Julio Mateo: Metaphysical Painting

You deal extensively with geometric shapes. Are there connections between your paintings and formal geometry? Is this a foundation for your Art?

In the late 70's and early 80's I was much taken by “sacred” geometry and its promise of holding, and perhaps even yielding the keys to creation. The correspondences I found between natural forms and geometrical and mathematical figures such as spirals, fibonacci sequences, close packing of two and three-dimensional forms, spheres, star shapes, wave forms and so on was excruciatingly tantalizing and intoxicating. I felt there was intrinsic meaning in these relationships and manifestations, a kind of code that could be deciphered, and which if properly understood would reveal the secrets of creation and who knows what else.

Concurrently I was very interested in Bach's music, which seemed to me a perfect musical equivalent to the processes and visual forms I was noticing as well as to the convictions and conclusions on the ways of natural creation which I had first distilled and then condensed from my observations: rigorous simplicity, the utmost economy of means, utterly self-evident principles and operations all of which had as much to do with the limitations imposed by the three-dimensional nature of space, or in Bach's case, the musical scale.

I spent time contemplating these beautiful forms and resonances, and admiring the harmony, formal economy, purposefulness and elegance that as an artist I found there. I speculated on finding meaning in them, distilling my findings, putting them through a multi-generational feedback loop, which was inbreeding and hybridizing the forms and ideas, reducing them, combining them, dividing them, multiplying them, and then distilling them some more, finding basic principles and correspondences in them to such things as alphabets, DNA molecules and a host of other archetypal-type systems.

Eventually I arrived at what I considered to be a vocabulary of elemental, or archetypal graphic signs, shapes and symbols possessing certain irreducible forms and identities, and able to interact with each other to form more complex, compounded forms-- somewhat as letters or ciphers combine to make words or numbers.

These elemental graphic forms possessed in equal parts abstract geometrical elements and "natural" organic qualities. In them the idealized, abstract, "digital" (if you will) principles of sacred geometry interacted with Nature's "stuff" and "analog" processes to yield flexible, organic hybrids with simple and clear geometric structures animated by flexible, expressive execution capable of dynamic expression, while retaining their meaningful qualities as signs and symbols.

In 1982-84 I executed In the Garden, a suite of drawings summarizing and exploring some of the graphic possibilities of this elementary formal vocabulary which would form the basis of my work for the next 15 years. My interest in sacred geometry reminds me somewhat of Picasso and Braque’s infatuation with Cezanne's work leading to their development of Cubism: when seductive, not quite understood ideas led to feverish creative activity that had little to do with the initial source, but which nonetheless, in ways peculiar to art, resulted in fertile artistic ideas.

To be sure, this work was itself predicated on my works in graduate school, during the late 70's, where I gave up my apprenticeship to the art of established masters to start literally from scratch, at the very beginning, at the core of all that I felt was my originality, at the point of first impulse. I determined to make artworks that arose from within the void of my inner self, even if that meant that I would begin with inchoate, spastic scribbles.

Art historians in particular have often thought about structured time. Your cycles also deal with time in a visual sense.

Whatever time element might be implied in my works would be of a now-time nature, that is, as a comprehensive whole, where everything is happening simultaneously. Although my works tend to come in related series I do not ordinarily think of them in terms of time. In some series the sequence of the artworks is important to the degree that a key element in the suite is a developmental evolution from one piece to the next, as for instance in some suites of prints. My painting cycles tend to be more non-hierarchical and non-sequential, though sequential patterns may be always be found if one intends it.

What about history, time and repetition?

My sense of historical repetition is that it is a dialectic, operating in cycles which are rooted in human psychology. Because we live in a polarized, duality-based reality we seem to be continuously undergoing a process of swings between antithetical poles resulting in new syntheses to which we then find new antithesis, and so on. The mind's dissatisfaction with things as they are drives us to seek their opposites until a wistful desire to return to our previously abandoned "golden age" brings us to seek the original pole; only now it's somehow changed: familiar, yet different.

That history seems to repeat itself, I think, speaks of the persistence of the archrtypal dualities which we share through our collective unconscious, such as freedom/limitation, control/chance, excess/scarcity, simplicity/complexity, reason/emotion, expansion/contraction, and so on.

In other words, it seems we take certain paths as far as we can until we tire of them for different reasons, and then our wish to "return home" sets in. We never do find our original "home"--it doesn't exist anymore; everything changes-- but on our way looking for it we run across some interesting adventures and places which we eagerly explore until in turn we tire of them, the desire to return once again setting in, etc.

Have you used fractal-like structures in your works? Do you put any merit in the idea that fractal geometry may visually describe all universal structure and reactions?

I love fractal images and find them absolutely fascinating, however I have not studied fractals in depth nor have I used fractals in my own work. From what I understand about fractals, fractal images are generated by computers programs using mathematical formulas. Colors may be assigned to certain values, and the formulas' parameters may be changed to yield different patterns. Fractals are characterized by infinite self-similarity at all levels of magnification or reduction. They are like worlds within worlds within worlds to infinity and back. There is something mystical in the very beautiful patterns that emerge, and I find them very beautiful, moving and exciting. I've thought about including fractal "guest galleries" in my website, inviting fractal artists whose work I especially enjoy to contribute images, but for now I am making do with links to the Infinite Fractal Loop Web Ring page where some amazing fractal sites may be accessed, including some with extensive information on fractal mathematics, history and theory.

Kandinsky claimed "The process of creation is the same in art and nature."

My paintings may allude to natural effects at times, as in the paint dripping effects in some of the Ode to Nature paintings, and at other times they may use natural forces and materials to refer to those kinds of things, as in "using" gravity and thin paint viscosity to refer to the pull of gravity or to the flow of water. Nonetheless, my work's relationship to nature is metaphorical and conceptual, using formal elements to comment on, or to allude to natural structures or effects. I am more interested, in terms of my work, in the metaphysical aspects of nature in the sense of its underlying structures, organizing principles and essences, than in Nature's dazzling beauty and in the details of its outward manifestations.

I self-consciously work within the painting tradition, with traditional media, in the creation of, more or less, traditional modernist paintings. I hold to Greenbergian standards of integrity in painting; two dimensional, material surfaces activated by materials, usually oil paints, without trying to render convincingly "realistic" illusions with the painting materials, which would attempt to fool the eye and negate the materiality of surface and paint. Perhaps the one way I may be considered eccentric in my work in my unabashed use of the primed white canvas as an abstract, timeless arena upon which to deploy expressive marks.

You describe your work as almost Metaphysical; can you define this?

As an artist, my work is based in metaphor. The formulation or even the illustration of a metaphysical theory, complete or otherwise, is beyond the scope of my work as an artist, which work is essentially of a poetic nature. As such, art evokes and rhymes; it suggests and ponders; it expresses and demonstrates; but it does so lightly, without holding too tightly to the philosopher's, or the cosmologist's, or the theologian's propositions, which are predicated on certainty: whether divined, reasoned, or supported by evidence.

Art makes no pretense - in my view, should make no pretense - to give us truths, objective truths, and suffers when trying. Art, at its best, is centered on the absolute freedom of pure creation, with inspiration, imagination, play, humor, and even whimsy for methodologies. I use the term "metaphysical" in my work to signal my concern with matters unlimited, and in particular, unseen. I use the term in the sense that Aristotle meant "wisdom," "theology," or "the first philosophy," a discipline "to deal with the first causes and the principles of all things," including, in addition to material things and abstractions, "immovable substance," as well as the eternal, immutable and immaterial, and the divine presence.

Do you attempt to illustrate the origins of how the universe began?

Some of my works have been about that, but treated from a poetic, metaphorical point of view using the visual vocabulary of art. I have "played" in my work with different creation stories, such as Genesis, Darwinism and the Big Bang , as well as with other schema, such as the I-Ching's notion of Yin-Yang as a primordial polarity engendering all changes and things. I’ve even used some of my own pictorial and graphical elements alluding to sequential developments that lead to growth, permutations, operations in the mathematical sense, cycles and other such sequences, for my work has had a tendency to come in related packages of suites, cycles, series and sets.

From the standpoint of art the use of cycles may be seen as formal or compositional devices, like repetition, development and counterpoint in music. They can also be more than that, as can the creation stories themselves, having higher octaves of meaning, subconsciously, or superconsciously pointing to things we as souls may have known but forgotten. And, indeed, that is one of the implicit intentions, or motivations behind my work: The demonstration and bringing to light of certain "archetypes," or schema which despite their spiritually vital power we as a culture may have forgotten, but with which we find strong resonance. In this sense they may serve as means of healing, restoring to our collective and individual consciousnesses vital pieces of our beings, and bringing us perhaps a greater sense of wholeness, integration and conscious awareness.

Is your overall goal to illustrate a complete metaphysical theory?

My work since 1978 has been concerned with questions of Creation, such as: the metaphorical correspondence between artist and Prime Creator, and between art and natural creation; the creation of something out of nothing --that is, absolute, rather than derived or evolved creation; the process of development and continued creation beyond first impulse; the nature and origins of the creative impetus; the issues of absolute freedom implicit in creation, and the implicit problem of choice; the role that art may play, as a microcosmic metaphor for cosmic creation, in informing us about the methods or "mechanisms" of natural manifestation; and the contemplation of the process of creation in terms of its ability to reveal the Creator, or to enable the Creator to know itself through its creations.

Why have you chosen to express your ideas as paintings? Do you experiment with other mediums or do you plan to in the future?

I have experimented with other media. I used to do photography, and I don't rule out experimenting with even more other media in the future, but going as far as playing around with Photoshop to manipulate - to weird out, rather - some pictures doesn't really inspire me.

Painting (and drawing, and printmaking, and occasionally small-scale sculpture) have proven to be sympathetic media for my interests in art: the direct, immediate and emotionally resonant expression of conceptual ideas of a philosophical nature. This in contrast to a cool, dry, mechanical, passionless rendering or transcription of thoughts.

I enjoy working directly, physically, with paints, color, brushes and expansive surfaces. I enjoy the dance-like muscularity of painting gestures, full blown and with intensity, as a performance captured, communicating the uniqueness and particularities of the moment of execution, the sense of bringing to life in a vital and emotionally intense way the merest wisps of ideas whose impact remained unseen, unexpressed and unmanifest until their actual execution in a dramatic moment of decision. These media suit my personality, my expression, my essential self.

It is important to me that there be fitness between medium and expression, that each medium be understood in terms of what it wants to do, what is most appropriate for it to do, what it does best, and that the right one be used, or that the right use of one be discovered, to match a specific expression.

How do you feel about art being so abstract?

Art is phenomenological, it exists in the same way that natural phenomena like trees, clouds, people or things do; they just are. How we judge them, appreciate them, feel about them; what we see in them or otherwise consider, or fail to, is not what these phenomena are --that is to say, those things do not exhaust them, do not ultimately define them and do not affect them as such. Tomorrow we will encounter them again and perhaps they will look very different to us, perhaps we will see things in them we never saw before, or maybe we will see them in a different light, from a different point of view. We would have changed, our perceptions would have changed, but the thing itself remains itself still, in all its ineffable, inscrutable, unfathomable being; and our judgments, beliefs and feelings about it say more about us than they do about it; for the thing, as phenomenon, acts only as a reflection to us of ourselves.

Is it a"natural" aesthetics subconsciously allowing us to comprehend the message even if we do not consciously realize it?

It is a wise artist who does not insist in exclusively owning his works, or on claiming to know them best, but who allows for and rejoices in unlimited responses to and interpretations of his work; for then, like a parent regarding his strong and independent child, he knows he has indeed created a living phenomena.

No doubt there are varying degree of comprehension that go on with viewers, some at unconscious levels. In fact, I do believe this is a common occurrence that we are influenced by artworks and plants and stars, and other such subtle or distant things in ways and extents to which we consciously may not be aware. One would expect that the sincere call of the heart would be heard from afar, and its influence widely felt.

Do you subscribe to the psychoanalytical teachings of either Jung or Freud?

I have found psychology interesting and insightful in the past as a doorway into subtler, deeper, and higher aspects of ourselves than allowed for by the biochemical machine paradigm of conventional western science and medicine. At present, nonetheless, it seems to me that psychology does not treat adequately of spiritual matters beyond our temporal, human manifestation. I would be most interested in a psychology of the eternal, transcendental soul as identified with God consciousness, if there could be said to be such a thing.

Does any of your imagery come from your dreams?

My imagery does not come from dreams. It has in the past come from semi-conscious doodles on note pad sheets arriving without active, conscious bidding nor design, though.

Do you work in the spur of the moment?

My imagery is both spur of the moment and planned. The initial inspiration is spur of the moment. I then usually go through a protracted period of analyzing it, considering it, understanding it from different perspectives and points of view, in relation to other images and ideas, and playing with it, and otherwise forming a set of relationships with it. This stage typically involves many sketches, at first small, then larger, usually in charcoal on tracing paper, where I further understand the image and the image's tolerances for distortions or variations.

I may then go on to make further small sketches in color, usually in pastel, and beyond that sometimes larger drawings, if the composition is somewhat complicated, in pastels or watercolor. I spend a long time thinking about the image, about how to paint it, what brushes to use, or what techniques. Sometimes I do dry runs on the canvas, getting the rhythm of the form's gesture, its rhythmic "swing." When the time comes to execute the actual painting, I experience a lucid calm. Working on instinct I mix the colors, choose my instruments and surrender to the flow of the event and to my knowingness. A painting's execution usually takes a few minutes, usually not more than a few hours. I may do more than one in a day, or only one.

Since I usually work in series, I stay with a given series until its completion. In the past I have typically completed a series of large scale paintings (about 9 by 6 feet or so), about 10 to 20 paintings per series, in about a year's time. I start a new painting series by gathering materials, buying canvas and lumber to stretch all the paintings I have decided to make for the new, as yet inconceived, series. I spend much more time, in fact, stretching canvas, building stretchers and priming canvas than I do actually painting the images.

There is usually a period between painting series when I study the last series' paintings, enjoying them and getting to know them, collecting impression and ideas from them, regarding them individually and within the context of the completed suite, and so on. Later a period of thrashing around sets in during which I consider what to do next, what, given what I've done up to then, I may want to do next, or what may be left to be done, taking stabs at some smaller canvases to try out new ideas or images, and so on. I may work on other projects as well, both before and during the execution of a series of paintings, turning out prints, drawings and smaller paintings.

So in your metaphysical model, I assume that spirit and energy are one in the same?

I feel now that spirit is different, essentially, from energy; energy, like matter, being a manifestation of creation, and spirit being more directly identified with the Creator, and therefore preceding creation. Nonetheless, in the created universes the two are inseparable: it is Spirit's essence that animates creation, as metaphorically, it is the presence of color and its expressive handling in the Easter Cycle paintings that animates their static structures, allowing them to bloom, wither and regenerate.

Do you feel as though you now have a better idea of how "meaning emerges in abstract art"?

It is good to seek answers, and good to find them; and we actually do find them. But let us realize that there are always greater truths. Let us hold our truths lightly, for we shall have others tomorrow; and let us not take them too much to heart, that we may have room for the others. Life is not as definite, or objective as we may have come to believe. We are unlimited divine creators. We are free to choose as we will, but let us not think that self-imposed limitations serve our highest expression.

Not surprisingly, it seems that meaning in abstract art takes many forms. The whole question of meaning seems rather problematic to me these days as I've come to realize the elusive, even illusory nature of it.

Julio Mateo, born in Cuba, lives and works in New Mexico. His website can be found at www.juliomateo.net.