Art as an altered state

Making art for me… is not unlike a slow moving, constrained–but not entirely contolled–mystical experience. I’ve always known this, but not always… how to put this? … consciously. Only recently has it seemed to flow together as one thing, aware that this is what I’m doing when I say, I’m making art.

This is the story of LSD told by a concerned yet hopeful father, organic chemist Albert Hofmann. He traces LSD’s path from a promising psychiatric research medicine to a recreational drug sparking hysteria and prohibition. We follow Dr. Hofmann’s trek across Mexico to discover sacred plants related to LSD, and listen in as he corresponds with other notable figures about his remarkable discovery. Underlying it all is Dr. Hofmann’s powerful conclusion that mystical experience may be our planet’s best hope for survival. Whether induced by LSD, meditation, or arising spontaneously, such experiences help us to comprehend;the wonder, the mystery of the divine in the microcosm of the atom, in the macrocosm of the spiral nebula, in the seeds of plants, in the body and soul of people. More than sixty years after the birth of Albert Hofmann’s problem child, his vision of its true potential is more relevant, and more needed, than ever.

LSD My Problem Child: Reflections on Sacred Drugs, Mysticism and Science

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LSD My Problem Child: Reflections on Sacred Drugs, Mysticism and Science

Remembering Rosebud

When I was kid I had one of those sets of blocks, large, plain wood blocks: cubes, cylindars, arches. I would spend hours building impossible structures. Asymetrical, precarously balanced cantilevard towers. Order courting chas.

I was remembering this as I worked the other day–,how many of my paintings are like that. Shapes and pieces that don’t quite fit together, puzzles that have no finished shape. Order courting chaos.

It certainly had to do with how arranging scraps of trash on a table brought me back into making art. Maybe I should name all of my paintings: Rosebud.

#757 Watercolor, ink 9×12.