper, 24″ x 20″
Detail of AQ19
2009
Enamel on paper, 24″ x 20″
AQ18
2009
Enamel on paper, 24″ x 20″
Detail of AQ18
2007
Enamel on aluminum, 24″ x 20″
AQ11
2007
Enamel on aluminum, 24″ x 20″
AQ10
2007
Enamel on aluminum, 24″ x 20″
AQ13 •
2007
Enamel on aluminum, 24″ x 20″
AQ12 •
2007
Enamel on aluminum, 24″ x 20″
AQ09 •
2008
Enamel on aluminum, 12″ x 10″
AQ14
2008
Enamel on aluminum, 12″ x 10″
AQ15
2008
Enamel on aluminum, 12″ x 10″
AQ16
2008
Enamel on aluminum, 12″ x 10″
AQ17
“Picasso had always believed in the incantatory powers of art. Therein lay the fascination “primitive” art held for him. As he told Malraux, it made him understand what he expected from painting. Art for Picasso was neither an aesthetic operation nor did it mirror reality. Instead, it created reality on it’s own terms, parallel to the creation of nature and could thus, and only thus have an impact on the world. It was in this analogy to real life that the magical quality of art resided for Picasso.“
-Excerpt from Picasso:The Communist Years” By Gertje Utley (Yale University Press)
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