“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

[...] However, after giving me some very astute data about my painting, Seth resumed book dictation very smoothly at 9:33 — just as though there hadn’t been any time lapse from February 11 to March 18.

[...] As your paintings are solidified feeling on board or paper, apparent in the physical universe and therefore vulnerable to the laws of that universe, so is the universe itself on your plane physical materialized feeling, only with more dimension than a drawing or a painting. There is however also an extra dimension in a painting than people usually recognize, beside the lines and color and form and content, which are as you said so aptly feeling solidified. [...] First you have the action of the lines, form and content and so forth, caught and solidified, then as an observer looks at a painting feeling is again motion moving out from the painting into the beholder’s perception.

[...] Action is solidified, or should I say transfixed, in a painting and yet even in a painting action is never really solidified or transfixed, but continually fluid.

Since holding the last [897th] book session nine days ago, Jane has delivered three remarkable private sessions for Seth.¹ Tonight she was quite at ease, and had been tempted to skip the session and just paint. [...]

I told Jane she needn’t have a session if she wanted to paint, but that if she did go into trance I wouldn’t mind getting something from Seth on the dream I’d had early this morning. [...]

[...] A great painting of a battle scene, for example, may show the ability of the artist as he projects in all its appalling drama the inhuman and yet all-too-human conditions of war. [...]

The artist who paints such a scene may do so for several reasons: because he hopes through portraying such inhumanity to awaken people to its consequences, to make them quail and change their ways; because he is himself in such a state of disease and turmoil that he directs his abilities in that particular manner; or because he is fascinated with the problem of destruction and creativity, and of using creativity to portray destruction.

[...] Poetry and painting were both functional in ways that I will describe in our next book (humorously, elaborately casual), and “esthetic,” but poetry and painting have always involved primarily man’s attempt to understand himself and his world. The original functions of art—meaning poetry and painting here specifically—have been largely forgotten. [...]

[...] Along with my painting and dream recording, both of which I do in the mornings, all of these activities come together in just the kind of busy, creative life I greatly enjoy. [...]

[...] She’s been painting, answering mail, and writing poetry. [...]

[...] We’re having the house painted, and I could smell the acrylic odor. [...]

[...] I’ve also been praised or criticized for elements that I hadn’t realized existed in a painting, while my conscious intentions were ignored or unperceived. That can be even more mystifying: “Are they talking about my painting?”)

[...] Afterward the critics may point out patterns, assign the work to a certain school, connect the images or symbols to those in other paintings — and then make the mistake of believing the symbols to be general, always apt, meaning the same thing wherever they are found. [...]

The Cézanne book, the show, your own interest in Cézanne, and your own painting abilities are also connected in Framework 2, along with the fact that Cézanne himself had a secondary interest in writing, that fell by the board, so to speak. [...] He paints in another reality to which his own intent has led him, except that his creativity has opened up so that he no longer feels the same need for isolation.

[...] Monday morning as I painted, I found myself doing the same thing. [...]

[...] It should also include a reproduction of your painting of me, in a prominent place.

It should also include some other reproductions of your paintings as they apply to your psychic personalities. [...]

[...] Then humorously:) Your painting of me can become famous, in time. [...]

[...] The result of this activity is that I find myself focusing on a few things I think really important: Writing, painting, my love for Jane, the sessions, the house, the cats, etc. [...]

[...] Your impulses led you to paint. [...]

[...] At first I put it out of my mind, but soon began to be bothered by a mild feeling of strain, especially when painting—without glasses, by the way. [...]

[...] I’d also ordered an extra pair of glasses to experiment with for painting and writing—not bifocals.

Ruburt’s project—and this book (Dreams)—serve the same purpose to him, of course, as painting does for you, and such activity can in that light only benefit him. [...]

[...] Try the library playfully —or even paint. [...]

[...] His references to my own material being valid concerned my insights that many of the heads I paint represent my own psychic searches, or efforts, to obtain understanding of the dimensions of the psyche through reincarnation and counterpart depictions of those various personalities.)

The artist’s standard of excellence is often the necessity of keeping his job, and he has to keep his job because he fears he is not after all a true artist, or he would be painting a great painting. [...]

[...] He considers studying dreams feminine, and to paint pictures of them presents a second mystery (intently). [...]

[...] I “drew” a rough analogy with painting (to make a pun): The artist may start working on a blank canvas, yet each physical brush stroke he or she delineates is built upon inner knowledge and experience; in the painting these qualities are objectified in new combinations, which in turn add further to the artist’s conscious comprehension. And when the painting is finished, the artist contemplates a new reality of his or her own creation.

[...] In the 168th session, Seth stated the painting represented him, but he did not say in which life. The idea “came” to me one day and I painted the portrait without a model. [...] I did not know who it represented consciously; merely that I had a very clear mental image of a face and figure to paint. [...]

[...] Now and then I do indeed look down at him from my painting. [...]

[...] To finish the painting which you have begun . [...]

Each brushstroke of a painting represents concentrated experience and compressed perceptions. In a good painting, these almost explode when perceived by the lively consciousness of another. [...] As you know, paintings have motion, yet the painting itself does not move. [...]

[...] While it was not as colorful as it had been earlier, neither was it the white painted wall that should have been there.

[...] In a creative individual, some of this information might be symbolically expressed in a painting or other work of art.

Rob spent the next Saturday afternoon in his studio, as usual, painting and doing other artwork. [...] Rob’s mind was on some innocuous chore, now forgotten; he may have been applying gesso ground to a series of panels to be used for paintings. [...]

First I looked at various objects in the living room, such as a vase, a painting on the wall, a plant, and so forth, and tried to let my mind’s eye travel around these objects so that I could clearly picture the far side of them.

[...] In the past, he has more or less translated this data automatically, without realizing it, into paintings, with no memory of any vision at all. [...]

You are secure as long as you put a good portion of energy into painting, but this distortive expectation of yours could end up making you bitter even against your painting; because even when you are pleased with your work, it could tend, definitely, to prevent you, in strong terms, from seeking not only financial reward from it, but other satisfactions as well by preventing you from showing it where such showing in galleries and exhibitions throughout the country is important.

[...] It goes without saying that if all of your energy goes into money making little will be left for painting, but this is a long stretch between this equation and the one that says that an artist must be poor.

[...] You could have made a much less painful transition between complete commercialism and painting than you did, but here at a crucial moment was starry-eyed Ruburt, with his ideas of the poverty-stricken artist; and you can carry on from there.