These artworks are from my 1972-1980 period of spiritual development. I now understood that there was a difference between being a 'cleric', who serves a particular denomination, and a 'priest', which I now identified as an archetypal individual who serves all of our species.Every culture has had a 'priest,shaman,minister,etc.' role that in some fashion is a 'bridge' between what that culture believes is its 'natural' world and its 'super' natural world. In complex cultures with many roles, such as ours, the priest role is broken into several sub-identities of the archetype. I believe that the most basic function of priest archetype is to perform mediation and that is always done through an artform. Art is the only tool we have to make the invisible visible, the fantasized belief system of a culture into the literature, images, sounds, etc. that materialize their supernatural. A priest who is not an effective artist cannot function as an emotional bridge and an artist who doesn't know his archetype is lost to fads,illustration, or interior decoration. I believe art is the primal 'liturgy' of our species. The art in this period marks my understanding of the priest archetype.
