I am a very curious person. I ask lots of questions. I often wonder what was in the Alexandria libraries that were burnt down. What antiquities have been lost in all the wars humanity has raged? What went on in the mystery schools in Egypt? What is going on in all the research laboratories in the world? What images are passing through humanity in their dream state? What are all the unseen artists all over the world producing? What is humanity at large creating? So many secrets to unearth! I yearn to see what humanity has done and is doing. Curiosity incites the imagination. The imagination is our own inner power. I use my imagination to become an unbiased witness observing the past, present, and future of the world.
I wish to see humanity become more inclusive of the imagination. The advent of alchemy brought the term radix Ipsius to life. It means the root of itself or the universal substrate of life. Radix Ipsius is a mysterious creative center in the universe. This is the root of our being and the state of absolute being any matter can exist in. In each of us is a replication of the universe.
I believe art to be spiritual alchemy, a form of meditation where I can examine my beliefs, my ethics, and my habits. In this process of examining myself, I have had to first learn to be an unbiased witness to myself in order to be an unbiased witness to humanity. Learning to be an unbiased witness to myself has been an arduous task but well worth it. I find my creative state becomes so much richer for it because I will consider everything that passes before me and see so much more than I did before because I am not placing conceptual veils on the experience.
My process of art-making involves libraries. I have an obsession with libraries and feel most alive when I am in them. I spend many hours going through the stacks in every section of the library. I collect images and thoughts that send an electric feeling to me, I just know they have something in them for me to realize. I then mix my collected pieces with my actual paintings. At this point, they go into my studio and I pry out sections of works and incorporate them into new crystalline arrangements, just as our minds do, we are always reinterpreting everything that passes through us. No matter how much I shapeshift the images they still contain the root of its beginning, its DNA intact, a process of evolution occurs. This method reflects what I feel life is about, we are always ourselves yet in a constant state of transformation. I feel our ability to change and shift our being is limitless and I see endless ways I can transform through art. Art manifests the imagination and unites the collective consciousness.
” I am the old dragon, present everywhere on earth. I am father and mother, young and old, strong and weak, living and dead, visible and invisible, hard and soft, descending into the earth and ascending into heaven, very big and very small, very light and very heavy. The order of nature often changes in me in color, number, weight, and measure. I contain natural light. I am clear and dark. I am known and I am nothing.”
– Basil Valentine from Azoth