4'x8' masonite primed with white latex primer and painted with water-soluble oil paints.

Median of Perceptual Awareness

Sometime in late fall Jake Edwards and I decided to paint a mural. At first we didn't know what the mural was going to look like, how big is was going to be, where we would put it, or how we would even find a way to do it. It really just started as an idea and grew into a desire to express the ineffable through visual representation. For weeks we thought endlessly about different ideas and concepts for the piece but none seemed to really convey the message we had in mind. The general idea was to capture the state of being that connects our everyday "perceived" reality to the net of continuous, omnipresent, and omniscient reality in which everything is a part of. I wanted to show that "what we see" is not all there is and that our eyes cannot biologically perceive everything around us and that there is an entire dimension in which we live but do not see. We decided that the best way to go about visually representing this concept was to organize a landscape into a gradual progression from our "perceived" reality to the net of expanding consciousness. It starts as sort of a cliff side jungle or rain forest and slowly transfigures into a book cliff style desert and ultimately plains out into a vast wasteland. Flowing through this waste land and desert is a stream of water eventually pouring into a massive waterfall and oasis. The water begins as a colorful and elaborately patterned "stream of consciousness" and passes by a figure pouring something into it changing it into "perceived" water. Supposing that the desert landscape stretches across to the other side of the painting, it is then shattered or crumbled away and sucked into an intense vortex of concentrated omnipresent energy and funnels into a mandala of collective awareness. Preceding this is a vibrant and "stringy" nebula followed by an omnipotent weeping Eye of The I. The perceived physical world is slowly disintegrating into the vortex. The Eye watches intently yet passively as everything falls into oblivion. A meditative figure beneath the eclipse is a mediator between the physical and metaphysical, expanding its boundless awareness to the distant reaches of existence. The Sun, Vortex, and Eclipse contrast one another with sacred geometrical patterns, signifying the precise order within the universal chaos. This piece is an attempt to portray the "median of awareness" and the true nature of being. The important thing to keep in mind when viewing this painting is that it is still in the early stages of progression, it still awaits more vibrant color and intense detail, it also has an unofficial title. When finished it will be hung in the school that made this project possible. It is there that it will be viewed and hopefully thought upon as to what it represents and what the artists were thinking when in the process of creating it. I hope it is enjoyed as it has been a major part of my self education and personal discovery.