Peter Rogers A Painter’s Quest: Art as a Way of Revelation. 

pp.1-10

Where to start on this journey? A chapter from a book called ‘The Painter’s Quest by seemed a possible beginning. I remembered this chapter read some years ago, and was struck by Peter Rogers’ account of his quest, which was to find  out why painting was thought to be an activity of significance - a way of knowledge?  Why was it important: not just for the personal satisfaction of the painter, but for the world in general. He took some years following up various threads, and came to some very thoughtful and profound understandings.

Rogers obviously paid close attention to the way he himself painted. He observed his decision-making in choices of colour and tone, the balances of form and space; and took note of the day-by-day difficulties he ran into in trying to get his painterly compositions to work.  He read comments of what other painters and philosophers had said about similar problems, and integrated these revelations into his own findings. He realised that he was always being torn between opposing qualities and tendencies, and of the importance of trying to find a balance between them.  A major discovery was the problems of attention: of giving too much attention to one part of the picture at the expense of the whole. As he was reading some books that contemplated these questions from a more spiritual point of view - Roger Fry on William Blake, the writings of Ouspensky, Bertrand Russell paraphrasing Heraclitus - he was then able to make the imaginative leap to connect the two activities: of making of a painting and the attempts to live a spiritual life.  

The essence in both these activities, he discovered, were essentially to do with patterns of relationships: ‘Each part of a painting, each line of a poem, each bar of a symphony is important, not only because the complete work of art cannot exist without it, but what you - the painter, poet or composer - do to each part, line or bar, is what you are doing to the whole painting, poem or symphony. However, it would be absurd to suppose that any artist is going to consider one part of a composition more important than the whole composition.’ Likewise in the spiritual life. Most spiritual traditions believe that God is everywhere and in everything, and therefore what is done to one part is done to the whole. This belief is echoed in  the ‘quantum entanglement’ of modern physics, where separate items are related even though they are physically distanced.

 So Rogers concluded that painting, as in life, was about patterns of relationships: the parts to each other and the parts to the whole. The main focus must - of necessity - be on the whole, as the difficulties encountered in arranging the parts then fall into place. He ends by referring to the first commandment, which is first through necessity: ‘likewise in life, by focusing on the whole and loving the whole with all our heart, mind and strength, the warring elements are sooner or later are resolved too. It is all a question of focus and of love.’

In reading this chapter over the years, I think I have come to understand what Rogers means when he says: 

‘The concern of art is with the Real World. The painter paints Reality.’ His understanding is rooted in a previous passage in a paraphrase of Heraclitus:

‘The Real World consists in a balanced adjustment  of opposing tendencies. Behind the strife between opposites there is a hidden harmony or attunement which is the world.’

I think he means that as the artist struggles to convey his vision through the balancing of conflicting opposites, he brings the work to a place of wholeness? completeness? - Truth perhaps - a place beyond words - that gives a sense of ‘a peculiar quality of Reality which makes it a matter of infinite importance in their lives.’  

Before starting to write the pages in the book, I counted the words in the whole text and ruled up the sheets of paper. However I must have miscounted the words, as towards the end I found I was using more pages than I had anticipated.

So on p. 9, I changed the format. Instead of the double columns, I ran a few lines right across the full width of the text area.  This is where Rogers is making his main point: the connection between the process of making a painting with the attempts to lead a spiritual life. Both are dependent on the ability to SEE.

Under this opening statement, I have taken a smaller pen, and on the same line spacing written these important words from the Bible in red; before continuing the explanatory text in brown, in three columns of smaller writing.

In trying to organise the arrangement of texts and meaning on the page one is sometimes asked to make a spontaneous decision, as the planned run of text has, for some reason, been changed. And the placing of where that comes on the page is random.  So decisions have to be taken ‘on the hoof’ as it were, without previous planning. However, this can also be an opportunity.

For instance, the sentence ‘ …..the Old Testament’ happened to end near the middle of the page. I therefore wrote the linking text ‘they were as follows’  in a vertical arrangement to support the central gap of the top two columns. This also creates an ‘eye-hold’ as it is nearly in the middle of the whole text . And it provided a preliminary emphasis to the following important lines in red. It also sets the placing of the last line in red; ‘there are none other commandments greater than these’. 

If the sentence happened to end at different place, other solutions would have to be found.

In p.10 the lay-out of the writing holds the same kind of problem: how can one make sense of the meaning of the text within the structure of the layout, and within the scope of the opportunities available.

The Way of Life : Lao Tzu  and  words by Hermes Trismegistus

p. 11

The main text is taken from the Way of Life by the Chinese Taoist philosopher Lao Tzu. He was said to have been born in 604 BC. There are 81 stanzas in this book, of which this is the first. There are many translations, this by Witter Bynner, first published in 1946 by Nicholson and Watson. 

I chose these words as they seem to relate to the previous text, which was essentially about the whole and the parts.  This is concerned with the core and the surface, and that ‘ are essentially the same:’ words making them seem different Only to express appearance’.

A similar theme is expressed in the words of The Emerald tablet:  ‘what is below is like what is above’, attributed to Hermes Trismegistus: the legendary father of alchemy and the Hermetic philosophy. He was identified with the Egyptian god Thoth, the god of writing, philosophy and astrology.  The underlying concept was that the cosmos constituted a unity, and all parts were interdependent.

In the Lao Tzu text, I particularly liked the  last few words of the stanza ‘ from wonder into wonder existence opens.’  Wonder is a potent word with its double meaning of curiosity and awe; and it seemed very appropriate in the context of being near the beginning of this book.

It must be remembered that at the start of the making of the book I had only a vague idea of what it was going to contain: I started on page 1 with the Peter Roger  extract, and let the subject matter evolve in its own way, though I knew that Sacred Geometry would be included.

The Way of Life by Lao Tzu

Existence is beyond the power of words 
To define:
Terms may be used
But none of them are absolute.
In the beginning of heaven and earth there were no words,
Words came out of the womb of matter.
And whether a man dispassionately
Sees to the core of life
Or passionately
Sees the surface,
The core and the surface
Are essentially the same,
Words making them seem different
Only to express appearance.
In name be needed, wonder names them both: 
Wonder into wonder
Existence opens.

p.11

The Way of Life:

Lao Tzu  and  words by Hermes Trismegistus

The main text is taken from the Way of Life by the Chinese Taoist philosopher Lao Tzu. He was said to have been born in 604 BC. There are 81 stanzas in this book, of which this is the first. There are many translations, this by Witter Bynner, first published in 1946 by Nicholson and Watson. 

I chose these words as they seem to relate to the previous text, which was essentially about the whole and the parts.  This is concerned with the core and the surface, and that ‘ are essentially the same :’ words making them seem different Only to express appearance’.

A similar theme is expressed in the  words of The Emerald tablet :  ‘what is below is like what is above’, attributed to Hermes Trismegistus: the legendary father of alchemy and the Hermetic philosophy. He was identified with the Egyptian god Thoth, the god of writing, philosophy and astrology.  The underlying concept was that the cosmos constituted a unity, and all parts were interdependent.

In the Lao Tzu text, I particularly liked the  last few words of the stanza ‘ from wonder into wonder existence opens.’  Wonder is a potent word with its double meaning of curiosity and awe; and it seemed very appropriate in the context of being near the beginning of this book.

It must be remembered that at the start of the making of  the book I had only a vague idea of what it was going to contain: I started on page 1 with the Peter Roger  extract, and let the subject matter evolve in its own way, though I knew that Sacred Geometry would be included.

The Way of Life by Lao Tzu

Existence is beyond the power of words 
To define:
Terms may be used
But none of them are absolute.
In the beginning of heaven and earth there were no words,
Words came out of the womb of matter.
And whether a man dispassionately
Sees to the core of life
Or passionately
Sees the surface,
The core and the surface
Are essentially the same,
Words making them seem different
Only to express appearance.
In name be needed, wonder names them both: 
Wonder into wonder
Existence opens.