October | 2020 | Art and Anthroposophy

This image can be catalogued with my resent “insomnia drawings. I started only with the idea of depicting some form of benevolent female spirit: the divine mother, Sophia, Anthroposophia, a group soul, the holy spirit, a guardian spirit, a redeemed benevolent form of Lucifer, etc. When I had come close to finishing it, I thought about a title. First thoughts were “Queen of Heaven and Earth”, then “Egalitarian Queen of Heaven and Earth”, to dispel any idea of exclusivity due to any apparent racial archetypes, objectification of women, or any other flaw due to my own ineptitude and prejudices, subliminal or otherwise.

It is obviously influenced by integral art that I have looked at in the past (I have done chakra images before), but there is one obscure influence that I should bring up. When I was young, we had a large drawing on brown paper hanging in our house, done by one of my father’s students, if I am not mistaken. It was of a blond female figure with flowing hair and gown, with the words “And Ye Shall Find the Fields Filled with Great Golden Chariots”, in block letters above the figure.

My wife and I together, during a very stressful time, once saw a hovering orange spirit in the corner of one of the rooms in our house. We were the only ones around. It is not as though she or I have hallucinatory visions, but we both sensed or saw in a non-physical way, a spirit bathed in orangish light and acknowledged this to each other. We have been known to finish each other’s sentences, have simultaneously the same thoughts, and know what the other was thinking, but this experience was singularly unique.

An odd thing happened when I went to write the title on the back with my signature. I had settled on the long name “Egalitarian Queen of Heaven and Earth”, and clearly had this in my mind as I was nodding off. When I went to read the title the next day, it read: “Egalitarian School of Prayer”, and I guess that is what it is, a prayer to an all encompassing compassionate spirit.

I have struggled with insomnia since I was a teanager. Lately I have had a resurgence of insomnia. Usually I eventually make up for lost sleep but in the meantime, I struggle. It is not that I never sleep, just that I cannot sleep at night for a normal 7-8 hours and have to make up for it later. Someone once said I keep jazz musician’s hours. When I was self employed, this was OK. Most of my adult life I have had to hold down a job employed by someone else. Luckily these were jobs I enjoyed, working in a living history museum for 19 years, 3 years as a graduate assistant and now, 10 or more years teaching at the college and university level.

My way of coping with insomnia has been, since 15 years of age, to put the time to good use making art. For 19 years, I painted in my attic.The past decade, I have played the piano with headphones on, and I have always written poetry. For the past several months, I have been drawing completing one or two drawings a week. sometimes more. Most of these have been non-objective. I have finally had to embrace my eclecticism even if it is not a good career choice. If you get known for one thing and then you switch to something else, you loose your brand so to speak. Of all the art Picasso made, his ceramic work was panned initially. Eventually this work was seen as groundbreaking in the field of ceramics. I am not claiming to be Picasso but I have learned to embrace my eclecticism weather others do or not

Here are my drawings from the past few months, some influenced no doubt by the current state of the world. I could be called a neo-modernist or neo expressionist with a predilection for Steiner’s ideas on art, and goethean color theory. I am a student of art of all kinds and of nature and of my own experiences.