I was going to post a long blog post about the US election, the two candidates, and the whole deal of the way we do things. It might have been nice add my two cents to the discussion but there was something that I felt was distracting or perhaps more profound more draining. The political can be an animal that becomes a harsh and dominating beast. It can take over ones imagination, energy and time. Picasso's time and energy in creating Guernica, a masterpiece to be sure, could also be seen as having taken his vitality and creativity. So, what I am trying to say is that I wanted to post something about Trump and Hillary, but felt that all I would be doing is posting comments about that and nothing else. 

What am I posting now? I have been reading a great deal of religious and mythic material. Carl Jung's work on the matter. The figure of St. Teresa of Avila, a Catholic mystic of great importance in the 16th Century is someone I find interesting. There is the great sculpture and chapel by Bernini that is a supreme creation. I had know very little of her and any idea what Catholicism is in general. Being at best an agnostic and one who is finding the ideas of Eastern religions and philosophies attractive I wanted to know more. I am reading her writings and what the Catholic Church is. I have been reading a few books by Catholic scholars. I had to do the obvious layman's act and went to the library and checked out "Catholicism for Dummies" book. 

I have the compulsion to make an image that combines, plays with and mixes St. Teresa's mysticism, Christian mystical ideas, Catholic ideas with Buddhist and Eastern views. A scholar of either areas could say that there is not connection or a vague one at best. To be sure, but I am not writing a scholarly book on the differences nor the similarities. I am looking at the way that I respond and reflect on them and were my mind, my imagination and my impulses take me. The wonderful Catholic churches with the myriad of images, the voluptuous interiors that bathe the viewer in sensory stimuli. The catholic imagination is conservative, constrictive, austere and at the same time sexual, the depictions of the martyr's death (how their bodies were tortured, brutalized), the body of Christ as his tortured, his suffering on the crucifix, the naked bodies, the cherubs, Mary forever young, the great saints as old men, half clothed, starving, isolated, testing the limits of their physical endurance to suffering. So much of the body and its desires, its cravings, its limitations as mortal material. The Buddha in his wanderings, leaving a life of physical luxury and princely pleasures into  years of physical denials of food, warmth, pleasure. Finding the middle path between the two. All about the body, our physical and mental cravings, desires, attitudes and behaviors. 

What will this work look like? I have done a few sketches and studies. Its a beginning and I have no idea where it will go. This is the first post about this.