Goudreault’s “Loft of Infinity” Brings New Dimension to Newport Art Museum’s 2020 Exhibition
For over 30 years, the Newport Art Museum’s Newport Annual Juried Exhibition has been a highly anticipated event by artists, curators, gallerists and collectors, and celebrated by thousands of visitors from Rhode Island, neighboring New England states, New York and beyond. Deborah Goudreault’s work in a hybrid medium of digital photography and what she calls perceptive sculpture will be showcased in the museum’s Newport Annual 2020 as part of an eclectic regional survey of 81 artworks in a diverse range of media selected by guest juror, Dr. Sharon Matt Atkins, Director of Exhibitions and Strategic Initiatives at the Brooklyn Museum.
Artist Deborah Goudreault had this to say about her selected work. “Growing up on a farm in NH, I often stole away to our barn loft to contemplate what existed beyond the physical dimensions of my world, the noise of conventional preconceptions and the fields which married my family to the Earth. It was a place of stillness, unlimited possibility and unbound perspective. There I was free to listen in silence to an inner, more eternal Voice; and glimpse that part of us that knows how to meet the veils of shadow and illusion and see only the indomitable radiance penetrating all life. The matrix of beams that formed my humble hay loft cathedral was my bridge between the finite and the Infinite and remains a strong symbol in my work.
In “Loft of Infinity”, a straight image of an empty, dark and forgotten barn loft is freed of its finite linear identity and unveils an equivalent of its more wholly integrated and unbound totality. Beyond lines of historic architecture and diffuse sunlight, an opening is revealed where we may let go the anchors of past perception and enter a realm of unknown dimensions, spiraling between the immaterial and the material, shifting our awareness beyond the domain of the physical senses, and closer to the subtle vortices of cosmically networked Energy and Intelligence within the self that feed and wait to fulfill our deeply wired yearning to transcend the known limits of matter, time, space, and what it means to be human. I extend my deepest gratitude to Dr. Atkins and the Newport Art Museum for their dedication to supporting and sharing art as a force of transformation and individual and collective awakening, and for giving my work new space to resonate and illuminate the hearts and minds of others.”
Invitation to the 2020 Newport Annual Exhibition
I hope you will join us at the opening reception Friday, February 7, 5 – 7 pm
or visit the 2020 Newport Annual Exhibition January 25 - April 26, 2020.
For details and directions to the Newport Art Museum https://newportartmuseum.org/
NOTE: “Loft of Infinity” was conceived as part of Goudreault’s 2019 collection entitled Vortices of the Self https://lightmindimages.com/vortices-of-the-self
Excerpts from Commentary on Vortices of the Self
https://lightmindimages.com/writings
Vortices of the Self opens viewers to Goudreault’s meditative inner perception and experience of a more expanded, multidimensional Nature and self. About her Vortices, Goudreault says, “They are the consecrated equivalents of an empowering course through the known finite aspects of who we are into an experience which realizes the self as a more potentiated, infinitely networked human totality. Loft of Infinity and every image in Vortices of the Self incorporates some physical form in nature but, in digitally dematerializing it, it becomes an opening to contemplate the vast multidimensional continuum of our existence beyond the stimulating yet limited reach of the physical senses.” Images of seemingly magnetic spinning pools become iconic projections of the Artist’s sensitively perceived entry points to a subtle energetic dimension of the self; a platform between the material and the immaterial where we are each networked to evolve a more whole and unlimited awareness, identity, purpose and potential.
In illuminating a relatively unacknowledged part of our human totality, Vortices of the Self makes conceivable what has been concealed in myth and mystery for centuries. Relating them to the rotating black holes and worm holes which are the focus of physicists all over the world, her impressions of human vortices foreshadow the increasingly significant future role of subtle energy vortices as vectors of individual and collective human advancement. “As long as we remain servants of a finitely conditioned mind,” she writes, “we are like robots in auto pilot evolving based purely on genetic coding and physical sensory experience. When we embark on a process of refining our energetic interface however, the universally networked Energy and Intelligence that has always been a part of our human totality will be more freely delivered through our human vortices. We will move from auto pilot and slowly progressing human potential to an evolutionary shift that is like suddenly traveling beyond the speed of light. We will radiate with new strength, harmonized wholeness, and capacities, technologies will emerge to serve unfathomed possibilities, and all space will open to us. But first, we must open the space of the self with practices which integrate the subtle dimension of our human totality! And before that we must be introduced to a compelling conception of it, in impressions which bring the immaterial more conceivably and relatably into view.”
When asked, “Why are these images relevant now?” Goudreault replies, “The period of emergence from conditioned preconceptions and long rooted mental patterns, associations and forms into a more complex but optimally harmonized, multidimensional reality and self-identity has been for most a slow and unconscious one. For all its ultimate benefits, the early stages of expanding awareness of our totality have often been experienced as a passage through trials, suffering, and a harshly dissonant inner discord. Too often the resulting doubt and despondency thwart our efforts to break the very chains that bind our conditioned perception, and the noise of chaos drowns out our inner call to live a sovereign life in which the whole self is known and free to evolve its unlimited capacity. The early stages of becoming more wholly empowered forces of healing and harmonization may yet taste of the bitterness of change and the conflict of transforming stereotypical beliefs, reasoning, and old patterns into purer energy, awareness and purpose. However, the means for a more infinite Energy and Intelligence to break through the lid of our limited past identity, incomplete knowledge and misperceptions are becoming clearer and increasingly accessible.
Art that is more than a shift in style and capability and that helps us release the preconceptions which anchor us to the past is of critical value in serving and supporting humanity in this period of transformation. As symbolic compositions of universal vision rather than art as excitatory escape and entertainment for the senses, Vortices of the Self evoke a quiet, neutral centered mind which frees us from our conditioned perceptions and limited potential. Beyond their inherent value as an art which revolutionizes how we view the medium of digital photography, Vortices of the Self are a link and uniting force where through a nucleus in the phenomenal world we may pass into the realm of primordial nature which binds every individual form in one single stream, one network of existence, cosmic Energy and Intelligence. As the viewer moves in and out of the vortices, simultaneously finite and infinitely engaged, it is an experience which may then become more conceivable and realizable within the self. What feels in gazing at the vortices like a moment’s transit through impossible expanses of space, we may eventually recognize as a reflection of our own innate power to fuse and transit multiple time-space dimensions for enhanced communication, and access to new energies and intelligence.”
Goudreault writes, “Every effort to bring the mind toward concentration beyond our finite physical sensory conditioned reality contributes to greater awareness of our human totality, and a union between our finite and infinite human dimensions which makes our experience of the immaterial more tangible. The content of the vortex images is unplanned and intuited, but the composition of Vortices of the Self is very specific. Concentration on the black outer fields help empty the mind of its attachments so we may more easily concentrate on the space of the vortices. Similar to their precursory geometric yantras, the central point in each vortex in the collection represents a ring of singularity, stillness and the most condensed form of Source Energy and Cosmic potentiality. The vortex is the uncoiling of the sequence of manifestation and its expression as a dynamic cyclic force of life where primordial energies are constantly being transformed and take on the geometry and substructure of the infinitely evolving phenomenal world. As representations of an archetypal vortex through which all manifest phenomena are created and evolve, they facilitate our movement from the dense material to more subtle dimensions of being. Where one has had difficulty settling the mind to meditate, a few minutes of gazing on one of these vortex images can help release viewers from a limited conception and experience of the self and allow one to more easily redirect the outward moving energy of the eyes internally.”
When Goudreault is asked, “so are the images in Vortices of the Self art or instrument?”, she smiles and replies, “There is no duality in it. True art is an instrument for creating a reaction which elevates our conception of Nature and the nature of the self, isn’t it? While this may be debated, we can find entertainment with the press of a button anywhere at any moment, but art should refine and expand our mentality. Vortices of the Self’s visual equivalents of an innate energetic anatomy for evolving a more empowered human totality may in some environments be revolutionary and provocative enough as photographic art. However, for those with a desire to engage them as such, they are also instruments of active transformation which support the individual practice of meaningful concentration and eventually meditation, whereby the source Energy and Intelligence emanating through our human vortices becomes an increasingly tangible, wholly integrated and infinitely potentiating part of our human totality.”
What can we take away from this? Each image in Goudreault’s Vortices of the Self is a unique approach to more expanded knowledge of the universal network of Nature and the multidimensional totality of the Self. Some may respond to one vortex image more than another. The opportunity to concentrate on these timeless impressions with unconditioned reference to known forms in nature may shift one’s perception of space-time as an increased sense of widening connectivity in space or the sense of becoming a present observer of vast dimensions without moving from one’s finite point on Earth. At the very least, gazing into the space of these vortices, we will all find ourselves on a journey beyond the ordinary parameters of life and mind, on a transit into the deeper universe of the self. They will open us to the idea of an untapped system of dormant inner potentiality as essential to our human quest to explore and reach the quantum possibilities we can now calculate and conceive of just beyond our grasp.
Earlier Barn Loft images may also be viewed in Goudreault’s Disembodied Barns https://lightmindimages.com/disembodied-barns
Copyright 2019 Deborah A. Goudreault. All Rights Reserved.