Pagan Spirit Gathering 2012

As has been the case with all the PSG logos I have done. They come into being in a way that is Spirit Led.

My own dreams/work/art begins leading me down a new and unusual pathway of images, seemingly from out of nowhere, and within a couple days, (usually less than 5) the call comes from someone at Circle wondering if I am interested in doing the logo, and excitedly swearing me to secrecy and whispering the theme (because the theme is always a secret until it is joined to its image and released as a whole) and low and behold each time, the artistic journey which I was already being led upon is exactly matched by the theme.... and the melding begins.

This year was most extraordinary. A couple years back a movie was released called The Cave of Forgotten Dreams. I never saw it. I had never even heard of it. One day, a trailer appeared on Facebook and I watched first the trailer and then the movie. The final scene of the movie is a breathtaking journey by simulated torchlight, accompanied by an orchestral work by Ernst Reijseger through the caves and passageways and past the art of countless artists, some believed to be more than 30,000 years old and painted over the span of 1000's of years.

One specific section was a series of horseheads in profile, utilizing the curvature of the cave wall, stairstepped down along the wall, each using the composition of the one above and below to create a beautiful flowing whole. Beautiful in its own right but heartstopping when the narrator tells you that through carbon dating they have been able to determine that more than 5000 years of time passed between the painting of the first horsehead profile and the last.

For 5000 years artists who had never met each other, used the same canvas, and the same palette of colors and even the same subject and they created. They did not destroy that which had come before, or try to best it, or overwhelm it in some way. They honored and complimented it. They shared the visceral need to descend into the darkness of the caves to create beauty, to manifest the magic of Spirit and they did so with all honor and respect given to the creations of those that had gone before. Their artistic additions only joining with and enhancing the creations of their artistic predecessors.

If a cooperative community art project is called an "Exquisite Corpse" this was the most divinely exquisite I could ever imagine.

I was still replaying this segment of the movie almost daily, and still in awe of this level of cooperative creation extending down through the millenia, from artist to artist, (by people we would in our arrogance refer to as primitive), when Sharon emailed me.

She asked if I would be interested in doing the logo again, and told me that the theme was a secret (as usual) and was to be this year. "Tribe and Spirit Through The Ages".

I saw the logo complete within moments in my mind. I did do a couple of very loose sketches to layout a few important bits... but they were patently unnecessary. I "just happened upon" a solid painting board at the art supply store (the likes of which I had never worked on before) which was perfectly suited to support a heavy application of medium to create texture, and "just happened to have" the mix-ins necessary to use with the paint to give a 3D texture consistent with a cave wall. These I spread thickly with palette knife and hand, and left to dry. In several days, when the ground was dry, I mixed acrylics in browns, ochres and black with ground dirt (collected from Wisteria, Zoe, Stonehouse, Circle and Fire Circle). I created the painting in one short session of less than 4 hours, being already painted in my mind, it needed very little actual work. I painted it at night, in my painting studio. I set up the huge bright studio lights to cast severe shadows across the ground and painted using a stick and my hands and fingers. The music I chose to accompany the creation was Carlos Nakai. A very small brush was used only for the curve of words that are part of the painting itself, and for nothing else.

If I can have a hope for this piece, it would be this...that our Tribe will be inspired by these ancient artists and the reverence they held for all that came before; that we will be reminded that there is nothing new beneath this sun. No matter how important we think we are, we are only a link in a very long unending chain. And finally, instead of working to invalidate and discredit the past and its creators, while puffing our feathers and tooting our own horn, we will seek with our contribution to enhance the continuous flowing beauty of the whole, with reverence extending from our hearts as far back and forward through time as that long unending chain of creation.