Etic Landscape #2

The impressions that I have of an etic reality go through my own filters. 

Getting back to the anthropological roots of etic and emic: those who study indigenous culture can’t ever be in that culture to experience it. They can try to imagine what it would be like and they may even get the opportunity to talk with someone in that culture to better understand it. They may have confidence that their information about that culture is objectively accurate. Maybe. Whatever they come up with is still subject to the world view that they already have.

Last time I wrote about etic visions of other realities that I bring forth and manifest in this world as my paintings.

Etic realities – are they real or wholly imagined? That depends on the definition of reality – or where the origin of reality is. 

It is obvious and also profound that if I can imagine it, it therefore exists.

But if it exists, where does it exist?

As I make a painting, I cross and recross the threshold from the unmanifested – the etic – to what I am manifesting on the canvas – the emic. 

So there is a back and forth synergy between the etic and the emic as the painting is produced.

I am unfolding an etic impression (You could just call it my imagination – I’m fine with that.) into my current reality. Taking unmanifested perceptions into a visual manifestation. 

Any creative person will tell you every work of art or invention first has to exist in their imagination before they can bring it forth into physical reality. And the final product may not match the original vision or intent. That’s the process of crossing back and forth in action. I’ll notice an invitation, communicate with it, and have a breakthrough expression. 

I will profess that the initial etic impression and subsequent conversation exists within me. But that reflects an issue that I have with people who see angels or hear the word of God or have fanciful near-death experiences. It would be easy to identify those as external to oneself. I have had enough of that sort of vision to know how powerful they can be. Whether your experience exists within or without is one of those sacred mysteries and your answer depends on how you structure your world view.

One paradigm would suggest that if I perceive it how can it be outside of me? The other paradigm would find it easier to go with the standard duality of our everyday experience.I find that I can easily shift my viewpoint between those two paradigms. The perception of the other world exists within my imagination. It may well be that there is no true inside or outside, only a continuum of experiential realities.

Etic Landscape #2

Mixed Media on Canvas, 24″x36″

Purchase information for this original painting and print reproductions.