Art and the Invocation of Spirit

by Chuck Angeline

The term spirit has countless meaning and overtones; everyone may have some personal concept of spirit, so we all define it differently. In that way the idea of spirit is not only very similar, but perhaps even integral to the human manifestation we call ‘art’. Creativity and art walk hand in hand, but are two separate aspects of an artist. To a vast majority of artists, creativity is a spiritual practice of expression and catharsis, the end result is the manifestation of art, an artifact of the immaterial process that we call spirit. Creativity, for some artists, is a process that focuses the mind and helps connect the psyche to the deeper part of our spirit, or even a deeper part of the collective human spirit.

The process of creativity does not away produce a work of art. For most artists the process of creativity is an act of play that can free the mind from the symptoms of contemporary life, and the obstacles that hold the rest of our culture in psychological chains. The creative process is not about perfection or precision, but rather refinement. It is the process of working from a rough idea, mistakes and all, to a more refined idea. The mental process for the act of creating is born out of a contention, for most artists, that there is no such thing as a mistake. Mistakes are simply manifestations of the mind; they are the residual effect of an educated minds ability to discriminate and display the illusory effects of our perceptions.

The ability to transcend the fear of making a mistake is one of the most important aspects which separate the artists from the rest of humanity. Through education we have been taught to perceive things as being dualistic (ie. Right and wrong, up and down, Heaven and Hell) which, inevitably, sets the stage for the formal academic arena, where mistakes are viewed as not only  time consuming, but will coast you points on a test, money in the financial world and should be avoided at all costs. The problem with this ideology is that it has stifled the creative capacities of the younger generations, all of which should be actively creative. This is probably the reason that those of us who are actively creative and consider ourselves artists have a propensity for questioning, rebellion and protesting such ludicrous idea as either being false or grossly misleading.

Some people tend to believe that the word ‘artist’ is nothing more than another job title within society, and like any other profession it can be taught. I feel that technique and aesthetics can be taught, but the mastery of technique and aesthetics alone will not produce an artists, let alone great art. Technique and aesthetics embody the science of art, but not the spirit. Everything, at least in relation to technique, aesthetics, and even anti-anesthetics has been done by previous generations, leaving the artist with little too offer, except for the expression of their own unique vision, while attempting to create work that will be the embodiment of their spirit. As a result, the artists' task is to capture an eternal moment of unity between the spirit, and quite possibly the source of spirit, into an artifact of transcendental experience, which we call ‘art’.

It is interesting that a majority of artists rarely refer to their physical creations as art, but rather a “piece” or a “work”. The only artists that I know that make a concerted effort to refer to the material objects that they produce as ‘art’ are Conceptual artists, since defining your work as art is integral to their dogma. However there are, hopefully, a substantial amount of artists that operate by more modest means, leaving the decision of whether a ‘work’ can validate itself to the viewer and thus be called ‘art’. By attempting to instigate an inner resonate within the viewer, the artist hopes to elicit some kind of resonance within the viewer that may provoke them to call the ‘piece’ a “work of art.”

By speaking of art as a manifestation of spirit, and creativity as a spiritual practice I am hoping to foster within every human being the importance of creativity, not only to human culture and history, but also as a universal tool of psychological growth. The process of creating has the power to, not only liberate us from our problems, but also can successfully sublimate them in perhaps the safes way possible as an alternative to obsessive behaviors, which we call vice. Personally I find that drug abuse and obsessive behaviors like shopping are never effective ways for dealing with inner turmoil and psychological stress.

For example, after receiving a DUI when I was 22 I began to draw at the bars I frequented in order to sublimate the desire to conform to social pressure. Eventually I reached a certain breaking point where the more I would draw in such environments, the more conducive the environment became to me creatively. It's as if my creative spirit began to feed on those energies and used them to create what I call ‘creatures of the collective’, or symbolic representations of those energies which surrounded me. Inevitably these creatures would have an opportunity to confront the sentient beings, which helped create them, as long as they were curious enough to glace over my shoulder. As a result, my early work became a vehicle for my spirit, channeling it towards a self-expression of personal experience and empathy, which, I believe, are some of the most integral aspects of good art.

If we collectively look at creativity as a spiritual discipline, while artists everywhere attempt to foster within everyone the ideal that the creative impulse is universal to all of humanity, and is as valid as anyone else’s, then hopefully we can begin to shift our ideal of art from just another commodity to be bought and sold in the markets of commerce, toward something more comprehensive and universal. I believe this is the most important role that an artist can fulfill. Some artists, for instance Alex Grey and Alan Moore, have gone as far as to refer to the artist as the closest thing in the contemporary world to a Shaman, which I have found to be quite intriguing and perhaps even a fundamental truth. For example, one of the ideals that I think the artist shares with the  Shaman is the ability to view our role in society as a unifier of spiritual energy, through the communion both of the culture and of all sentient being within the cosmos, while channel that energy toward the most advantageous and promising goals possible. This is the most esteemed role of the shaman and should be seen as the function of the artist within society, and the rest of the cosmos.