“Intuition gives outlook and insight; it revels in the garden of magical possibilities as if they were real.” (Carl Jung)
Instinct is something I have learned to listen to through dabbling with meditation. I know what you’re thinking—how everyone and their dog bangs on about it these days—but I take a pragmatic view. Not keen on the word spiritual, nor do I believe in chakras, Buddha, or doctrines, but I like the primal feeling of a group chant and the philosophy of Zen, which calms my mind. I won’t worship a god or follow a religious construct and refuse to ‘believe’, yet, meditation has made me more aware of instinctive sensations in my body when I align with nature.
Which brings me back to painting. That intuition which is in us all, whether we are aware of it or not, is what I am attempting to paint. Some work merely reaches towards its edge, and I’m not sure I have yet made a painting which goes further than that. Onwards in pursuit.
Painting is about time—time spent with an idea, an idea borne from a response to instinct. Instinctive response, followed by thought, followed by idea followed by time imbued with intuition. Some argue that painting comes from their complicated intellectual thought processes, above the initial gut-wrenching burst of instinctual feeling in the body.
We know spending time in nature does us good but are fuzzy about why. We know water makes us relax, looking at the stars soothes our minds, listening to rain helps us sleep. My theory is experiencing the natural world is a fundamental requirement, speaking to our instinct and it reminds us of our place within the bigger picture of the natural world.