"We recognized the role of imagination and ritual
that is shared between contemporary psychotherapies and all ancient traditions. It was also evident that the arts are the bridging existential phenomena that
unite ritual, imagination and dream-world in a way that no other activity can do."
-Paulo Knill (p50 in
Foundations of Expressive Arts Therapy).
Is
the art world between two worldviews, one slowly dying, and one not yet born?
It is
well known that paints and pigments can be approached as
ritual objects, magical energetic substances to help create a space for
manifestation. Painting
or the ownership of them can be a meditative ritual, a ritual of affirmation
and manifestation. With
transpersonal art and in life, there is space and
opportunity at every phase for invention, as with life no part of the art
creation should be merely rushing
from A to Z without appreciating the journey in its fullness along the way
because every moment is complete in itself. Transpersonal art
will continue as a growing trend among academics;
because it focuses on self-realization and
design psychology, it will be the tool used increasingly to create inspiring places.
Transpersonal art is not magic,
it's the creative imagination, the "new modernism", one of the disciplines considered by Boucovolas (1999), in a listing
describing how
transpersonal psychology
may relate to other areas of transpersonal study.
A characterizations of the
experience of functioning in the creative state as one of being "in the flow".
A successful engagement by artists in the creative process yields what Joy
Guilford (1956) identified as divergent ideas and forms characterized by
fluency, flexibility, originality, and elaboration.
Graham Wallas (1926)
identified the creative process as occurring in four
stages: preparation, incubation, illumination, and verification. He explains
further, the most
important stage of the creative process--incubation--occurs in the unconscious.
Verification is where the solution arrives in the unconscious and becomes
manifest to the conscious awareness.
The mind and body is
more than just an extremely complex machine. We are also spiritual beings
learning from life, searching for meaning in birth, death, and all that
precedes and follows our life cycle. Within
the narrative portions of this website we will attempt to examine in very
broad strokes the purpose of design
psychology and how it works to create environments that reflect an
individual or group as well as encourage positive change; the origins and
purpose of art therapy. Spiritual considerations
and psychology are now the principal design tools
used to create aesthetically and functionally beautiful places, emotionally and socially fulfilling
spaces,
because all significant events in life reflect a deeper sense of purpose, meaning and
direction in this, the
human experience!
Woody's paintings are not derived from
drawings, they are organic
memory, spontaneous
reactions to color and movement. As stated by:
Mihaly Csikzentmihalyi (1996) "when the artist is "there" the image s/he has
discovered 'appears". His
paintings are developed from his vision, not evolved from a pre-determined
expectation, most of his works are considered interactive, allowing the
viewer to find within the image their own reality. We are making this point because
some
academics have defined his paintings as a derivative of the
Action Art Movement. "Action Art" is a term first coined by Harold
Rosenberg, it refers to unconventional techniques of applying paint to a canvas
and connected to the Abstract Expressionist movement. More precise in its
meaning, Action Painters believe in the expressive power held in the actual act
of painting as much as in the finished product. Rosenberg defined the notion of
the canvas as seen by the artists in this movement as being not a picture but an
event.
Feel free to contact
us.
Ms.
Ann Reade-Moore
