Moved by the creative desire to find a mental “object” to bring into the world, we proceed by transferring and organising our inner contents. We draw on the expressive energy of the first four workshops, but now with greater complexity and refinement. The aim is to move beyond an immediate instinctive relationship and build a composition that brings together several moments of creation and inspiration. Painting becomes a construction of multiple elements, as though we were moving from writing a poem to composing an epic. External matter elevates and develops inner matter into an energetic entity guided by the artist’s intention, which takes shape as a Purpose. This intention is guided by a connection with what we call Pure Reality. We create a work that functions as an energetic processor or transmuter, removing everything secondary until only what is essential remains on the canvas.
Where do you want to go, and what do you want to become?
We work by integrating the preceding steps, moving beyond them and refining their contents. In workshop 8 we incorporated bodily and internal sensations to guide aesthetic activity; in workshop 9 we learned to translate visual stimuli instinctively and chaotically, then transform them through a process of purification and elevation; in workshop 10 we applied the same transformation to inner stimuli.
In this workshop, now that we know how to transform painting materials, we seek to transfer the most elevated states of energy onto the page: we try to imagine and represent subtle, ethereal sensations. In a sense, we move in the opposite direction from workshops 9 and 10, taking the sensations reached at the end of their purification processes as our starting point.
We revisit our earlier works and ask what can be removed. The goal is to reach the sound of silence: those aesthetic and energetic movements that awaken deep peace, joy, relaxation and freedom in us, along with all the sensations we have sought since the beginning of the course.
We must ask ourselves: what is essential?
We begin to “empty” our first work, retaining only the essential elements. We undertake a kind of pictorial eidetic reduction, questioning and working with essences.
Through this work we may encounter Pure Intentionality: the profound will that moves us without the involvement of the ego, like an energy sustaining all other human beings and perhaps the entire universe.
Our aesthetic aim is to approach what we call Pure Reality, in which the human spirit finds expression by animating the artwork.
This tendency to approach a dimension purified of the anxieties and fears arising from our historical and social existence is what drives transcendental art.
Artistic and Technical Objectives
To interpret imaginative and inner stimuli on the chosen surface using different realistic techniques.
Existential Objectives
To overcome personal fears and prejudices in order to perceive the signs of the sacred both within and around us.
Spiritual Objectives
To seek a deep connection with the subject and “internalise” the vision, carrying it further inward and upward in search of a connection with the Profound.
Workshop Topics
The relationship between art and pure intentionality; the Purpose; the Ascent; Pure Reality or Pure Form.