OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOH

I started a new job just the other week, and it’s going really well. But understandably, there’s a period of adjustment that comes. It’s not just the wall of new information and people that one must process, but for myself, this is the first time I’ve been in a structured workforce-type situation in about 8 years.

Having to be somewhere, at a specific time, and then stay in that place for a specific period of time, it’s all very strange and compelling to me right now

No doubt it’ll become normal soon enough. But for the time being, it’s quite a lot to accommodate. It makes doing a silly little project, like writing a blog post once a week, become a new challenge altogether. I welcome this (but I am tired)

A fortnight ago I mentioned that I was once quite into painting. Shortly after I wrote that, I stumbled across a folder from an old Instagram rip I'd forgotten about. It contained many of the paintings I did back then. I had actually thought I’d lost all record of some of these so it’s been fun to look at them, and get into the mindset of what I was up to at the time.

L’artiste, 2016. Completely off on one

Vibes all the way down

As the title of the post speaks to, this was a quite short and psychedelically charged time in my life. The period in question really got going after going to Boom in 2016, camping out around Órgiva (iykyk) and heading through Morocco – all of this at once sorta uncorked a visionary pipeline in my energy body. Prime white guy spirituality stuff 🤷 the allegations cannot be beaten

Idk, if you’re reading this you probably know how these psycho-spiritual synchronicity laden adventures tend to play out. Suffice to say I came back consumed with a desire to paint (in fact, I came back with a plan to sell all my things and live on the street in Spain as a painter, which did end up happening – but that’s a story for another time)

What do I think about these paintings now? I think they're earnest, playful, arguably best viewed with entheogens, and a wee bit manic. The Lysergic Years ended disruptively in a 'The Tower'-coded collapse. But key seeds for what ultimately followed after the dust settled had been planted or foretold in these creative offerings.

Oh, I guess I should say something about the process here for a second. The majority of these paintings are pretty direct portraits of spirits that visited me in my “studio” during this time, either in dreams, beyond the veils, or by light of day. Stoked.

The paintings are also all pretty rough and ready, and born from experimentation with acrylics with literally zero research. The naivety was an intended feature, rather than a bug. I was also super into thick black lines, not so much for their cartoony effect, but due to how they distorted when tripping. I thought an awful lot about cave art too.

If you get the message, hang up the phone

For my new venture into painting this Venus year I want to up my understanding of materials and theory, so that I can do more with less and try out different things. I’m also much more interested in paintings as processes and carriers of intent / as hypersigils, than I am with simply creating windows and mirrors into hidden places and people.

The experiences I had back then were about discovery, and about dismantling some sticky lingering received assumptions about reality. It was a time suffused with white hot energy. I’m in a different place now, one much more at ease and in acceptance with how weird everything actually is haha, but certainly no less amazed

Anyway, on with the show!!

The Hunt

Pretty sure this is the first one I did, it has all the elements I was keen to play about with like the thick lines, psychedelic/visionary elements and archaic symbols. it’s also by far the crudest imo, which makes sense

Singing Mountains

it’s so weird this one, like is he sucking that mountain, singing it or eating it. Idk, I think it was a free associative accident that this ended up the way it did. It still feels pretty good to look at though, I like the way it rises

Heartmaze

This is the first one I did that I really liked, and I still do. It’s got so much I find interesting to look at, and I remember that the orange centre would blaze with rippling fire when I looked at it

Yantra

Started to get a bit more of a handle on the way I could use colour here, idk it’s just wild lol that orange is face melting, but I love the way the colours of the yantra itself sorta radiate

Spirit Canoe

Another with a bigger focus on archaic imagery. I was just so obsessed with labyrinths at the time, I couldn’t stop drawing them

Curandera

I remember the visitation by this being so well, and it’s such a curious (loud) foreshadowing of my time to come as an ayahuascero

Tantrika

this was fun, I remember it being very process based. Like there’s actually two or three interrelated paintings in layers beneath this one. It was an evolving image that took longer to paint. This marked a turning point, where I began to focus on sitting with a particular painting for a longer period of time and used it to map symbols and omens playing out in my life

Floresta

Pretty straight up venus veneration here, this was the biggest canvas I did. Again there are images beneath this image known mysteriously only to myself

Cernnunos

Quite a stylistic departure from previous ones, this also marked a turning point in my life away from a more overt psychedelic focus. I had basically burned out from it. This was made around the winter solstice, and has such a presence, the whole thing came through and was painted in a very short time

Prophecy

This is an interesting one, not so much for its design/technique, but for what it represented. It was basically a warning and a ward all in one. It spoke to the consequences of me remaining in a very damaging relationship. It was around this time that my paintings became less about visionary work, and instead became more expressly divinatory. I was painting a lot of channelled poems at the time as well, none of which survive – but which were very oracular in origin and impact

Saturnus

The last major painting from this period, it was intended as veneration ahead of my coming saturn return. It was what I was working on when The Tower hit, and this piece was actually ritually destroyed as part of what went down