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LAURENCE CARUANA: VISIONS THROUGH THE AGES |
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Laurence Caruana was born the third son of Maltese parents who met and married in Toronto, Canada. After completing his studies in German and ancient Greek Philosophy (B.A. from the University of Toronto 1985), he learned classical techniques of painting at the Akademie der Bildenden Künste in Vienna (Academy of Fine Arts Vienna 1990). Caruana then began an itinerant existence, living variously in Toronto, Malta, Vienna, Munich, Monaco and Paris. In that period, he actively pursued visionary experience (dreams, entheogens) as a source for his painting and writing. After meeting his French fiançée in Munich, L. Caruana settled in Paris. In the year 2000 he met Ernst Fuchs of the Vienna School of Fantastic Realism and subsequently apprenticed under him for a year, working in his studios in Monaco and Castillon, as well as at the St. Egyd chapel in Klagenfurt. Caruana currently works in his atelier in the Bastille, and often travels abroad to exhibit his works or deliver lecture presentations on Visionary art. The year 2008 marks the publication of Enter Through the Image (Recluse 2008, ISBN 978-0-9782637-2-0) and his first painting seminar Visions in the Mischtechnik. Wikipedia contributors, "Laurence Caruana," Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Laurence_Caruana&oldid=238069473 (accessed September 23, 2008).
The visual language is a lost language, like cyphers undecyphered. But it underlies all that we dream each night. It invisibly appears whenever the images of vision flow in a meaningful way. It emerges from trance, contemplation, myth and madness. This ancient image-language, otherwise forgotten, is now being spoken once (from A Manifesto of Visionary Art, Laurence Caruana)
What does it mean to be artist to you?
When you first set out as an artist, you must learn to be true to your own life path and the visions that guide you along it. That means paying attention to your dreams, fantasies or vision-quests and really following the paths they propose, even if they’re far beyond anything you’re really prepared for.
No one else is going to be convinced that you’re an artist for at least the first ten years, so you have to believe in yourself.
But as the work gets out there and people start to respond to it, then you see your role expanding. A visionary artist, as far as I’m concerned, opens the eyes of others to worlds that remain otherwise unseen. I don’t mean fantasy worlds, but aspects of this existence which are important, but are generally ignored, like the web of life, our hidden interconnectedness, or underlying unity.
I’ve absorbed influences from hundreds of artists, some known, most unknown. My eye wanders, then becomes attached to a certain style, symbol, or colour hamony. From there, it’s drawn in deeper and deeper, returning to certain artist’s works and creating a kind of dialogue. This develops into a visual dialogue between their art and my own, but that dialogue can also be verbal. Strange as it may sound, I hear the artist’s voice each time I look at their works. An inner voice suddenly speaks up in my head and tells me that I should concentrate on this or that…
I see myself following a lineage that traces quite a specific line of development through Hieronymous Bosch and William Blake to Gustave Moreau and Ernst Fuchs. I can recognize and point to the visual similarities in their works. But, Christian art of the Occident is just one facet of a larger vision-jewel. I’ve done a lot of travelling because I really wanted to absorb and understand the sacred art of other cultures – ancient Egypt, Hinduism, Buddhism, Byzantine, Maya… Each of these traditions has had a profound influence on my art, both stylistically and symbolically.
I’m always open to ideas from all sources. I’ve had the rare good fortune of receiving certain images in dreams – the painting is presented, fully formed. Or, just the core combination of images is given to me and I improvise from there. After thirty years of recording my dreams, I can say that fully-formed paintings come quite rarely – about 2- 3 times a year. So, I also go on vision quests with entheogens. Despite the best of intentions, I never know what visions will flow or if I can even reproduce them in paint. The art of other cultures is also a great inspiration, particularly when I travel and visit sacred spaces, like temples or pyramids. Then all these influences get combined when I have entheogenic experiences in these sacred spaces, or dream of them afterward…
The Renaissance was born of the encounter between two entirely different cultures - ancient Greek art, and Christian art which, until then, was mostly Byzantine. I think there’s always a tremendous explosion of creativity when cultures collide and open themselves up, thereby, to new influences. We today are exposed to so many diverse cultures – both ancient ones like Egyptian, Minoan or Maya, and living ones like Oriental, Amazonian or Tribal cultures. We’re fortunate to be living in such diverse times, but artists have to respond creatively to the new influences, absorb them and integrate them into their own cultural tradition.
In a lot of ways, Ernst Fuchs represents the counter-current to Modernism. He has a very penetrating artistic gaze which looks back through the centuries and even millennia of art. Then, his paintings manage to combine influences, ideas and styles from so many high-points of artistic history. Where Modernism rejects most of art history, Fuchs incorporates it, following the integral dictum ‘include and transcend’. His researches into colour are way ahead of our times. A lot of the visual games he plays – like broadening figures, distorting shapes, or combining colours through glazing – are pushing the boundaries of our perception; they’re paving the way for new artists. What I learned, above all, by working with Ernst Fuchs, was ‘visionary seeing’. Of course, learning the Mischtechnik was also very important, but the technique won’t really serve your needs unless you learn to expand your vision, to see forms and colours in ways beyond our usual perception. That’s what I picked up from Fuchs.
As I said, I learned the Mischtechnik from Ernst Fuchs by working side-by-side with him in Monaco for a year. I learned a painting method that goes back through the history of European painting to the time of Van Eyck. Essentially, the Mischtechnik builds up a painting in layers. Eventually I understood that building up a painting, layer by layer, is essential for visionary seeing. For example, you can only create depths and dimensions of colour by building up those colour-dimensions - glazing one semi-transparent colour-layer on top of another. The technique allows you to see new depths, to visualize, play and improvize…
I held the first in a series of seminars this summer at Torri Superiore, an eco-village in the foot-Alps of Liguria, not far from where I worked with Fuchs. The seminar is called Visions in the Mischtechnik because it pursues visionary ways of seeing while also teaching the Mischtechnik. I was quite fortunate to attract a really enthusiastic and talented group from around the world – Argentina, Turkey, the U.S., New Zealand, Norway and, of course, Italy.
I think so many people came out, from such diverse backgrounds, because there’s a real need right now for gathering in creative groups. The unique place and timing of those gatherings is also important. I chose Torri Superiore because it’s a small eco-village where the residents have a really deep awareness of what’s happening to the planet and how we have to change our way of life to compensate. I think sustainable living and visionary art pursue the same goals in different ways. More and more people are having visions of a new world, and searching for the means to depict them. The Art academies won’t touch this kind of stuff, so these seminars fill the gap.
Italy is fortunate in having a couple of private academies in Florence that still teach classical techniques. But, they don’t encourage vision or imagination at all… Still, the interest in Visionary art is surging in Italy, just as it is every where else. I don’t agree with you when you say it’s ‘unknown in Italy’. Rather, the power-brokers of contemporary art, in Italy as elsewhere, don’t recognize it because they’re afraid of it. So, it doesn’t appear in the mainstream media channels, like tv or newspapers. Meanwhile, it’s finding expression through other means. Betty Books in Bologna published a great book on Visionary art called True Visions, which included the Italian painter Matteo Guarnaccia alongside the better-known visionaries. Italian painters like Fabrizio Clerici, Romano Ferroni, Fabrice Balossini, Rosa Estadella and Colette Rosselli appeared in Michel Random’s book l’Art Visionnaire (1991 edition). As well, Maurizio Albarelli staged a huge exhibition on Visionary art in Venice called du Fantastique au Visionnaire, which also published a catalogue. I think the awareness is growing…
Visionary art depicts the worlds we share behind the eyes. It makes the unseen seen. Whether you speak of angels and elementals or ancient archetypes and sacred geometry, there are always shapes and forms which remain invisible to the naked eye, yet which the mind can recognize in a visionary work of art. What makes visionary art unique is that ‘aha!’ moment of recognition. You’ve never seen this image before, yet it’s strangely familiar. If an artist has really plunged into the visionary depths, then the marks and signs of his experience usually manifest themselves in his work. It’s a question of authenticity – the authenticity of vision.
I provoked a lot of controversy in my manifesto by distinguishing between ‘true’ visionaries, ‘near’ visionaries and ‘false’ visionaries throughout the history of western art. A so-called ‘false’ visionary may be an extremely talented artist, but fails to convey a sense of the sacred or imaginal world when confronted by a visionary subject like the Fall of Adam, St. George and the dragon, or the Apocalypse. It’s not enough to imagine things by combining different pieces; you have to have an authentic vision of the whole. Anyway, you can find out more by reading the Manifesto of Visionary Art, where I try to define this elusive term in less than one hundred pages!
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