Turning his back on pure formalist play, on cynical political statements and pop-art, Jack sought out teachers outside the western art world who could teach him about the transformative powers form and colour could have over psyche and spirit. Connecting across centuries of left-brain cultivation in the rationalist-secular Euro-American world, towards practices of a type that 'we' had marginalized and stigmatized since the Middle Ages, Jack defied the narrowness of the art world around him. With his work, as he practiced and taught it, he ignored the categorical divisions erected between 'art', 'therapy', and 'spiritual practice,' bridging these, and out of that emerged the form of the circle, emblem of wholeness, as a site for safe exploration of the depths within and without.

To me, a global wanderer, art lover and writer, encountering the art of Jack Wise affirmed how one can encounter the presence and the workings of a universal mind/spirit, wherever one goes, although they are few and far between. What do I mean with 'a universal mind/spirit'? ("Is this person some kind of fuzzed, romantic post-hippie airhead?" you ask.) No. But I do distinguish between what most people (and most artists) do and what the small number of break-away non-conformists do. Most people root themselves in the particulars of their 'here-and-now,' embracing the emblems and modes of their era, and play with these, perhaps tweaking, twisting, or stretching them, to make an original mark, but essentially staying within their culture. But a few people make a leap, out of their geo-cultural and temporal parameters, and reach for something that appears new to their surroundings and peers, even when this 'new' thing is actually far older than the artist's own 'traditions' and, in fact, turns out to be something that resonates more deeply within the artist than the elements of the familiar that surround him or her.

Sanskrit has rhythmic-poetic terms for these two different kinds of paths through life: the astikas are the orthodox, or 'yay-sayers', who go with the expected flow, and the nastikas are the heterodox, who say: "... but no! I think I shall have to try it this way!" And proceed surrounded largely by solitude, because no one understands what they are up to. Not until much, much later. Encountering Jack, I encounter another nastika; not a nay-sayer to the existence of mind and spirit, but to the cultural conventions and institutional regulations that would limit his access to the fullest and deepest orchestration of these.

I lose myself in Jack's mandalas. Here is the familiar transformed - here is the cosmic diagram, with the four directions encircling the centre, with the gateways both welcoming and maze-like, and the idea of the journeying eye representing the journey of life and death and rebirth and the cycles of growth we may turn. Here is also pure, abstract colour play and powerful, even monumental compositions, where geometric shapes are assembled into wholes that are both organic and essences of deep structure. Yet, Jack Wise's mandala paintings are neither 'Tibetan', 'Buddhist,' 'New Age' nor 'modern western' art. If anything, they may combine fragments or deep roots of all these, and more. While I bathe in their aesthetic impact and slowly align my psycho-somatic rhythms with theirs, I struggle to try to define Jack's work. They just won't come. A little laugh begins to bubble up towards the surface of my mind and words begin to take shape. Finally I can see them, like tiny, three-dimensional tongues of fire echoing the shape of the soft hairs of a fine paintbrush: "That which can be spoken is not the true Wise." [This is a play on the Taoist teaching "That which can be spoken is not the Way, the Tao"]

<<back

Page 2 of 2