Statement
AEON: GNOSTIC ICONS. My work is a footnote to C.G. Jung's "The Red Book." Brilliantly, in "The Red Book," Jung translated into words and painted imagery his visionary experience of open-eyed descent into the underworld of the unconscious. What he produced is a testament to the limitless potential of a realm that the ancient Gnostics of the early common era knew well, and termed the pleroma. Every Gnostic of that time was expected to produce from their own experience such a testament. This form of direct knowledge, gnosis, so challenged the authority of the established church that Gnostics were persecuted, their works suppressed, and every attempt made to stamp out any vestige of their existence. The key point of contention was that Gnostics centered authority in the mythopoetic realm of the imaginal, the orthodox in literal or factual truth. In our time, the split continues. Hence the perception that "scientists don't understand Jung, artists do." My sense is that "The Red Book" marks a turning point, a shift in time: the aeon, as it were, of the re-emergence of Gnosticism. To this end, my icons, incised and painted wood panels, aim in their own nascent way to contribute.
