ARTIST’S STATEMENT

              The reason I see Christianity and Art, and the relationship between the two, differently than most people, Christians in particular, is that I’ve experienced the full reality of hell, the demonic and Satan personally. And not by reading About it in scripture, in books on religion or worst of reading and listening to contemporary Christian Art sermons.  

              The reason I believe in Jesus Christ as the Messiah is that it was through his mercy and the guidance of the Holy Spirit over decades of delusional belief that I broke free from those delusions. I will also add that I in no way consider myself an authority on God or to speak for Him or to have any definite idea who is or isn’t going to hell.  Nor do I claim to be saved while others are damned. Most importantly I am making no claim that I’m right in my personal belief in Jesus as the way, the truth and the life. A person who is crazy by definition, meaning that I am autistic, is clearly unable to insist that his own experience of and firm belief in a specific person as God is the correct one.

              And that everyone listening to me or reading my words is incorrect. Nevertheless, with those initial disclaimers and acknowledgment of my so-called mental illness, I will continue to believe myself right and you wrong in every area where we are in disagreement.

              So I don’t just think contemporary religion is a crock, I think contemporary art is an even bigger crock. Why? Because at least contemporary religions are based on some coherent moral system and narrative wisdom tradition imparting true spiritual knowledge. Whereas contemporary art has devolved into the same carnival of fun and games hilarity that is the equivalent to the devolved church worship activities. In fact it’s all one and the same.

              I’m saying this in order to distinguish my own work from those of my contemporaries who don’t believe in any spiritual reality in particular but think the world is a place to cavort and have fun while the going is good. This a decadent belief, and invariably becomes universal at the point civilizations are disintegrating into meaninglessness and purposelessness accompanied by lawlessness and violence.

              So this is the content of my work. It’s always had Christian Art theology behind it and so it has to be viewed from that perspective if it’s to have any meaning. I’ve always viewed making art as a spiritual practice, and not a material or commercial one.

              And, this might be hard to believe for artists today, but when I was in art school in 1972 that’s exactly what it was taught as being… deeply spiritual. The abstract expressionists were all making  statements about and depictions of profoundly deep Spiritual realities and experiences never understood or painted in history…. Until artists like Barnett Newman took everyone to Nirvana by looking at a 20 x 8 ft flat one color painting with a few arbitrary masking taped vertical lines….

              Of course Modernism had already achieved the heights of pure idiocy with Communist fanatic Kasimir Malevich and his White on White Suprematist rectangles followed 20 years before. Accompanied by theosophist Piet Mondrian with his red, yellow and blue reduction to just the essentials grids… So the American Abstract Artists just added the full spectrum to the rectilinear hell of modern abstraction and it was off to the races with every new infant a born artist.

              No need to read books or have any notion of history, particularly the relationship of art to history, because that had already been smashed to bits by Abstract Expressionism and Pop Art and good riddance… because that old stuff is a downer. Wheres the fun?

              So the fantasy element is essential in order to keep the whole matrix in permanent re-run… endless tape loops of mick and keith and all the lads plus gossip beyond endurance, at least in my case. That’s no doubt the primary reason I’m locked into the accuracy of the Biblical narrative because I see how unreal the hypocrite actors are, especially to themselves and each other….

              They just regurgitate the past in endless hilarious laughter when what they’re describing isn’t actually funny at all.

              The blind leading the blind is a central theme in all my artwork and always has been. I was well aware I was blind from early on in the game. It was also much to my dismay that I was unable to follow the blind leaders with the least degree of faithfulness that everyone one else was managing to do with ease. I was always kicked out of the cults early on or at some point because of either asking too many questions or losing all interest because of the constant repetition of whatever bullshit the leaders were feeding them.

              Reflecting on it now, I’m aware that my lack of belief in human beings as anything but complete con artists was at the root of my lack of belief in a particular God. I was an egomaniac. There’s one thing that everyone has to understand if they’re going to have any spiritual awakening at all. Not having an ego is a prerequisite. And the prospect of losing the ego, which is always identified as the self in unawakened people, is terrifying. This is why people are so manically attached to the material world.

And why in Psalm 46: 10 God says:

Be still and know that I am God. 

              Christians today are so far out in left field that they actually have to read books on how to pray by best selling authors. And these books are all heretical compared to Christian Art writings from centuries past In detailed guidebooks like The Cloud of Knowing or The Dark Night of the Soul. Of course, few Christians today can read the complex prose of past centuries because all they ever read is best selling teen romance and adventure fantasy prose.

              In Bible terms this is called sloth or laziness. It’s mental/ intellectual laziness. It’s why churches as well as art galleries are little more than gossipy social networks… that’s all Warhols art factory was.. a gossip factory. Lifestyles of the rich and famous narcissists. And their imitators playing and dancing to the latest disco hit chart toppers in all the Christian music awards at the Emmys…

              Bible Illustration  verses like “friendship with the world is enmity with God”  and Christ’s kingdom is “not of this world” emphasize that God has told us that Satan is the ruler of this world. There are also the commands to depart from the places if the wicked like Sodom and Gomorrah.

              But curiously these verses never appear in the popular Christian Music songs topping the charts with the masses at the Sunday masses. It’s also noteworthy that these same masses are also calling for global war against most of the world for because of their lack of support for American/NATO/Israeli imperial project. But what else is new?

One question I’m asking, which it would be interesting to hear an answer to is:

              How has it come to pass in America that the one religion discriminated against and consistently ridiculed or condescended to at best in the contemporary art world is Christianity? Why are artists making  creepy photographs like “Piss Christ” awarded NEA Grants and Museum shows? Yet speak a word of criticism against Israeli war crimes and one is labelled an anti-Semite?

              Objectively speaking, this so-called art is state propaganda, just as Malevich and the Russian Avante-Garde were state propaganda followed by their American abstract art descendants. And the big joke played by the CIA was to turn the communist abstract painters into propaganda for the American Way of life… freedom to get boozed to the gills, make the orgy scene and go wild in sensual abandon in a sea of frothing oil paint.. all those primal emotions unleashed.

              And an immortal masterpiece every single End times Prophecy! Just like Picasso and Georgia O’Keefe and Judy Chicago’s dinner plate with Georgia O’Keefe’s flower/vagina reference… the never ending vagina monologue to accompany the never ending penis monologue. But art isnt in the sewer at all.. Its pure and innocent and full of love. Just ask the artist and their fans. From Bohemian Paris to the Taos/Santa Fe Modernists of the Roaring 20s Real Estate miracle and on to Judy Chicagos Land of Enchantment, which is where all the spiritually woke art folk go to die in Southwestern splendor.

              Throw in Los Alamos, Hollywood and the Epstein Ranch and you’re smack in the middle of the spirit-filled American’s idea of Paradise in earth.