“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(At supper time this evening I explained a few problems of a technical nature, connected with my painting, to Jane. I believe I have solved some of them, or at least am embarked on the right course after a very long period of trial and error. They involve mostly portrait work, and such mundane things as the handling of paint, both opaquely and thinly, and the symbolic meaning behind these things. I told Jane I wasn’t asking that Seth go into these this evening; I preferred that he talk about Jane or the Sumari work. I made the extra effort to explain these concerns to Jane because I feel it’s part of the resurgence I seem to be experiencing since we made the decision that I leave Artistic at the end of this month.)

There are multitudinous themes interbound in any society at any given time, and they are all related. There is meaning in all of them. In the eras of the great artists, civilization was united by a series of revelations, ideas and also distortions. The artist was an important part of his society.

The distortions grew so great that the whole structure crumbled. Many artists relied upon the stereotyped constructions of their age, rather than looking within for their own revelations, so that art could have become the frozen art form—painting could have—that showed clearly the spiritual immobility of a people who finally grew dry.

The artist became at that point truly an initiator, no longer supported by the cultural society. While the majority were still immersed in the old, the artists were already experimenting with the new, and became to some extent outlaws to their own people.

Those minor artists who still continued to follow old patterns often did so because they were honestly not initiators or creators, merely facile. They belonged to the (in quotes) “mass mind” of the time, therefore they did not have to feel apart and were accepted.