DIGITAL INK BLOT PAINTINGS
Jung, Rorschach, Art and Therapy
Teaching a class called Carl Jung and Art Therapy, my awareness and appreciation of Jung’s contemporary, Hermann Rorschach, blossomed. I decided to explore the ink blot medium/process as artistic expression, rather than as psychoanalysis by the doctors of the early 20th century.
Nine Dancers
Soon a few experiments evolved into a major series of art. My wife had just died, and the covid-19 pandemic hit hard. Nowhere to go and all alone at home, all I could do was create art. I converted the central island in my kitchen into a large easel, turned on nice and loud an opera by Verdi or jam-band concert by the Grateful Dead, poured a glass of wine, and let the ink flow. I explored a variety of techniques in an effort to match my visual ideas with a satisfying result. The dried inkblots on paper were digitally scanned and significantly altered, modified and added to using Photoshop tools. The resulting digital files were printed using large format inkjet printers. For these works I began with 12˝ x 18˝ inkblot paintings on artists’ rag paper with just the right balance of absorbency and hardness. Usually, themes and images were painted over and over again, in an effort to get the desired result. Thousands of these painting led to a large group that were then scanned into a digital TIFF format. In Adobe Photoshop I further painted and modified to my satisfaction. Once completed in the digital format I printed them on Epson Premium Luster paper using Epsom printers resulting in archival pigment prints.
Cosmic Heart
Friendly Goblin
Kacy
Death Mask
Possibly the most insightful observations on my art were made by the world-renown art therapist, author and educator Dr. Shaun McNiff. In the catalog, An Active Imagination, he wrote, “Various mythological figures from world cultures are presented in new media, including photography, printmaking, collage, and digital painting. Classical personages are included together with people in Mark’s personal life. There is a continuous glow and light radiating from the images that feels like it emanates from deep within persons, materials, the soul of the world, for me more chthonic than celestial, closer to the fiery core of the earth, and perhaps each of our lives. Many of the works feel like art altars, inviting contemplation and reverie, archetypal shrines connecting life now and the ancient past, an imagination of perpetuity incited by each piece carrying its unique life for us to engage. The works in this show are true images as defined by Archetypal Psychology, uniquely particular entities, living things, or moments in time unto themselves, as contrasted to more transcendent symbols. As well as I know Mark Towner, I confess that it is only through his showing of this work that I am for the first time witnessing his sense of the deep sacred emerging from his personal studio space, a true sanctum where, he conducts what our friend Thomas Moore described as ‘rituals of the imagination’ manifesting the ‘holy.’”
Angel in the Morning
The Bear
Ghost
Phoenix Rising