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artportfolio: Samuel Lightwing


'Psyche, or, Mental Imagery'

'Psyche, or, Mental Imagery'

Original
Acrylic on canvas
16cm x 12cm

Introduction

Statement

I'm not a writer. I mean, I'm really not very eloquent. I'm a painter- a young, autistic painter- and my communication skills are distinctly subnormal. So please bear with me as I try to explain what I'm all about...

I paint from imagination. It's a drive in me, the urge to create, make something new and strange and wonderful, something unreal. The unreal, that's the key here, I think. That which does not exist in nature. To recreate what already exists doesn't interest me much, and doesn't seem to have much value. I mean, I'm not a camera. I'd rather be God's epigone than his plagiarist. And besides, why restrict myself to the cramped palette of the real and present, when my imagination provides me with the limitless diversity of the fictive to draw upon?

I can do so much more with the bizarre than I ever could with the mundane. Suppose I were to paint, for example, a white horse running through a field, to a most meticulous standard of detail. It would be beautiful enough, but there would be nothing to hold the observer's attention for very long, or challenge the intellect. One of my pieces, on the other hand, might depict a butterflycityglowbrokensandcastleshapeofanautumnleafslantofafrowninshadowcatseyebatcavefallsidewayshandundertheskymanyfeet, upon a landscape which looks like the smell of hyacinths, under a sky which is indescribable. My way is at least as beautiful, if you have the stomach for it, and can provide expressive analogues for a thought about the future, or the blindness of the mob, or the nature and potential of technology, or the conflicting impulses of the creative psyche.

That is as good an explanation as I can manage of the mechanics, as it were, of how I respond to inspiration. The inspiration itself, of course, derives from the spirit of God, and so defies explanation...

Biography

My name is Samuel.

I don't think the way you do.

I dont process emotion the way you do.

I don't process memory the way you do.

I don't see the way you do.

I don't hear the way you do.

I don't learn the way you do.

I don't grow the way you do.

I don't feel pride the way you do.

(I cannot be compared with others objectively.)

I do not deceive.

I cannot deceive myself.

I cannot close my mind.

I cannot feel envy.

I cannot feel hatred.

I cannot feel bitterness.

I do feel anger.

I do feel pain.

I do feel fear.

I am incapable of bigotry.

I am incapable of patriotism.

I do not experience culture shock.

I do not have a culture.

No human understands me.

My nature is alien to them.

A few people try.

Most prefer me to hide my nature as efficiently as possible.

But different is not the same as wrong.

I am Samuel.

I am the only one.