110. The Pursuit Of Revelation

Art is born through the interaction of imagination and intuition. Materials are provided by the imagination and shaped by intuition. The shape emerges through aesthetic judgments that intuitively arise. These judgments cause the artwork to take one form instead of another and to have one content instead of another. It is through open and careful attention to all of the intuitions that arise throughout the creative process that the artist creates a powerful work.

The artwork itself is the unique result of the artist’s present awareness. As the artist further explores their own being and the world around them, their awareness broadens and their intuitions improve. The result is that they are then able to create new and better works. While their intuitions arise from past experience, the artist is not required to conform to the objects of experience. They can always inject the endless possibilities of imagination at any point in the process.

This freedom means the artist is always positioned to create something radically different from their past work. What often prevents this from happening is the socioeconomic situation the artist faces. There is both an unlimited desire for more of the same popular work and the undying belief that artists are supposed to satisfy the desires of their audiences. The result is that the artist can feel forced to transform into a factory of dead art just to obtain the material support necessary to survive. But in doing so, they are also forced to abandon their own intuitions and the revelatory creations that would follow from them.

To break with the desires of others and accept material sacrifice is to recognize the importance of following yourself as far as you can go. It is to work towards creating what the audience needs but does not yet know it needs, rather than producing what it merely wants. What is always needed is a greater understanding of human experience, and the artist, through an unrelenting exploration of their own experience, is always capable of providing exactly this.