“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Now, each brush stroke 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. [...]

[...] (Long pause, eyes closed; one minute.) Spatially, a painting is flat. [...] (Long pause.) The depths within the painting do not physically exist, yet they are perceived.

(I am still much interested in the technical side of painting, so much so that a few years ago I drew back from getting too involved in this aspect lest I spend too much time at it, detracting from the painting itself. [...]

(Perhaps I carried out some of my experiments with painting the outdoor sculpture in Denmark, where winter weather must be considered, after visiting Italy. While I discussed the Florence, Italy, data with Jane after the session, Seth returned very briefly re Rembrandt:That is why he went to Florence—to see the sculpture there. Perhaps after my return to Denmark from Italy I did some experimenting re painting sculptures, and then passed this information on to Rembrandt?

Too many compromises do sap your strength and energy, and the work compromise was inhibiting your painting to some extent. [...]

(I asked about which painting was involved because I wanted to be clear about the two most recent I’ve been working on. [...] The October 9 date would be, I believe, either the day I began this painting, or shortly after I started it. [...] I was concerned about form in this painting, and this concern, linked up with composition, gave me quite a little tussle in this painting. [...]

(“Just briefly: What do you think of that little painting of the trees I did?” This is why, earlier, I asked Seth which painting the dream referred to; I was just finishing up this painting while beginning the fruit still life, on October 9.)

[...] The painting is almost done now and appears to be successful. [...] I hadn’t said anything to Jane about my concern with this painting; in fact, everyone who saw it in progress, even at the beginning, seemed to like it, remarking especially upon the form and composition.

[...] Out of the corner of my right eye I caught a glimpse of my oil painting, The Girl with The Violet Eyes, as I call it. It’s of a dream image I had on November 8, 1981, although I didn’t finish the painting until February 1983—one of the last I’ve done.

(At first I thought it was a trick of sunlight—which was quite diluted as it came through the room’s east windows—but all of a sudden I stopped to look at the painting as it sat on the shelf I’d built high up on the south wall just inside the door. For a moment I was almost transfixed—for the painting, I suddenly saw, was alive. [...]

[...] I described my experience viewing the paintings to her, and made a mental note to bring the painting in to 330 so she can see it, since her recall of it isn’t too clear. [...]

(I know the painting, of course. I painted it in Florida in 1954, before Jane and I were married. [...] This means, of course, that I’ll only be painting a new version of the old. [...] I have no regrets about selling the painting, though.)

[...] One of the paintings you did many years ago clearly foreshadowed the development of your psychic endeavors. [...] You were not consciously aware of the connection, but you were consciously aware of the painting’s strong impact.

[...] She said she could see the 1954 painting very clearly while Seth talked about it, including its wide, old-fashioned gold frame. [...] Naturally, the painting was sold before we had any conscious awareness of its import. [...]

The painting also, innately now, involves going outdoors, though you seldom paint from nature out in the landscape. [...]

[...] Time spent writing meant time not spent painting. You believed the painting self had to be protected … as you felt that your father had to protect his creative self in the household …

[...] You chose to concentrate on artistic endeavors as you grew and learned through various areas and periods — that is, you tried and enjoyed sports, and writing; and after a while you decided upon the painting self as the particular focus upon which you would build a life.

[...] The dark-haired young man was trying to talk me into displaying some of my smaller paintings in the room in his funeral home where guests were seated for viewings, etc. [...] I wanted the paintings to be priced so people might buy them, but he said that wouldn’t be proper in a funeral home. I replied that his policy meant people would think the paintings were his, and not for sale. [...]

You do innately possess that freedom in your painting—as Ruburt innately possesses that same freedom of bodily motion. [...] In a way, your paintings were larger than life. In that their spontaneity so beautifully followed their own order, and the painting seemed to simply flow outward into physical existence. [...]

[...] Earlier in the afternoon I’d described my very vivid dream of last night, and asked that Seth comment on it if he came through: I’d found myself in a large studio, painting like mad on large canvases. Like Rembrandt had, I was painting portraits and full-figure compositions on very large canvases—even over ten feet square, say. [...]

If the artist paints a doorway, all of the sensed perspectives within it open, and add further dimensions of reality. [...] The people in the artist’s painting are not simple representations either — to stare back at him with forever-fixed glassy eyes, or ostentatious smiles (again humorously), dressed in their best Sunday clothes. [...] They can turn sideways in the painting and look at their companions, observe their environment, and even look out of the dimensions of the painting itself and question the artist.

Now the psyche in our analogy is both the painting and the artist, for the artist finds that all of the elements within the painting are portions of himself. More, as he looks about, our artist discovers that he is literally surrounded by other paintings that he is also producing. As he looks closer, he discovers that there is a still-greater masterpiece in which he appears as an artist creating the very same paintings that he begins to recognize.

Our artist then realizes that all of the people he painted are also painting their own pictures, and moving about in their own realities in a way that even he cannot perceive.

[...] When the police asked Bill to remove the painting from his gallery window, he asked advice from three people in particular. [...] These two supported Bill’s decision to leave the painting in the window. The third man, Ernfred Anderson, who has a national reputation as a sculptor and teacher at Elmira College, and is a close friend of Bill, Jane and mine, advised Bill to remove the painting. [...]

[...] The so-called disputed painting is in one window. In the window opposite it Bill has a large hand-lettered sign dealing with the hours when his gallery is open to visitors and for painting classes. [...]

[...] In the third column of the envelope object there is a reference to “ceramics and metal sculpture” also in the window with the nude painting that is the subject of the object. Directly in back of the painting is a large circular ceramic sculpture, perhaps a foot in diameter, that is more egg-shaped than a perfect circle. [...]

(The portrait is one of my “people” that I had painted without a model, which is my favorite way of doing people. Seth has said that I paint these portraits of unknowns because I have received telepathic data on them. [...] Yesterday I thought I had more understanding why Sonja wanted the painting, and so decided to sell it. [...] The painting was rather abstract, but hinted at a Middle East background, and the head was in a turban of sorts.

[...] Sonja has always been attached to a portrait I had painted before Jane and I were married, and at various times had urged me to sell it to her. Yesterday she asked me again to sell her the painting, and I did even though it had sentimental value for Jane and I.

I also miss the painting that hung there upon the wall; and while I will not take up much of this session with this material, I will nevertheless make here a few comments concerning the person to whom the painting was sold.

[...] In a lull of conversation, Peg G. leaned forward and said: “I was at Lib’s Supper Club, and your paintings are still there,” or other words to that effect, mentioning both Lib’s and the paintings.

This is the first time since the sixties that the Gallaghers have ever mentioned those paintings to us also; although they’ve been to Lib’s many times in those years … It’s also interesting that Peg didn’t see the fourth painting, either … She and I seem to “pick up” from each other fairly well, according to past instances…

If Rob and I discussed it on Tuesday, I could have picked up on Peg’s plan to go to Lib’s, wondered about Rob’s paintings — and have somehow gotten my question across to her. So that, visiting the next night, she was attracted to the paintings, answering my question Friday when she gave us her account of the episode.

(At the supper table tonight Jane and I discussed our painting and writing, and said we hoped Seth would discuss several problems that had arisen in these fields. I was particularly interested in the painting information, and spent some little time explaining why to Jane.

The precise delineation helped create the subject of the painting beautifully, with almost “supernatural” in quotes, precision. Yet the lines also served to protect you from that which you were painting, and from the feeling involved.

When you paint the land, do so thinking in terms having to do with its past as well as present and future. [...] Remember in your painting the relationship of one object to another, not in terms of space necessarily, the interrelationship of the vitality that forms the objects; the vibrating always changing reality within, say, the skin of the apple or the orange, the quite living consciousness within the molecules that make up what seems to be the solid surface of the fruits’ skin.

In a fashion, those stylized figures that stood for the images of God, apostles, saints, and so forth, were like a kind of formalized abstract form, into which the artist painted all of his emotions and all of his beliefs, all of his hopes and dissatisfactions. [...] The point is that the images the artists were trying to portray were initially mental and emotional ones, and the paintings were supposed to represent not only themselves but the great drama of divine and human interrelationship, and the tension between the two. The paintings themselves seemed to make the heavenly horde come alive. [...]

[...] Poor people saw lesser versions of religious paintings in their own simple churches, done by local artists of far lesser merit than those [who] painted for the popes.

The species uses those conditions, however, so that the paintings of the great masters can serve as models and impetuses, not simply for the extraordinary artwork involved, but to rearouse within man those emotions that brought the paintings into being.

All of his interest in painting is used as a supplement to his interest in medicine. Certain paintings can capture the psychic energy of others, and certain paintings can release the psychic abilities and healing abilities of the viewer. The painter’s intent is embedded in his medium and in his painting.

You may be interested in hearing some information about him, for he is working with art, painting, in terms of therapy. He is not only working with patients and using art as a therapy for them, not only having them paint as therapy, you see, but he is also working on the idea that some paintings in themselves have a healing effect. [...]

[...] I mentioned earlier that in one probability system you were a doctor who painted as a hobby. [...]

(At supper time this evening I explained a few problems of a technical nature, connected with my painting, to Jane. [...] 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. [...]

[...] The sketches sketch themselves through you, so let the paintings paint themselves through you in the same fashion, and miracles of technique will follow automatically. [...]

[...] I explained to her after the session that I wasn’t sure about the reference to purple or violet, which I seldom use directly because they are hard to integrate into a painting—at least for me. [...] The painting I am working on now features a cadmium red shirt on the subject, and has given me some trouble because of its tendency to turn purplish if not watched; since Jane has seen me at work on this portrait often, she may have picked this up, although I haven’t mentioned it to her. [...]

[...] You say, consciously: “I cannot get painting ideas now because I am working on thus and so in these hours,” and so inhibit paintings. With a freer attitude, you see, the paintings would come through, practically speaking, now. [...]

[...] If you do not make artificial divisions, but see the day as your own, and know your intents, then you will find that while doing Dialogues, for example, ideas for paintings will come, and that while thinking of Larry’s (Herschaft) sketches you will also find future paintings coming to mind.

(Last night I had a very vivid dream in which I sold three of my paintings. One of them was one of the last I’ve painted before Jane went into the hospital. [...] It’s the little painting of a dream of my own, in which I stand on the close edge of a roof, looking down into a city street. [...]

An excellent dream, in which the paintings stand for paintings—but also show that the fruit of your other endeavors will do well in the marketplace—that the marketplace will reward you—and that also includes the insurance situation. [...]

(“What do you think of my dream about my selling my paintings last night?”)

[...] Now you can grab a hold of the original inspiration for a painting, and ride it outward, or you can look at your own completed painting and ride it inward to its source. [...]

Your painting itself will seem to expand, for the channels will be opened. [...] There may be a definite memory recall, a few curious moments when time dissolves, when even beneath a portrait you have painted you will see another face.

You will find evidence of the center of your self in your paintings, of course. [...]

[...] When I started painting, I was appalled to discover my ignorance. [...] I was willing to spend the time necessary to master painting. [...]

(They had to do with my painting, my lack of financial contributions this year, etc. [...]

He feels that you have not tried to make a success of your art, but have used excuses while blaming him for using excuses; that he tries desperately to sell his books, while you will not lift a finger to sell your paintings; that if he waited until he did his best work, he would never have sold a thing.

Paintings, sketches and drawings will be seen by millions of people as they appear—and will—in current and future books. [...] The impetus of your own growing psychic experience will more and more provide you with the inner models for drawings and paintings (louder).

[...] (See sessions 714, 716 for instance.) Your own creativity emerges, and will not only in your sketches of your experiences—those you have done and those that you will do—but in the paintings also that you will indeed do from them. [...]

[...] Remind yourself however that even in this period of activity your creative mind is working on paintings, and you will have the time to physically produce them.