In 1991 I traveled to India for the second time in my life. I traveled to the ashram of Bhavagan Sri Sathya Sai Baba, located in a little village called Puttapharti, (Approximately 100 miles North of Bangalore). During my five week stay I was put to work with an international collaboration of artists, writers, and poets to create an installation for the soon to open Sai Museum.
One of the artists I worked with on a daily basis was a Yugoslavian named Radhe Terzic. He gave me this greeting card with an image on it. The story goes as follows...
Radhe was sitting alone in his studio when he fell into a trance. He was consciously aware he was in the trance, when he observed his hand move to pick up one of his paint brushes and then move to his palette. Over the next 30 minutes the brush he was holding moved from palette to canvas a number of times, mixing and blending with colors unknown. In amazement his hand never moved to clean the brush. It just kept moving back and forth, up and down, back and forth...
In the end, this was the image that was produced on the canvas.
The Abstract Expressionists, Surrealists, of the Late 19Th, early 20Th Century (Matisse, Klee, Picasso, Kandinsky, Miro, Dali), dabbled in what today is termed "Automatic Painting". Where they would place themselves in a trance in front of their canvas and watch they channeled the 4Th Dimension move through their body and limbs. This extraordinary approach to creating something that was unusual, and unique served to open the minds and arts of contemporary society and continues to serve as a conduit for heightened creativity of 21 Century artists, writers, and poets.
In what seems an end, the veil is thinning, and opens our minds to a new beginning.