Carl Jung – Frames of Reference

“so now we see the cat is a shadow of the Virgin Mary. It is that part of the female nature that the Virgin Mary did not represent but would belong to a complete image of the feminine“

Marie-Louse Von Franz

The principle driving forces behind creating this new body of work were two interlocking books, Psychology and Alchemy by Carl Jung and The Cat by Marie-Louise Von Franz.

Drawing from these two sources created a framework from which I could project various scenes and scenarios.

There are seven stages of spiritual alchemy; if a person can complete them, it is thought that they will reach an enlightened form of consciousness. There are parallels here to Buddhism and Hinduism. Continue reading “The Cat Becomes A Fountain & Other Stories”

This might be a curio best forgotten, an embarrassing piece of juvenilia. Forty years ago this was my final year thesis at art school. Nowadays it would be called a dissertation. But really it was just an annotated photo album. I’d found a stripey beach towel which became a sort of security blanket for a while, it seemed emblematic of the striped abstract paintings I was making and I photographed it wherever I went. I put all the photos together in a book with lots of random quotes as if I’d swallowed a library, or more likely the Whole Earth Catalog and An Index Of Possibilities. It was all very 1970s and very pretentious, but what really strikes me today is how much it resembles a prototype blog post. Continue reading “Thesis & Antithesis”