These paintings are centered on the new thinking surrounding the energy and potential within everything, everywhere that has existed throughout all time. Think of them of from the perspective of visual questions which are directed at our understanding of what animates all of life. They attempt to capture the concept of motion for the tiny quantum particles which science has yet to decode, or even capture visually as of today. A way to think of them is to think of the way astrophysicists photograph stars and galaxies. They can photograph them as our eyes see them through the Hubble telescope or they can photograph them capturing only their infrared image, X-rays, gamma waves or even microwave images to name a few of the technologies which look at what lies beneath. The technology used by astrophysicists changes how they visually appear to us. Think of these paintings as rendering all of those technologies output plus some not yet conceived of. Therefore the paintings are really scientific images/photos and are not abstract paintings at all.
The paintings are also visual thinking encountered during my research for a proposed standard model for human history. The standard model for human history was the accidental byproduct from examining technology cycles throughout history. Here is a link if you would like to see more on the proposed model. In the context of the art work, I have used symbols as well as projections from the model in order to examine its potential.
The Paintings with some commentary . . .
Title: Humanities Three Ages
In the lower left there is a vortex symbol. This symbol has been found worldwide wherever humanity lived during the prehistoric timeframes. Once I had realized this was the case it dawned on me that this was a universal symbol of world view for the hunter-gatherers.
In the center I used the Christian symbol of the cross as an agricultural symbol of world view. Though the Christian symbol was not universal, the core in the “Golden Rule” (do unto others...) was the universal core of all the worldviews which came into existence during the agricultural era.
On the right side I used the symbol of an atom to symbolize world view for the machine era. Though it is very early in world view creation I think the environment created through the automation of machinery will result in an update for world view much the same way as the agricultural era featured updates to the inherited hunter-gatherer world view. Therefore the symbol for the machine era is not intended to be a prediction of what will be but rather a symbol to represent domestication cycles humanity continues to experience and cycle through.
I had stopped painting since 1994, when I started again in 2006, I began to use foam instead of plaster in my paintings. This painting was a very early effort from where I had begun to use the foam. In the picture I had juxtaposed three images from the three economic eras humanity has known.
Below I have put some details showing the details of the world view symbols utitlized in the paintings. Three details follow:
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Title: Painting between the ages.
My grandfather Herbert Boeckl was an extraordinarily talented artist. I never really knew my grandfather because by the time I was old enough to have memories he had suffered a stroke and was paralyzed. Further since all the books written about him are written in German I don't really know what the subject matter experts said about his art specifically.
I do know that he painted for awhile with the likes of Picasso and company in Paris and then returned home to Austria. I saw a copy of the letter from the Nazis instructing him to stop painting as his style which can be said to be in school of the German Expressionists was considered degenerate art by the Nazis. His paintings did suffer even after the war, as he painted religious themes without the same skill he had painted during the 1920s and 30s. Later in his life he would regain his form, though in a different style and again produce some truly remarkable paintings again.
He painted a chapel in a monestary in Austria named Seckau. I have rendered the image in the center of the painting in a somewhat similar style to the one my grandfather used in his frescoes painted in the chapel. To the left is an atomic symbol and to the right is a very abstract crucifix symbol. The intent of the painting was to show that my grandfather was focused on spirituality during a time when faith not only came under intense fire from the National Socialists and the communists to the East but also just before spirituality would again be allowed to be discussed and rendered. Therefore I have tried to show that my grandfather was in a situation similar to his peers, where the time in which they lived disrupted and sometimes ripped their lives apart. I wonder what he could have done if he were alive today. I say this because I have been told he was very intellectual in his approach to art.
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Title: Early afternoon of the third age.
If what the model projects, is anywhere near accurate then the industrialized nations have very recently entered the impact period where new thinking regarding world view is being seen just as this period was for our ancestors from 4,000BCE to 2,000BCE. During that time residents of the agricultural economies began to see the impact which farming was having on their lives. This can be seen through the Epic of Gilgamesh and many other stories which reference the economic change over from hunter-gathering to farming.
The agricultural age gradually began to modify the inherited peer based animal gods to a more human centric world view. This painting attempts to portray this time in history relative to the past. It is for this reason why I chose one of the oldest symbols for world view, which is a tree. That symbol has been used from the hunter-gatherers through the agricultural age as a symbol of the three tiers of existence.
The roots represent the underworld. The area above the ground represents the ordinary world and the limbs reaching into the sky represent the heavens. This symbol has not changed since the human family first universally began recording it. In the Christian tradition it is represented as heaven, our mortal existence here on earth and hell. Other theologies have very similar conceptions of these three tiers though not all of them are limited to three tiers. Some have many more levels.
Even though most places on earth experience the afternoon with the sun high overhead, I chose to put the sun in a more typical rising position. I did this as a metaphor to the coming updates for world view for the current economic machine age. Further I chose to render the area surrounding the sun in an almost Van Gogh like painterly style as a reference to Vincent's exploding skies which he so loved to render. Van Gogh sought throughout his life a kind of synchronization between the cultural environment which he saw around him and his own conception of world view. In several of his poignant letters to his brother Theo, he would reference this thinking but not typically in context to his paintings. I doubt he was consciously aware of what he was seeking or even thinking through his painted compositions. I also think that Van Gogh's subconscious pursuit is a major reason why his works continue to grow in popularity as many now feel the same kind of dissonance relative to world view which he suffered with 100 plus years ago.
Finally I chose to make the sun appear as if it was almost melting as a reference to Dali and his melting clocks. I view most of the surrealist's works as that time periods kind of new existential world view. The painting was intended to be a positive perspective on coming changes. I must confess that I suffer from the same judgmental and initial autonomic negative response which is quite common today. Eric Kandel the Nobel laureate in neuroscience wrote in his book In Search of Memory, that we may not have free will but we certainly have free won't. The lack of free will is a result of how our brain is wired to respond to threat but the free won't he references is our ability after our initial mechanical responses to think beyond our basic wired reactions. This is why the process of painting is almost therapeutic for me. In the struggle to get a composition together I am allowed the time and tools to modify my initial reactions in an effort to produce a more complete expression of my own personal free won't. This is something we seldom have the opportunity to do in daily life.
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Title: World view transitioning
This painting must be read from right to left as was the case with ancient documents and writings. On the far right side there is an image of an anthropomorphic figure (half human and half animal) whose eyes are cast downwards towards the ground. The symbol is that of the universal characters which spanned the prehistoric Neolithic into the time when writing had been invented in ancient history. There is also a snake slithering between that figure and the central human figure wearing flowing robes to show that this world view was not completely new but was an older image which had been updated with entirely new meaning. The story from Genesis discusses the ancient image of the snake in new terms with the story of the Garden of Eden for example.
The central figure represents those individuals from ancient history; who were idealized in being able to ascend directly into the heavens and with other super human characteristics. They were typically rendered wearing flowing garments. Whether it was Buddha turning into a sacred Bodhi tree after reaching a state of nirvana or Christ walking on water and rising from the dead or Mohammed ascending directly into heaven after his death, these people were worshipped as being beyond human. However it was their collective message of “do unto others” which represented new thinking in their day and not their God like powers which changed our world view.
On the far left side is a human figure with their eyes staring up into the heavens as they gaze upon a distant galaxy. The figure represents the rise of science and the coming impact on world view which the new understanding will have for the human family. The religious studies scholar Huston Smith derisively refers to the rise of science as scientism. Smith feels that science has reached a kind of religious status as a result of the trend toward increasing scientific knowledge through the 20th century. Though this may be true if we were to freeze that moment in time, it will not remain this way in the future as there are many spiritual leaders today who are embracing the additional definition of the world we live in which have resulted from scientific explorations to update existing world views. Huston need not worry as the future will bear little resemblance to the trends from the 20th and 21st centuries in this regard.
I will try and get some better shots of this painting later alonh with its details so that you can see these figures better.
It is very difficult photographing three dimensional paintings which either don't become washed out as a result of too much light which flattens the depth or too much darkness which obscures figures as well.
Sadly this is an attribute of trying to capture these paintings via a camera which has extraordinarily limited depth of field relative to two human eyes.
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Title: Western agricultural worldview
I debated whether or not to even post this painting at all because the colors almost completely hide the raised images which you can see with your eyes but not through a camera lens.
This painting has a large sun or moon hovering over the images of three typical places of religious worship in the West and the near east. On the left is a Christian church, in the middle is a Hebrew synagogue and on the right side is a Muslim mosque. The reason why the moon or sun is represented as if its edges are starting to buckle is because the literal interpretations of the three religions foundations through their stories are increasingly being viewed as allegorical today even by the adherents of the big three religions.
As the Hebrew faith gave rise to Christianity and then to Islam, I have put the temple in the center of the composition. Though Christianity and Islam share many aspects of their world view there are also significant differences as well. Therefore I chose not represent the dominant religions of the West and near east as a simple linear progression. Though all three religions were subject to the same forces in which world view evolves for humanity, the discrete theologies came into existence at different times and in different geographies which was why so many differences exist between the three world views.
The model predicts that all three of these world views will remain for the agriculturally based economies and environments; however, the model also predicts that these world views will plateau as several new variations will come into existence in the automated and machine based economies of the future.
I included the painting because I happen to be very found of the color composition and the idea even though I am unable to present the image clearly via the web or a camera.
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Title: False Entrance at Newgrange
In Newgrange Ireland there is a large mound structure built around 3000BCE. It has two kerbstones, one directly in front of the entrance to the mound and one in the rear where there is no visible entrance. This is a painting of the rear kerbstone. In the painting a majority of the markings on the kerbstone are still clearly visible. I did falsify the bottom markings which were subsequently covered in paint so they became invisible to the viewer. The reason I falsified the bottom left of the kerbstone was the concept for the entire painting. That concept for the painting being what if what those ancient people believed was actually true? Then without knowing what they had created we would be silly to copy it without any appreciable understanding as to what reality it might bring forth.
You may click on this painting to view larger and more detailed images.
I recognize the possibility for the concept is arithmetically remote. However I wanted to explore their thinking with their system of thought and not bring any personal values or judgments. I repainted this painting three different times and as a result of all of the repainting it weighs a ton. When I was finally happy with the picture it was because of how it looked to me. As if the paint interacting with the carvings of the kerbstone created a type of almost plasma like energy which became visible to us. It was if the by covering the markings in paint I was seeing a kind of microwave representation of these peoples intent.
David Lewis-Williams and David Pearce were probably correct when they wrote in their book: "Inside the Neolithic Mind", that the rear kerbstone was probably a marker made by the people who built the mound. The marker was to demarcate a point in space where some of the people, likely the tribal shamans, could move up the mound and from there journey into the invisible world and through porous rock faces of nearby mountains. A place for the few and as well this was a warning for the majority of the people to stay away and advance no further up onto the mound do to the energy which existed at that point in the mound.
You stare at the painting and wonder what those markings are on the kerbstone? Are they the ideas of the stone cutters, their energy perhaps? Or is it a snapshot of the energy at the point where the "shamans" took off into their heavenly journeys? The energy which enabled the supernatural "flight" of the shamans? You also wonder, what is that at the bottom of the painting, some form of writing? Perhaps even a sort of visual incarnation of the thinking of these ancient peoples in the form of writing or skrit never before seen by modern humans? You again consider the possibility as to whether or not you are seeing imprints in human thinking which manifested itself into some kind of configuration which did not exist before the kerbstone was made and used? Today scientists routinely smash atoms to reconfigure them into something else in large super colliders. Could this kerbstone have been literally the same thing without all the heavy science and equipment to make the little particles conform to our desires? Perhaps early humans had a more intuitive view of the world they inhabited than we use in our analytical approach of today?
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Title: Cartouche
The ancient Egyptians utilized what are called cartouches to document who it was that authorized the synchronization work between this world and the unseen one with carvings representing the pharaoh. When I had painted the rear kerbstone from Newgrange it occurred to me before the paint was even dry that the right side of the kerbstone was saying something specific while the left, which was populated by chevrons and vortex symbols, represented worldview. I can't say what the right side said, whether it was the ruler or a representation of their community or something completely different. I do feel confident that whatever it was, it was something specific to those people about themselves. For this reason I decided to copy a cartouche and see what if anything it told me as a kind of experiment through paint and color.
Painting the cartouche only solidified my belief that the right side of the kerbstone was a kind of cartouche. How it was organized and demarcated via a large line breaking the image into two separate plains functioned in the same way that the cartouche had and incidentally was similarly shaped and divided the rest of the Egyptian carvings. Now bear in mind even those these peoples couldn't communicate with each other, that they possessed identical wiring in their brains. This should not come as a surprise that they divided image plains up in similar ways.
I would like to render and paint other ancient images and symbols to see what they might tell me in future as well.
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Title: Permeable Stone
Prior to the mapping of DNA, the program for life, the big knock against evolution had been the lack of found missing links for the evolutionary shifts for the animals which exist today. The DNA now proves that evolution must have taken place as the blood in our veins records the generations of evolution which humanity underwent to become the people we are today. The archeologists may never find the missing links but the thought which struck me was that our bodies adapt at the cellular level to our minds desires. Again this has yet to be scientifically proven but how else could reptiles crawled out of the seas millions of years ago to form the first land living species which would lead to us? You can see this in yourself when you think of the times when you are under stress. Your hair might fall out, or you might feel achy or a host of other symptoms which are the result of your being stressed out. That is your mind being cognizant of the fact your don't feel well and your body at a cellular level responds to your thoughts and actions.
I imagined an ancient stone which had been used for intensely spiritual rituals by our most ancient ancestors. I thought what if we could look at that rock with a mythical quantum viewer – what might we find and see?
You can see at the edges of the picture what almost looks similar to a traditional view of outer space but you know it to be an intensely magnified view of this ancient rock. In the center of the rock, almost exploding out of the picture is what appears be an almost totem like figure. The head looks like a vortex which we now know from the cognitive archeologists to be a very ancient form recorded again and again all over the world from prehistoric times. Even today the vortex is found to be present in tribes which have continued essentially unchanged for thousands of years all around the world. The arms look like wings and the feet eagle like. Then you notice near three of the edges larger elements which almost look like human brains. Hmmm you wonder, could it be that Paul D. MacLean, one of the early dept heads at NIMH, might have been correct with his triune brain theory? If his theory, explained in very brief summary here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triune_brain, was correct then is the image saying that image was the result of ancient shaman's altered states or that is the only way I/we can comprehend the sentient quantum world?
Could that be the R-complex in the upper right, the mid-brain in the lower right and the neocortex in the lower left? Also what is that in the upper left? Is it an image of a being (outlined head and shoulders) gazing in from off the left side of the image? Is that me or a being looking at me or the image? These questions make you wonder whether we are projecting our cognitive views on objects through the quantum soup which pervades the entire universe. Or are these trace images of what was left behind from long ago in a form of a living imprint in the rock as a kind of energy? The painting doesn't answer the questions specifically but the little mind experiment does point out larger realities which were new for me personally.
You may click on this painting to view larger and more detailed images.
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Title: Worldview Tree of Life
The vast majority of the hunter-gatherers which still exist and hold their inherited ancient form of worldview view the cosmos as a three tiered model. In their model the area underground was inhabited by spirits which the dead and their shamans have to traverse in order to reach a successful after life in the heavens above. The earth is the second tier and of course the heavens and the universe is the third tier. The agriculturally created religions inherited this thinking from the hunter-gatherers during the agricultural age and therefore the three tiered universe existed for them as well as it does for the majority of people (around 80% of the planet) who still believe in those theologies.
This painting is of an ordinary tree which is used by the hunter-gatherers as a symbol of three tiers which their shamans still roam to intercede on the behalf of the tribes members to maintain order in the universe. In the picture you notice that the tree looks as if it has been cut in half from top to bottom. The image looks as if there is a river of matter flowing up through the trunk and into the trees branches. Their appears to be no delineation between the river of matter and the sky, the tree or the ground. The image produced has a porous and unending look. Many shamans describe the tree to be a ladder from one type of world into another. You wonder if this is what a multifaceted view of a tree is really telling us?
You wonder if this is what a multifaceted view of a tree is relates to the pursuit by modern scientists as to how the tiny quantum world functions and affects our much larger world? Are the scientists of today asking the exact same questions which humanity asked in prehistory? If you think about it you will realize that the answer must logically be yes. The only difference is that we have evolved more sophisticated tools to make and test our hypothesis with.
You may click on this painting to view larger and more detailed images.
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Title: World view Mountain
The mountain as metaphor as well as image for spirituality is incredibly ancient as well as the tree. In the Old Testament when Jacob flees from the wrath of his brother Esau, he experiences his vision into a range of mountains already viewed as places where the Gods lived. The world renowned professor of ancient Judaic history at NYU, Dr. Lawrence Shiffman, made note of this in a documentary. What the ancient Israelites, Babylonians, Egyptians and all of the others from the agricultural age could not know is that there view of the spirituality of mountains was indeed an inherited one from our ancient hunter-gatherer ancestors who felt exactly the same way about these impressive natural creations. It is also no coincidence that one finds the oldest Christian monasteries occupying the most incredible views high atop of the most impressive views in Europe. During early Christianity the monastic movement viewed mountains the exact same way as the early civilizations from the near east.
In the painting, I have tried to portray a machine age view of the mountain. By leaving the left side flat and then adding more foam to the right side to build the mountain out into the viewers space, I have tried to show a mountain both it states. The one on the right where it is something we can touch and feel. The other in the left is one where the mountain has been reduced to its massive amounts of quantum particles. In rendering the mountain in this way one can see the spirituality as well as the physical reality of the mountain in the same image or moment.
I have also put in a small river and the underworld as well to bring out visually what has always been inferred about mountains. They like trees have always represented the tiers of existence for humanity.
A good friend of mine noted when he looked at the painting in person that the right side of the mountain, the physically three dimensional one has a coral look and feel to it. Given that what animated the earth originally was the seas I think that is a very fitting way to show a mountain that is coming into three dimensional existence in one painting.
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Title: Neo mammalian memories
The last painting on the first of two web pages with commentary on my recent paintings is related to evolution pure and simple. I called it neo mammalian memories (memories of a new mammal) because the journey from the tiny single organisms to the larger reptiles of the sea followed by the move from the sea to the land and then eventually our species was a dramatic story by any accounting for it. The journey could have been interrupted or totally negated by anyone of thousands of factors. The fact that there are human beings, primates or even mammals is an incredible fact given the odds for this world to have been dominated by the cold blooded reptiles or some other type of species.
The painting is unfinished and therefore I have cropped the photo so that you can not see the incomplete human face in the lower right hand side of the painting. However even though it is unfinished, the ancient symbols of the vortex winds out from the birds nest to spawn a new mammal. The painting is not a question but rather an acknowledgement of the fact that we even exist in this form at all. I painted it as a reminder to myself to say no matter how bad you may feel think about all of the things that you posses which were almost a mathematical probability to not exist at all.
Coming Soon
In order to reduce the time it will take to load this page with all the images which are on it I am breaking the commentary on the current works into two web pages. The first page was a pictorial journey through human history. The second page will be more of a journey of potentail through science and the universe. Hurricane Hanna happened to come through my town today and being home alone I had the time to remodel this page. I hope you have enjoyed the renovated page. I intend to work through the second page once I have some time. However for now the current works commentaries ends right here.
This will eventually move to the end of the 2nd page.
A little bit of commentary on the substantial shift in my painting. I used to feel while I was painting or even just thinking about painting that I really did not have a clue what I was trying to say more or less do with a picture. It was as if I was the character Richard Dreyfus played in the movie “Close Encounters of the Third Kind.” In that movie Dreyfus and other characters had an image implanted in their minds by aliens. The aliens had done this to give the selected characters information about where to meet them in the future. Dreyfus however just about goes mad trying to figure out what this image is and why it is in his mind. In a complete frenzy one morning he storms out of his suburban home, dressed in his bathrobe, and begins shoveling dirt and rocks into his bathroom. No, the bathroom window was not open, so it was shattered in the process. All the while his neighbors and family witness this mad shoveling of dirt and think he has gone totally insane. Dreyfus could not and did not stop trying to sculpt the image that was in his mind even though it cost him his family and everything else of value in his life.
Painting for me had always been that kind of vague experience. I would madly attack the canvass in hopes of expelling the vague idea and more importantly the feeling that was embedded within my mind. In my case the feeling that lay within me had not been implanted by aliens or any other external source. It was something that I was trying to express in the hopes that these inexplicable feelings would somehow subside. It was for this reason that I would go on painting jags for a period of time and then literally cease painting for years to see if the last round of painting had finally brought out in front of my eyes what had been embedded within. The jags could, and frequently would start unexpectedly. In 1993 I had not painted since sometime in the mid 1980s. Then suddenly I could not sleep and images began cropping up in my mind. After a few days of this, I gave in and at 3am I went into my basement and started painting again. Since the ideas were not very well thought through and therefore unplanned, I had to find materials to use in my paintings. So in my bathrobe I went outside and pulled up weeds and gathered sticks and hauled them into the basement and embedded them within the painting. You can now see why the Dreyfus analogy resonates so directly with me. My wife awoke in the morning and searched the house for me and found me in the basement where I showed her what I was doing. Fortunately for me she liked the painting; it still hangs over our fireplace in our home in a frame she selected for a birthday present to me years ago.
That incident ignited another year long season of attempting to express myself in paint and objects. After that year I again stopped for over a decade till sometime last year. This time around when I picked the paint up again it was very different for me however. I had been doing research for an idea which became my proposed standard historical model and those thoughts are guiding my painting ideas. Oh don't get me wrong. I am still pretty lost in the execution phase of the paintings but now I know for the first time what it is I am actually trying to say. I don't know if it is mellowing due to age or simply that after having made so many pictures over the years there was enough evidence to inspect in order to crack the case so to speak. You see in the past I painted more along the lines of what I was against and disagreed with as opposed to expressing what I was for. More like my mental disagreement with existentialism and issues such as that. That is why I used to call myself a post existentialist painter which really meant that existentialist was just the opposite of what I wanted to convey in my paintings. Everyone knows it is much easier to take shots at things instead of trying to build new ideas. This time around I am making paintings which some might see as fables or worse yet still more bad paintings ;-). That may be true but I know for the first time that I am painting what I see as the possibilities in everything. Not probabilities, not the limitations, but the potential . . . and this I have found to be extraordinarily fulfilling. I invite you to browse around the galleries and the rest of website if the thinking interests you. Thanks, Leo.
Last note, I am not going to change any of my previous commentaries in the other rooms of my website for my earlier paintings. So when you read them you will notice that they were written with in a different perspective as I wrote them years ago. They do not dove tail perfectly with my current thinking as my thinking has shsifted and continues to shift. Please forgive me if the older commentaries read a little choppy. Those words are now, like the earlier paintings, are mile markers of my past. Please view them as signs of personal growth on my part.
Photo montage of my current paintings set to music. This montage shows the paintings much larger. Click the back button on your browser to return to this page once montage completes. Sometimes you must hit reload the page a few times as I wrote the code for the montage and it is a little glitchy. You will know when you have seen the entire montage as you will return to the starting images.
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