Scott Prairie-- The Journey Inside
A personal art journal with paintings, drawings and recent reflections
Scott Prairie 5/21/04 Taipei, Taiwan
More than ten years ago, while I was in my late twenties, I was suffering or should I say celebrating, the beginning of a dramatic transformation; a breakdown of sorts where my sense of self was rapidly collapsing and becoming the rich earth that would later give the fruits of renewal.
During this time I grasped onto creative work --- painting and music making, like a man in the desert reaches for water, like a burned man reaches for soothing medicine. Painting and creating was a way to "safely explode" and give birth to energies that could no longer be contained. I was extremely fortunate to have the resources to sustain the process or I, like so many would have died from this "dying".
Now in 2004, the long spiral path that has taken me to myself (and Taiwan!) has led me to offer this work to others. I am extremely grateful to be where I am --- internally and externally. I have a loving partner and my life is filled (sometimes overfilled) with making and sharing art and music.
It is my hope that this personal art journal can share with others some of the beauty and mystery of the journey. Beyond that I hope to encourage others to see that finding a "way"; a space, a place, a container to express and explore ourselves is an incredible healing gift that we can give to ourselves. The contents, feelings and thoughts, inside this beautiful, vulnerable sensitive creation that is called a "human being" are as vast as an ocean.
My personal beliefs are shaped by many experiences and exposures to belief systems that I have been attracted to and needed at different times in my life. They range and travel through many forms of psychological spiritual and artistic conceptions. I offer bits and pieces of ideas and realizations that have been particularly important in the writings that accompany the pictures in this book. However I want to emphasize my belief that there is no one right way. It has been my experience that the process of living a life is the most creative of all processes. The choices we make to "dis-cover" our true selves is best guided by a compassionate and courageous commitment to stay true to whatever best serves what our soul is hungry for and we should protect this search the way a mother bear protects her baby bear.
It is my hope that this book could offer some light and encouragement to this kind of seeker.
A Dangerous Display
by Lin Chi Wei
This is an exhibition of photographic prints from a mixed media visual journal that includes painting, text and collage. They were selected from the two hundred original images that are contained in the complete journal, produced fourteen years ago. The journal records a very intense period of spiritual development and transformation for Scott.
These fifteen or so images that have captured the book’s contents are separated from the book they reside in, and separate from the context of the journal in its entirety. They are also apart from the immediate interpretation of the original creator, and apart from the time and space of creation. The ways they will be viewed and understood are subject to the new context of this current exhibition. When they are hung on the walls of a contemporary art gallery, it is unavoidable that the contemporary context will dictate the way the audience will view them, and under this circumstance, it is difficult to see them for what they really are. This is the focus point of discussion for this writing. Concepts such as heroism, individualism, original creation, professionalism, objectiveness, format, composition, self-reference and de-contextualization all are totems and taboos that are subject to scrutiny according to the prevailing notions of what makes “contemporary art”. However, Scott’s works do not easily fit within the confines of contemporary art values.
Scott’s paintings and drawings are an out-picturing of self transformation as it is occurring through creative work. They are not intending to display and are not guided by the rules of external composition, but rather by internal awareness and by a seeking for something beyond the current condition. There is no theme; therefore, there is no object which it is their goal to create. The work is a subjective experience. The main effort is the release of multiple layers of restriction, and the freeing of a transcendent creative spirit. These unintentional works place us as an audience in a dangerous territory. We have no way of foreseeing where such unrestrained creativity might lead us and no way of restraining the result or affect this encounter may have on our contemporary rationalism. The safety line ceases to exist and we are, as one of the images in the exhibition is entitled “free falling”. When pure creative expression, in this case, drawings and paintings, bypass the notion of “artistic genre”, and are no longer possessed by the preset questions constructed by contemporary art, what then have they become? What questions do such drawings raise? Do the audiences really have the courage to allow themselves to gaze at these drawings with a naked eye? Are the audiences truly prepared to dialogue with the messages and callings sent from afar by these drawings, and also are they prepared to be changed by the experience?
A baby’s face is magical in the sense that it allows joyous laughter to be followed in the next moment by grief and crying with these emotional changes leaving no trace of the previous experience. The final page of Scott’s journal is full of fluid colors and patterns. It is a water color drawing that seems to have no theme yet it clearly directs us somewhere. Although it is only water color and paper, it has already taken off from the boundary of art.
Blue Horse in Heaven
Look to the sky
Look inside
See a scene
From a timeless dream
Something is happening deep inside you
Do you know what it is ?
--Blue Horse Painting Story
The ideas for the paintings in my books all sort of materialize the moment I sit down to paint. I believe in making a space and then allowing energy to flow into it. My task is to channel the expression as directly as possible from some unconscious region inside me onto the paper. In this painting as I was connecting with a certain kind of emotional space, a very clear image came to me. Most often the shapes and figures in my painting are totally brand new creations in the moment, crystallizing an internal feeling. This time as I began to paint, I remembered a very powerful experience I had about a year earlier, doing a Native American ritual called "Vision Quest". I was fortunate to find a wise teacher who was of the Lakota tribe and I had been participating in a number of ceremonies he directed over the years. The orange house you see in the painting represents a small structure called a "sweat lodge" in which a ceremony is performed that involves bringing rocks that have been heated in a fire into the structure and placed in a small pit in the center. People sit on the ground around the pit in the dark and listen to the prayers of the leader and join in singing and offering their own prayers in the hot dark steamy space. The leader pours water on the hot rocks at special moments in the ceremony and this intensifies the heat. The feeling you get inside is of being purified and of being very close to Mother earth. Possibly you are pushed to let go of fear or discomfort and to reach out to a greater power to guide or protect you.
In my case we performed a sweat lodge ceremony before I began my vision quest. A vision quest is simple. It is basically a period of time where a person stays out alone in the wilderness and "cries for a vision" to the "Great Spirit". The Vision Quest is a time when an individual clarifies what is important in their life and seeks guidance from a higher power to know which way to go. In my case I was in a forest in Minnesota , it could also be done in a desert or in the mountains. I stayed for two days, during which I fasted and only drank water. Actually my stay was kind of short compared to others which last up to ten days, but my health wasn't so stable at that time. During the Vision Quest I prayed and hiked and meditated. After the second night I was singing at the edge of a lake that was surrounded by trees and hills. I had the feeling of being enclosed in a magical space, a natural cathedral and I felt my voice echoing with a power that was much bigger than my own singular small voice. I felt myself opening and then overflowing with grief, touching a place that cried out, "I don't want to be alone". It was a moment of deep understanding and realization about what was important and necessary in my life. The Native Americans believe that the "Great Spirit will provide you with what you need" and a few moments later I got a chance to test the depth of my commitment to my new understanding. The area I was staying was very remote and I was told it was very unlikely that I would see anyone during my time there. However as I made my way back to the sweat lodge where I has slept the last two nights, a very funny looking guy with a big dog on a long rope came awkwardly into the area. My first reaction was to be a little mad because his dog running all over an area where people had made special preparations and considered to be sacred, also I had expected to be by myself. However I remembered my prayer of about thirty minutes earlier and stopped myself from being short tempered and instead was kind and patient with his questions. Actually it felt quite good to be nice to him and he didn't stay long before continuing on his hike. After he left I reflected that this was the lesson that the universe or Great Spirit had to teach me, that if you don't want to be alone then you have to make a space where others can meet you. You have to be willing to let them in. The Native Americans and many other spiritual traditions that are open to the mysterious aspects of spiritual understanding believe that these kind of "synchronicities" or specially timed experiences and coincidences happen at just the right moment when they can teach you something. They also believe that such events are a sign that you are on the right path and "doing exactly what you should be doing in exactly the right place" in regard to your spiritual learning process.
My painting came from a moment about a year later when I sat down to paint and connected with that magical mysterious experience. The man between the trees, the lake the sweat lodge and the mysterious image in the sky are my expressions to describe the feeling of awe I had in that place. After completing the painting I felt grateful to revisit the experience. Making the painting helped me to go deeper into the feelings and realizations and remember them again in the present.
Eat That Guy
Eat me, eat me, I don't care
Maybe I'll find peace down there
Maybe I will finally see
In being eaten
I feel free
Maybe the question stated by William Shakespeare, "to be or not to be" isn't the most important one. The real question, deep in our hearts, is "to be or not be eaten". Man is a spiritual being on a human journey. However, we still are subject to the "laws of the jungle". We try to have faith and at the same time soothe the fears of our animal nature.
Face Reality
I need you
But I am so afraid
Of you
Sometimes the veil lifts
I see where I have been
My longing for love
But my fear of the circumstances
That will come with it
Birds
The bird that eats
The bird that watches
Noted myth scholar and historian Joesph Cambell quoted these lines from a Zen teaching story to describe two different ways people live in the world. I selected some images I felt were suitable.
Almost Touch
A TENSE YET EXCITING ENCOUNTER THAT COMES AT THE PROSPECT OF ………………………..intimacy.