Artist's statement

“There is an imagination below the earth that abounds in animal forms, that revels and makes music.” James Hillman The Dream and the Underworld

The title of the series is Revitalizing the Subliminal:
What lies below (Series I), Conversations with Persephone (Series II) and Traversing the barriers (Series III)

This body of work is an exploration of the under/inner world, particularly that portion of subliminal knowing that closely borders our conscious reality. Like the dream state, this “place” is rife with potent messages. Depth psychology aims to free soul essence that is embedded in the subconscious and thus free the personality. I, too, aim to access source and liberate the essential by delving inward and co-creating with a transpersonal core.

This co-creation is the active principle in the work. It is the part that “revels and makes music.” It is the revitalizing aspect of the series and it is characterized by a reawakening of dormant energy as it strives to give image to subliminal or subconscious formlessness. At its foundation, this dance reflects the far greater mysteries of our creation; our consciousness and the search for the true grail within.

The work is gentle, but decisive in its active urging toward nonverbal communication (an inherent necessity of non-objective art). The goal is to access collective being - a pure knowing and conscious unification of the separated selves. In this sense it is the place of the alchemical conjunctio (often symbolized in traditional art as the unity of opposites, i.e. male and female, heaven and earth, the cross or crossroads, etc.). It is the place where two worlds, the inner and the outer, meet. Therefore, these non-objective images serve as a point of entry into this realm.

This place of entry marks the threshold of development and manifestation. It is the invisible line that must be traversed to bring imagery from the realm of the numinous or non-manifest, into reality. This implies that if your consciousness merges into the painting ( through the vehicle of your own subconscious ) you will emerge back into your conscious reality with an imagistic gift; an “in-sight”, but undoubtedly it will be in the ephemeral, pictorial/sensorial language of the unconscious — something that we all know intuitively.

This is the divine coition that occurs ( for both artist and viewer ), that incorporates both the active and passive parts of the personal imagination, the “imagination below the earth.” It is the dream that dreams reality. It is the vital, erotic, sparkling crucible of the under/inner world that contains the stuff of all form and manifestation. It is the cosmic question that crosses some mysterious portal to become all that is; it is the doorway of perception itself.

For me, this exploration has become a flexible interchange, a fluid dance back and forth through this “place” — this doorway — and with each return these are the fruits that have become manifest. Of course, all conscious skill that I have gleaned over the years in design, color, composition, etc. is brought to bear in the mix. All that I bring to fruition, by necessity, comes through the filter of my personality. But the essence is blind essence until I bring it back through that portal, and only then can I actually see what I am holding in my hands.

— Martha Channer