nathan bartley

Words

by Nathan Bartley, 2022

Theses portraits were originally charcoal sketches of sadhus who live on the street around Arunachala mountain,, i chose them because of my deep respect towards them as examples of people who have renounced any interest in material things,, power, money, fame ect,, none but one sketch turned out well, so as i was just starting to learn about oil paint i used the sketches to practice and experiment with oil paint. Through the process of scraping, wiping, pouring oil, turpentine, brush work, the materiality of the paint itself, the marvelous effects began to emerge. At the end of which, although the likeness of the original individual was lost, the images as objects in and of themselves were interesting. The colours, the drips, the scrapings, the happy accidents looked and felt just like the worn down, drip covered surfaces of the actual environment around the mountain, in the temples,, the wonderful peeling paint, layers of dried pigment, incense stains, monkey droppings, pigments of colours thick and thin. The very corporeal nature of the surfaces then linked to the almost mask like quality of my portraits,, affirming the materiality and richness of the surface of life, and linking it to the body, which too goes through a process of wear and tear. The blackened eyes , which i chose to keep, accentuate the physical quality of the paint and lends them a mask like appearance,, which is interesting as it reminds us of the masks we all temporarily wear, then put aside, in favor of a new mask. There's also a subtle reference to the great tradition of Advaita Vedanta which in essence speaks of the death of the mind and separate sense of self, the world and the universe, all occurring within the mind.. and from this death, internally , an emptiness exists,,a non personal yet very personal state of timelessness.

MUSINGS 1

by Nathan Bartley, 2010

         Where there is decay there is also growth. The decay of systems of belief and concepts of identity, the decay of myths, and the dissolving of the experience of opposites is symptomatic of our times and is apart of the “post-modern malaise”.  The modern era with its myth of progress intellectually and aesthetically reached its evolutionary end through a rigorous internal criticism. I’m interested in this reduction that Clement Greenburg talked of in painting and the internal reduction of a spiritual practice aimed at a contact with ones essential self;  “Modernism criticizes from the inside, through the procedures themselves of that which is being criticized” (Clement Greenburg, Modernist Painting).  In Jhana yoga, the mind is used to go beyond the mind. The western artist recognized the need to reduce the picture to its essential nature, eliminating illusion to finally achieve a stasis where subject and object become one. To quote Barnett Newman “We are creating images whose reality is self-evident and which are devoid of the props and crutches that evoke associations ... the image we produce is the self-evident one of revelation”. Mark Rothko wrote ”we are for flat forms because they destroy illusions and reveal truth.” From the eastern point of view the revelation experienced is totally internalized, as the truth of who one is is revealed, which too is self-evident.

The renunciation found in spirituality signals the emergence of ethics with a re-birth of identity. This renunciation is the withdrawing of attention from the objects of perception allowing the mind to go beyond its good/bad dualisms. Modernism left us without illusions and without a myth of progress, which in the inner world marks the true beginning of an inner unfolding. The post-modern age reflected a hopelessness that was based on the reality that modernisms intense desire for unity was never really to come. To quote Micah White; “oppression can be traced back to the way we think… and hope of liberation rests on escaping this binary thinking. The task of the post -modern activist became the blurring of distinctions in order to destroy dualistic thinking”.  This difficult task has been more than adequately addressed by the spiritual and mystical traditions of the east.

  So the post-modern world was born without the illusion of progress to take comfort in and so the wisdom of no escape began to dawn.  In Buddhist thought once form has become empty, emptiness must then return to form, following their two schools of thought, Hinayana and Mahayana.  I work with this re- emergence by way of the contour drawing. The contour leaves the object depicted unmarked while creating a physical trace around the empty shape on the surface of the canvas that becomes a form in and of itself…an object made of paint. So form has been reduced to emptiness and emptiness has been made into form, this blurring of distinctions becomes a sign of the non-dual. Within that basic reversal the interplay of opposites begins. The marks themselves dance between light, and dark, wet and dry, movement and stillness, figurative and abstract, female and male, all the while letting content emerge spontaneously. In past shows like The Salt People the story that emerged also mirrored the form of its creation. The myth of Orpheus and Eurydice is a metaphor for the relationship of opposites. The polarization in this story between Woman and Man is metaphorical for the existence of these opposites within us all. The descent of Orpheus into the underworld to free his wife is analogous to the movement of attention into the dark cavern of our being...the void, the feminine, during self- enquiry or meditation.    

In more recent work the fundamental opposites remain but the story’s characters represent divergent aspects of the psyche bound within a universalized environment whose ground is shared by all. This represents unity in diversity. There is also a focus on structures in decay. I use structures as a metaphor for the internal landscapes of thoughts. I‘ve been examining Marshal McLuhan’s ideas of tools being extensions of our bodies, an exteriorization of bodily systems, a bio-mimicry. I feel we are equally bound to both our internal systems of beliefs, judgments and memories, and our external systems.

Our world exteriorizes itself so our art mirrors our collective attitudes. Modernism pointed the way to the freedom from our limits but created more limitations than before. Post -modernism felt the necessity of freedom but had no more illusions to pursue, no more options. Modernism and post-modernism shared the same goal in disrupting binary thought, but now where do we go? I feel we need to go beyond thought in the subjective realm first to understand who we really are internally, then we can begin to build up systems that reflect that shared understanding of unity within in order to embrace the wonderful diversity of this world. I feel we must all understand that in wisdom we are nothing and in love we are everything.

MUSINGS 2

by Nathan bartley, 2005

An assembly of heads has gathered here concurrently to weigh which one rises above the rest, and the castigated blow , undesired by repentant memories plush with the chances of being disarmed, thunders quietly from beyond the pool of narcissus. Our collective belief owns the moment, and delineates its possibilities for vulgar profit, alas, not one who gathers here tonight has remembered their proclamation of birth. That loss is gain, and gain the weight of atlas at least. 

For vanity’s sake I cast a foul beginning. To rectify our beginnings is seemingly the trajectory of a thousand years not forgotten. Only the mind that fearfully glances back into its beginning can establish a citadel of crystal, of salt. Bricks of salt house our commitment to repetition. 

We all reside here in equality, yet ascribe to this situation a subtlety graded system implemented internally for the benefit of no one but our muse the ancient narcissus. Narcissus as hope ripples eternally. The ultimate system for the ultimate power point presentation.

A quote from Frank Herbert “ Life extension for the rich and powerful poses a similar threat to a (community) as that found historically in the dominance of a self perpetuating bureaucracy. Both assume prerogatives of immortality, collecting more and more power with each passing moment. This is power which draws a theological aura about itself:  the unassailable Law, the god-given mandate of the leader, manifest destiny. Power held too long within a narrow framework moves farther and farther away from the adaptive demands of changed conditions. The leadership grows ever more paranoid, suspicious of inventive adaptations to change, fearfully protective of personal power and, in the terrified avoidance of what it sees as risk, blindly leads its people to destruction”

There is a sacrifice I propose equal to the bombastic conventionality displayed only in the movies which demands a destruction of even our most prized masterpieces. These masterpieces collide against each other in an ongoing pendulum pageantry of excellence, Rooting down our possibility and propping up our expectations. 

The end result being the re-castration of the rogue elephant, its balls regenerate, its weight and delicacy no different for the french as the Spanish, the English, the German. Our history seems trodden by this frustrated beast. 

Form is emptiness , emptiness is form, this is the foundation of true intelligence, lost under the lopsided bureaucracy of the intellect and its puppets. The rectification of this paradox is the severance of the obvious movement towards truth, towards honesty and grace under fire.

The concept of god in all its mighty rhetoric creates a sanctuary of self deceit, a crystallization, a civilization. 

Well defined  insanity runs through the physical features of peoples bodies. It coursed through their veins too like the in the minds of intellectuals with their distaste for things “contaminated” by uselessness. If only they could ponder their enslavement to fashion. Their desire to be branded, like heifers.

To disregard the status quo is to arrest the crystallization process so evident in systems such as our bled aristocracy and their layers of exploitation. The gap, the error is between what we think is true and what is true, vain power needs this gap. Our imaginative re creation of ourselves  is at counterpoint to the real thing , memory serves as the basis for both, doing a great disservice to that which is beyond memory, and beyond the future.

Black appliances named locally for conditions wrested from the ground, smelted with irony and cast in salt. 

At this time Id like to address the audience to name their diseases…..starting here and moving sequentially to the back. 

Are there no diseases here?   WE should count ourselves among the minority, and celebrate our intended immortality with a tip of the hat to toxic avoidance. 

Who isn’t a god, who isn’t a human, Silence is our prison in questions which probe the nuances of greed. Do you see us leashing cats, reduced to a monoculture of amplified exchange. A cosmic game of import, export?  Why has so simple a dance been brought to such a mystery? Cant the womb of the not knowable recount its pleasure in the known without lip service? Pure psychophysical flux is but the pendulum swing between these two disparaging camps…on…off…on….off…..the old in and out. The quantum dictate.

Nuns will be nuns…..

We all participate in the grandiose history of humankind, none are barred from the court. None of us are devoid of the power to contribute and contradict. To act and to change.

But…..if we weren’t born royal or rich we can still create our own intrigue, our own hierarchy and fiction and we do, we forge from squalor our coups, our succeeding, our overthrowing and our exile. A fiction to exalt us yet still we forget this fiction makes fictitious victims real, our gamesmen thus create a microcosm of the larger, believable drama played daily by the ruling class.  Let us remember our lot in life and rejoice in our actual equality, not fester in the illusion of success. For success as any mystic will tell you is failure and failure, as any poet will deny is success.

I am the offspring of an aristocracy designed to fail, designed to colonize. It has wavered in its conquest, and I hack the hands of thieves, and burn the eyes of the blind to reassure myself that this dream was never mine to begin with. Karma is energy, and duality is merely heat, ask anybody who resents not speaking. I acquiesce in a pool of regret for the force of the folly that my heritage strips to sell on e-bay. I could have been a pencil dicked banker. Or a wanted golf pro put- putting for the fun of it.

If you came here to hear about the creative process ask yourself why? Tonight, before you brush your teeth, ask yourself “of what  value have I been to the memory I serve?” Can I really be that which casts itself in bronze in the courtyard of the unknowable?  Will “never”  happen?  Will always be forgotten? 

Death is nearer my sublime teacher than I. For I is not mine and I will live on beyond me. As I is common to us all, I is my master.

All this talk of the meaning and un-meaning of it all can be reduced to this triumphant moment where flesh and flesh, mind and mind, through the friction of duality are made still in the infinite, useless now. And why we rouse the affection of ourselves is unduly to unite what we cant be in a moment where cock sinks into the fleshy vestibule of our beloved, casting off the past, melting the crystallization of our past into an ocean of simple, peaceful uselessness. With what expense ,with what accumulation, with what ownership?

So single a state it is, the silence beyond the function which we prohibit. The greatest secret of all time is that it is free and available to all, at anytime, the planets of blood attest to it and bleed for the absolute. Will you  not listen to your own listener? You who by Ishwara our identities unite?

Lay down your hierarchies for they are not true as 1 turns to 8 … 8 to 9….   9  to 12, our laws are simulacrums of an infinity beyond knowing. WE  are bodies of earth. 

At his time I ask you to turn to your neighbours and trust, feel, and relax into them. They are you without doubt

Now ask…..did you choose who would be sitting in this room with you tonight?

The work here is both vain and ironic.  It vacillates between a curious dismemberment, and an attempt to build  what won’t be built, or which may be constructed but only temporarily. There is no money back guarantee. I hesitantly wish to illuminate that which usually goes unrecognized. And the irony is that it only works in virtue unrecognized and so the vanity is my own salt persons program to gain power. What noble artist can survive unbeknownst to the eyes which employ him? To what degree can one stay quiet knowing to speak is to bring to consciousness that which can only operate unconsciously?  A noble cause is my only option in a world which is locked in a vault. The iridescent glory of heaven , earth, and the active principle which unites the two….man…..can not be owned, and thus I mimic the design of success and  fear the result of it simultaneously. Capricious….like Goya, and impossible. Like the cash cow jumping over the moon.

The only reward is the emptying process, not the gain. And how many know it, innocence isn’t something to loose and regain n old age, despite the archetype itself, rather instead why loose it to begin with and propose to have ones cake and eat it too.? How about matrimony instead of the one who gains to the one who will never want? A two legged race and decidedly slower than an american dream. 

My basic question put here is how the insane trends of planned obsolescence can be so trendy that those who deny their own future by buying into the commodity market are rewarded with the honors that once were given to those who simply loved,,,without it being a competition?  The understanding that a rich man will never fit through he eye of the needle is a quantum equation, not an ancient proverb. But how do you  understand this? By adding it to your heap of diamonds, the diamonds of knowledge that cuts the throat of your competition? 

This show speaks about the paradox of having/not having. And by its sheer existence weather intellectually held, proves that perhaps less is more after all. Because what I have, and what I show is a movement. It metaphorically mirrors the very intangible moment that we now inhabit, that is so easily avoided, that can so easily be squandered if one is caught within the substructure of society, the underlying current of gain which I call “the myth of progress.”

MUSINGS 3

by Nathan Bartley, 2011

It was always evident to me the link between the mystical traditions of the east and the development of painting in the west from the nineteenth century into the twentieth. The breakdown of the recognizable image, whether due to the invention of the camera or the ideas of science, resulted in modern art, with its tendency toward expressionism, then geometry, then colour fields devoid of any suggestion of spatial illusion. This seemed like a liberation, and Clement Greenburg sealed the deal with his astute theory of "flat" and the recognition and guidance towards the merging of subject with object. The reality though was that artist's only co-opted the simulacrum of transcendence. The achievement of the high modernist period was a mime of mysticism and although consistent intellectually and aesthetically it remained closed to the whole picture. The allure of modern art was that it seemed that anybody could do it.. (which isn't true at all, but it looks easier to paint than, say, a Vermeer). Barnett Newman's voice of fire is an example of this, so too is Jackson Pollock's awesome piece Lucifer. The reductionist ethic did have its merits though. If applied to the human organism, the human systems and the mind this ethic would take root in society. The result of all this was a rebellion against big ideas, truth, and freedom. It was as if the modernist failure catalyzed a depth of cynicism that has continued up to this day. Irony, camp, facetiousness, and the feeling that truth is an unworthy pursuit pushed us further into a kind of post-modern malaise...life being considered meaningless, hopeless, so why not just have fun, forget the big questions, stay on the surface of things and comment on the material aspects life ....Jeff Koons comes to mind, his joyful superficiality was a perfect representation of the 80's. But honestly, the big questions have been asked from the beginning and won't be quelled by theories. The prison cell of the intellect, although decorated with fine modern art, is simply limited. Innocence, earnestness, courage, simplicity, transparency, silence.....this is the new cool. Peace, however corny, is still possible, love, despite the sixties, is never out of style. In fact, the progression into futility is an inevitable and required stage of a real spiritual evolution, en masse, or individually which is where my interests lay. I think about the impetus for Chinese landscape painting in the time of the dynasties. At that time painting was a reflection of Buddhist and Taoist spiritual practices. The merit of the work was in its discipline and subtlety, and in Japan, its economy of means. ..Ink, ..water, ..paper..... Simple.... Painting and calligraphy was also closely associated with chi, martial arts, and magic. Today, spirituality is as informed by science as it is by ancient traditions. My belief is that our scientific and more specifically quantum understanding is now mirroring what Marcel Duchamp was interested in in the early twentieth century. The ideas of chance, the observer and the observed, Advaita Vedanta, the unpredictability of matter, and the understanding of "oneness" are all coalescing. Nothing is determined, nothing is real, everything is determined, everything is real....here lies the paradox that marks our time. In Buddhist thought Hinayana states that first form must become empty, then in Mahayana, emptiness returns to form. And so considering all this, painting pictures for me has become an act of "controlled folly". Its like the old saying goes... before enlightenment chop wood, carry water, after enlightenment chop wood, carry water. The enlightenment referred to here being the high modernist period of western painting.