Currently I’m late-night reminiscing and I find it very appropriate to document the immediate emotional association I’m dwelling in. This is what’s most immediate, BONFIRE. Bonfire, specifically in how it acts as a sort of ritualistic experience that I partake in outside of any voluntary initiation from myself, I simply join and partake as a secondary audience. The smells, the heat, the cold contrasting, the intimacy, this is the joy of the Bonfire. Deep cool greens, contrasted by a hot scarlet, orange, yellow, flickering, whipping, crackling, vehemently and with love, this is the bonfire. It has and will continue to reoccur in my art.
Of course, its either a complete night time setting or a completely overcast setting, outside, in a backyard, with the comfort of a home in the back of our minds. This association is true insofar as it is nostalgic, but not entirely necessary to the truth of the act.
What is the inherent truth of this evocation to me? The bonfire evokes the younger self, that being the self associated with the freedom and vulnerability of middle school/early high school. It is during these years that I had no egotistical preoccupations that were cultural, such as a job, my emotions and sensations could act much more confidently in the appeals of the emotional sense of self (similar to what Jung would refer to as the Anima). I wanted love, comfort, mutual intimacy. That’s what the bonfire personifies, mutual intimacy, a stimulus for that. It provides specific smells and temperatures that those participating In the intimacies all experience, a binding element. The fire is natural in its state, a plasma, that which emits great light, heat, and visual spectacle, a truth of nature. So when I refer to a bonfire in my paintings, I refer to it in this way: a sort of socially ritualistic intimate experience in which whose integral elements, heat, light and smell, bind those participating in said ritual in a deeply truthfully human and animalistic sense. This hints at an eternal truth of consciousness and perceptiveness, perhaps a sort of archetypal eternal truth of consciousness?
Such truths that I write here are ever persistent within myself as I create art, but I find a strong desire to document it in words and put it on a public platform. To have such experiences documented concretely allows myself to refer back to such strong emotional states to get a greater sense of my holistic self, not just in the ever fleeting moments of evocative intensity, most of which would be forgotten within an hour’s or more’s time. I also find a great sense of obligation to share these thoughts so that others may recognize a truth within themselves that they’ve either suppressed or passively experienced. The concept of the bonfire, for me, is a symbol, and evokes many truths within my individual.
I ask that you meditate on what “ritualistic” occurrences you have in your life that you feel may or do evoke internal truths of your individuality. It is through our acceptance and understanding of the internal truths and variabilities of our emotional states that we may draw ourselves closer to the understanding of the self on all levels of the psyche, not just egotistically (of which American culture specializes in, prioritizes, and rewards.)