I’m so glad you’ve posted again. I look forward to seeing your art.

Funny, I was just talking with my homeopath today about how my life is so at odds with what society tells me it should be, how I am not a go getter, not much of a doer in the world at all. And also how it is hard to believe your own way is valid when the whole society is saying it’s not.

I have always found your journey an inspiration and look forward to further installments along with this season’s fruits of creativity.

Andrew

Albert Herbert’s method of creating added a further level of reconciliation to his work. He has explained that a painting usually starts with some idea that could be put into words but that when he begins to paint he becomes fully involved in “the struggle to harmonise shapes, colours and textures”. This can go on for several months with the original idea becoming lost in the paint only to re-emerge as something quite different. In this way he both draws his images from his subconscious and integrates them into the wholeness of the painting.

His approach tallies with that of another contemporary painter, Ken Kiff. Kiff, too, argues that his subconscious images only achieve meaning through the process of shaping and forming the painting. The painting, as a whole, must be discovered, by the artist, bit by bit. This has to happen in order “for the thing to really grow together and be significantly all part of the same growing thing”. In this growth there can be a sense of peace, completeness and wholeness despite the presence, at times, of disturbing imagery.

Cecil Collins, too, came to use a similar approach to a united development of image and form. He called this process the Matrix. Collins’ use of the Matrix involved the following; he would choose two complementary colours, then, with his eyes shut he would paint a number of brush strokes. He would then open his eyes and consider the marks on the paper or canvas. As he looked images would suggest themselves and he would select and paint the one that he wished to impose as the predominate image. The point of the Matrix was to “penetrate deeper into the creative imagination so that it is that which speaks to the artist and not the shallower levels of the mind … The Matrix … stands for all the hidden desires of the soul”.

I consider myself a spiritual artist. You can see work on my website, also my art blog:

www.marthamillerart.blogspot.com

thankyou!
Martha Miller

I also met him in the early 1990’s . It was by far the most important event in my life; truly life changing.

All the best,

Muhammad Ichlas