About this Piece
#78 - Quanta: "Bark Talk Totem" One of my first Aboriginal Dreamtime encounters that I experienced in Kakadu was with the bark of a eucalyptus tree. My first watercolor site set up with the use of my music tapes did not work with the use of my recorded music collages. Those sounds did not at first unlock the natural phenomena of that park setting. I had laid out a bark paper and couldn't connect until I put on an Aboriginal music tape that featured camp site stories and their instrumental original music. Their main instrument is the Didgeridoo. It is a one note sounding instrument made from a hollowed out limb of a eucalyptus tree. It's sound vibrations drew my attention to a large section of bark peeling off a eucalyptus tree nearby so I used this sighting to inspire me to begin painting my first watercolor on a small piece of Mexican bark paper. The eucalyptus tree bark surface "talked to me visually' and instructed me on how to express this experience and entrain with the Aboriginal culture spirits on the watercolor bark paper. I had brought with me. Once I was able to translate their stories and music and eventually my music collages through the watercolor medium and entrain with the Aboriginal spirits of the park environments, I was off and running for a full month of painting experiences.
About the Artist
David W. McCullough - Quantum Artist Statement
For fifty years my paintings, sculpture, and works on paper have been concerned with capturing nature's light energy, color, and geological crystalline Geomancy. Since the early 1980's I have consciously been developing a quantum coherent aesthetic based on my field trips and studio work.
My quantum art aesthetic is multi - disciplinary. It consists mainly of nature field research and originating creative innovative uses for all mediums in conjunction with studies of the disciplines of Chemistry, Mineralogy, Crystallography, Geology, Physics, Bio - physics, Mythology, and music, art, and poetry. I began in 1970 making art in my Dallas studio which also afforded me access to the National Park system in the Southwest, mid - west, and Southern states surrounding Texas. I have concentrated my watercolor field trips on the 'Four Corners' region that includes Utah, Arizona, Colorado, and New Mexico. They are my 'outback studio' outposts where I can paint watercolor, draw, and photograph, nature's holistic systems, Her psyche, and entrain with its geological crystalline Geomancy.
This field research is always assisted by recorded music and is the foundation stone of all my abstracted quantum art studio compositions. The field artworks captured essence of natural phenomena in the parks and at Native American rock painted sites assists me in maintaining an integrity to these places and its potential transference to all mediums and processes. I have also traveled to Kakadu and Grampean national parks in Australia to study them and paint at their Aboriginal rock painting sites. The Aboriginal Dreamtime stories, art and music, as well as the Native American mythology, and ethnological studies of their cultural operating systems has greatly informed the quantum potential of the use of imagery, coloration, rhythms, and Alchemy in my artworks.
The onsite watercolor painting experiences ground my quantum aesthetic and give it a mystical, universal, and naturalistic quality. They also have given me many insights into how to create an optical chemistry in the paintings that changes in the light and reflects their transcendental nature essences.
Musicians from all idioms and instrumentation throughout the world have contributed to the flow of spiritual energy that drives the processing of quantum aesthetic realizations which stimulate my creative activity. Their music resonates in the watercolor coloration and its rhythmical sensuality and lyrical poesis.
This has resulted in a Gaia poesis that represents nature's harm0onic complexity and its geological geometric ordering systems throughout the mineral kingdom and plant world. The poetic audio visual fusion of artistic expression, nature's psyche, and the emotional of musicians' imaginative insights are all woven together into a what I call, "sonic expressionism." These sonic rhythmical patterns and geometric ordering relationships animate the audio visual entanglement of conscious intentions and quantum coherence systematically into a harmonic entrainment process.
Animating words to metaphoric delight, like "collaging" is to take ordinary aesthetic learned processes like collage and turn it into a quantum - way processing juggernaut. Simply put quantum art is about being affected by a creative energy flow of pure awareness that allows our being to process consciousness in the moment so we can respond to the adventure of discovering new possibilities to making lively spirit filled artworks.