Martin Lawes
Creating art through 'becoming music'

My paintings, examples of which are reproduced above and below, involve my intuitively being drawn to music which I then listen to repeatedly whilst I paint. For this I use short extracts of music that is especially meaningful to me, each extract lasting around a minute and a half. I typically repeat such an extract for several hours at a time as I work on a painting, the process repeated on many different occasions over a period of weeks and sometimes months until the painting is finished. Repeating the music never feels like repeating the same experience. Rather it is a way of ever deepening into the present moment experience of the music until I feel that I have 'become the music' in a way that transforms my state of consciousness. It is only out of this that the painting emerges authentically in the way I work. 'Becoming the music' involves feeling immersed in it as though I am living within the music, continually aware of its transformative presence, whereas at other times I may listen but my mind wander and I lose awareness of the music at times.

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With the paintings reproduced below, I have not identified what the music is that I used. The title of each painting nevertheless relates in some way to the piece chosen, though not in a way that would necessarily be easy to identify. Lumen naturae in three of the titles is in alchemy the hidden light of nature which illuminates its own darkness. Alchemy is the forerunner of modern chemistry and has ancient roots in both the Eastern and Western traditions. In its Western form, alchemy combined chemistry, medicine and mysticism, the aim being to transform base metals into gold, cure disease and prolong life. In the twentieth century, Jung, the Swiss psychiatrist and psychotherapist, understood alchemy metaphorically. He believed images of gold in ancient texts and in his client's dreams, for example, to be symbolic expressions of the origin and goal of individuation, the process of becoming whole as a human being where opposites are brought into contact and inner and outer, spirit and matter are reunited. Profound spiritual insight can be associated with the lumen naturae of alchemy which goes beyond a more conventional Western dualistic understanding of light being separate from, and even opposite to darkness, as in Christian religious mythology, for example. Rather lumen naturae is a luminous darkness beyond duality - “a darkness no longer light’s contrary but a point of possibility in which light and dark both have their invisible origin” (Marlan, 2005, The black sun: The alchemy and art of darkness, p. 209). 

 

Beyond this explanation of the meaning of lumen naturae, the titles of my paintings are intended to be both evocative and ambiguous, so as not to convey a precise meaning but be open to endless possibilities of interpretation. My experience of the music and painting is personal to me. Viewers generally, I believe, both consciously and unconsciously create their own experience of a painting which they really connect with, giving the painting personal meaning for them, whether they can put this meaning into words or not. All art experienced generally to be meaningful lives beyond the intension of the artist in this sense.

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When I create a painting out of the experience of having 'become the music', I usually have very little idea what the finished painting might look like when I begin, the process controlled more unconsciously than consciously when successful. There is often much reworking and transformation of the material along the way, so the the history of the painting's creation is present in the finished work. Trusting the process and what I feel unconsciously led to do is important, even if that means reworking a part of the painting in progress I had come to like, or transforming or adding something that seems to make no sense initially and might even ruin the painting! Working with 'creative accidents' is often an essential part of the process too.

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A painting is finished when it feel imbued with subjectivity, when it feels real, authentic and integrated as a whole. When a painting feels true to my inner experience in this way, it always has a sense of unfathomable spatial depth. Associated with this is a sense of meaning that is inexhaustible, that can be endlessly created anew and evolve in the act of looking again at the painting. There is often the sense for me of a successful painting containing multiple, even opposing or contradictory meanings simultaneously. Such meaning is at one level personal to me, but at the same time feels universal and even transpersonal, beyond words. 

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Painting for me is an act of courage and integrity, where I sometimes find myself painting what I do not consciously want to paint at all, yet feel is important and needs to be done, the result always deeply satisfying. The creative process often has a death-rebirth rhythm as the great Austrian theorist and teacher of painting at Goldsmiths College Anton Ehrenzweig so insightfully wrote about in his seminal 1967 publication The Hidden Order of Art. The dying aspect relates to letting go of conscious control and 'surrendering to the powers of the deep'. This can initially feel like a kind of entrapment in death and be anxiety provoking (the alchemical process as psychological metaphor involving a similar descent into darkness and death). That is until the creative process works through when healing, rebirth and liberation occur, often in totally unexpected ways. For instance in the way a painting's 'problems', aesthetic, psychological, emotional and spiritual are finally resolved. Successfully completing a painting for me nevertheless always depends on having 'become the music' I've chosen to work with. The painting is then a kind of expression of the music that also has a life of its own.

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I can sometimes see the influence of other painter's work, with evolving themes where a painting may rework or transform a theme also explored in previous paintings. Although I am a therapist, I do not consider my paintings as 'therapy'. All art-making could be conceived in this way of course - that all creative artists are in some sense engaging in a therapeutic activity. This is as valid a perspective as any other but can also be a bit limiting in terms of what people may associate with the idea of painting as therapy.

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Rather, painting, for me is a way of being. It is a way to be creatively in touch with aspects of what feels real and true not just of my own personal experience but of human experience and experience itself more universally. Art provides a unique way to accept reality just as it is - it is an affirmation of being in every respect. I cannot be in touch with the truths my paintings express (at least for me) in any other way, hence their value and the way they so deeply nurture my sense of wellbeing 'beyond words'.

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I will end with a favourite quotation about meaning in the creative arts. This comes from Ken Wilber's 2001 publication The Eye of Spirit: An Integral Vision for a World Gone Slightly Mad:​