迈克尔·哈夫特卡认领

Source and Inspiration:"The division in our lives is the structure of thought, which is the action of the observer who thinks himself separate. He further thinks of himself as the thinker, as something different from his thought. But there can be no thought without the thinker and no thinker without the thought. So the two are really one. He is also the experiencer and, again, he separates himself from the thing he experiences. The observer, the thinker, the experiencer, are not different from the observed, the thought, the experienced. This is not a verbal conclusion. If it is a conclusion then it is another thought which again makes the division between the conclusion and the action which is supposed to follow that conclusion. When the mind sees the reality of this, the division can no longer exist. This is the whole point of what we are saying. All conflict is this battle between the observer and the observed. This is the greatest thing to understand."J Krishnamurti

Inspired by the film "The Cave of Forgotten Dreams" by Werner Herzog and the book "The Origin of Consciousness in The Breakdown of The Bicameral Mind" by Julian Jaynes.

The artist's words about this painting: "When I was a child before the age of 10 I had a reoccurring nightmare that woke me up in a cold sweat shivering with fear. The nightmare was that I was on a railroad handcar pumping relentlessly going in all directions simultaneously at the speed of light and at any moment I would be completely obliterated. I never told my parents about the nightmare but every time it happened I was overwhelmed by it. Then one night I decided that I am not going to wake up I am going to continue on the car and see what happens. The most astonishing thing happened, the experience turned to pleasure. In fact it was so desirable I tried to recreate the feeling over and over again.Recently I read this quote by Joseph Campbell from Sukhavati: Place of Bliss: A Mythic Journey. "We're in a freefall into future. We don't know where we're going. Things are changing so fast, and always when you're going through a long tunnel, anxiety comes along. And all you have to do to transform your hell into a paradise is to turn your fall into a voluntary act. It's a very interesting shift of perspective and that's all it is... joyful participation in the sorrows and everything changes."One of my most formative experiences when I was beginning painting in 1975 was the realization that every painting presents a point at which I have to risk everything. There is much good about the painting so far but there is also something incomplete, something still not right about the whole. It is at that moment that I must dive in, even if it risks all the good that is there, I must. I found that this approach works for me, that choosing to dive in transforms everything and in the process I find the way. Joseph Campbell's quote reminded me of my experience with the nightmare. I realized that my willingness to risk everything when I paint was learned from that experience. My painting 'Memory' is about my childhood nightmare. An acquaintance with familial background similar to mine, told me that many of her relatives tried to escape the Nazis on railway handcars and perhaps my nightmare was a transgenerational memory. “Whatever does not emerge as Consciousness,” Carl Jung said, “returns as Destiny.”

In private collection