Damien Hirst Painting

Alright, so ...

Art Solutions isn't exactly art therapy although to be sure it's that as well.

It's a kind of in depth communication with yourself and the universe at that, and it is designed to bring about change.

I have trouble with art.

Haha, I can imagine folk coming across my work and saying now, "Yeah, damn right you do ..."

But as all true artists, I try to ignore that and go one regardless ...

So, I have trouble with art.

This is not just my personal trouble of school art trauma, various mental, emotional, spiritual and physical art related beatings over the decades, my own reversals over what art is, what it's for, how you do it, how you do it honourably, and what to do with it once you've made it.

There is more.

Artists and especially painters have a weird powerfield surrounding them; there's the whole madness/cutting off of the ear thing, there's a lot of "starving artist" stuff; there's persecution, loads of that and it's still happening in so many places in the world. There's that whole 3rd Reich art reversal which now denotes that if you do anything that's beautiful, you're a Nazi; I'm German so that doesn't help.

There's the responsibility of the artist to control their energies and their output as not to create any more screams which make life worse, not better, for everyone concerned. Controversial, to be sure, but that's one of my things, what can I say.

There's the major weirdness surrounding the price of art. How works of art are traded for ridiculous sums and others are not and how that works, where the merit in it lies, what the cause and effect of any type of reward is in creating original works of art.

This links back to the fact that unless you find someone to pay you for your art, how can you be an artist? If the villagers don't put some food outside the shaman's hut on a fairly regular basis, what's he gonna do? Start ploughing, chasing pigs around and milking goats instead of communing with the spirits? And if you do, are you a farmer or are you a shaman?

Dear oh dear ...

There is also another thing.

I had a moment of revelation with Damien Hirst's Crystal Skull.

The first time I saw an image on TV and heard about it, I thought immediately, "If I had that kind of money, OF COURSE I would have covered my Mirrorman in diamonds rather than in glass shards!" That was an interesting moment; many things flashed through in an instance, as it tends to do when you're having a real threshold shift.

I've always wondered what money was for. I really couldn't see a use in it beyond a nice house somewhere quiet where you can see the sky, a larder full of food and a bit extra for toys. I also had no idea that you can just have an idea for art and then get other people to make it for you, and it's still your art.

Honestly, I didn't know that.

I really thought you have to make things yourself and this had saddened me on the grounds that if I wanted to make a bronze sculpture, how long would it take me to learn the basics of it and get good enough at it, get a workshop and all the kit to make the damned thing?

But if you don't have to do that, if you can just go to a suitably foundry and say, right guys, this is what I want, make it for me - well then I could "realise" some of the things I've had in my mind for many years. I think of them and always sigh because I thought they were impossible.

But they're not if you have enough money. Then you can "realise your dreams" in a whole new way. That's amazing! And that also means that you can't possibly ever have enough money, or too much money. Imagine a Mirrorman made of diamonds and it's 30 feet tall, 300 feet tall ... LOL ...

For sure that's a bit of a joke but I'd love to make one entirely constructed from prisms. Hollow inside. Huge. And then wait for the sun to strike it on Winter Solstice!!! Wow!

It's like I went "Oh my God - now I know what money is FOR!" when I saw DH's skull. So thank you very much, hallelujah, and wow for inspiring me so profoundly :-) That's what art can do, that's what art surely is all about!

Now Damien Hirst is the world's most successful artist - ever. In the history of all of human kind. That's pretty awesome, so I used the Damien Hirst vibe as a part of the woven set up for this symbol painting. It's difficult to sum up in words but it was something along the lines of, "Sort me out, set me free, catalyse the next level of unfoldment, do what must be done to make it so!"

And that was pretty heartfelt. And mindfelt, soulfelt, everythingfelt.

Once you have that energy, the desire, and it's powerful and rising, you do the lines in art solutions and get the process for a symbol painting underway.

Yeah ... so that's what I've been doing for the last four days and five nights pretty much straight, and man, that was a ride and a half!

Thank God for the Bank Holiday Monday ... I promise I shall never complain about it again. I really needed it to re-assemble myself and finalise the painting in peace.

OK, enough talking.

Here's the Damien Hirst painting. Bless it and bless Damien Hirst - the most successful artist who ever lived!!!

To quote David Bowie, "It's uncertain if I like it, but I know I really love it ... it's a crash course for the ravers ..."

Silvia Hartmann

Monday, May 7th, 2012

	From the start, I wanted a black "living black" background for my Damien Hirst painting. It's rough and made up of layers of different types of black.
	It looks pretty black though through ordinary eyes and in ordinary lighting. That was also part of the plan.
	This is the path of the symbol painting. I traced it after the fact with a vector drawing program because at the time I was too engaged to remember to take a photo at this stage; I normally do. I was just dying to get the black on asap and before the inner colours were done, which is also unusual. Still, these things have a life of their own and do what they want ... with me ...
	Between the image above and this one which was taken on May 7th 2012, 21.03, there lies four days and five nights of just ... I can't begin to describe it. A million memories, a million stories, a million feelings, wrestling with all sorts. Hehe I guess unless you've ever been involved in something like that ... I guess you just had to be there ... There are many peculiar features about this painting. Including that at one point, I had a major threshold shift (one of dozens, maybe more) and I thought, I'm a writer. I'm going to write something on this painting. Not overly revolutionary you might think but it was for me. I've never done that before. I've always kept painting/art well away from writing. I wrote some of my favourite quotes and some little thoughts on art, such as "Art is magic" in black on the black background. If you really look for them, you can see them just about. I've taken a couple of photos with weird light settings to make some samples visible.
	Throughout all of this, a Mirrorman was watching :-) And do I see a crown of lights ... :-) ?
	Something else I haven't done or seen before was the occurrence of Genius Symbols on a symbol painting. But once I started looking, I saw a few more ...
	Obviously, there's the space symbol right in the middle, and that shape below definitely could be a friend ... :-) There are more, if you know TGS you can see how many you can spot.
So that's the Damien Hirst Painting, fresh off the press. It's done. Phew with a capital PHEW. Tomorrow, I will have a go at taking a better photograph of it but for now, I just wanted to move the process on to the next stage and declare this DONE. Fat lady singing ... :-)