Near Death Experiences and Painting

Frenetic Painting Stories influenced by oncoming death and post Near Death Experiences

A few days after the events of September 11, 2001, I was in Vietnam delivering Training and was told this story – ‘An artist who had rented collective art space in one of the Twin Towers had been missing since September 11. Apparently for the three weeks prior to September 11 he had gone against the protocols of the NY Port Authority and used the art space out of hours, frenetically trying to finish a Tryptic Painting – of a large plane crashing into tall buildings’. With aftersight his behaviour and images seem prophetic, but at the time, his fellow artists just thought he was mentally ill.

Near Death Experiences

This story really resonated with me, and I was grateful that his experience was not my destiny. I was also grateful that I did not have that frenetic feeling to paint at all costs. More fool me, because the universe had other plans! Three weeks later after the Training was delivered, the upstairs powers-that-be, gave me an opportunity to embody what Frenetic Painting felt like, as I frenetically and almost obsessively had to paint every spare hour of my day and night to get images that I had drawn in the 1980’s of my Near Death Experiences onto canvas. It was exhausting yet exhilarating. This painting, ‘The Eye of the Universe II’ is one of those images: