We Are Made of Relationships
I’m really excited to share this interview with my good friend and mentor Seth Ruggles Hiler, which continues The Dormer Window’s new series on the relationship between different art forms.
As you read on, you’ll also be given an opportunity to experience moments of Seth’s latest show in the New York City area, The Nature of Threes. The show carries many themes, including ideas around “source” and freedom that always get me going. He’s a spiritual person and one of my guides. I think you’ll really enjoy his perspective on art-making and creativity…
Seth, you know my obsessions well, and this past Spring I couldn’t stop thinking about the relationship between art and the natural world, how they play off each other, and then split apart to become their own thing, with their own energy and purpose…
I riffed on it a bit in last month’s Dormer Window post:
Art and gardening teach us that fresh new flourishes of anything involve a lot of waiting, weeding, withering and, of course, dying.
Seth, you paint many landscapes, and they seem to reveal something very specific about human beings. I’m thinking here of where my own intensity reflects back at me in your work, and also the steadiness and quiet I can find in the right conditions. Your impressions of the natural world collect these dynamics within us, I think.
Well, thank you. I think I’m most interested in how a static image becomes a portal into the infinite.
Earlier, you and I were talking about Monet’s waterlilies. I’ve studied them and tried painting them myself. What happens is that each time your eye travels between the canvas and the scene you’re trying to paint, the waterlilies move just that tiny bit. And these tiny movements change everything. Suddenly the light reflecting onto the water changes and the lilies look different. Their likeness is constantly changing and saying something new. And it happens every second. The possibilities are endless. No wonder Monet was obsessed with them.
I never thought of the waterlilies as an object of endless colours and moods, wow. And when I consider that Monet painted them during World War I, it makes sense that they should become a point of fascination for him. During such a traumatic time, I imagine he was looking to make sense of the intensity and unpredictability surrounding him. I read that the French President at the time, Clemenceau, told Monet to keep painting no matter what; that his contribution to the war effort was to embody what they were all fighting for: that is, in today’s language, to make space for the human spirit to thrive, so we can listen to it and it can teach us.
I’m reading a book by Cynthia Bourgeault that you’d love. As you know, many say Cynthia is a modern day mystic. The book is about the law of three, and it invokes a lot about spirit and movements in individuals and groups.
She highlights binary systems, and how we can get stuck into 2 ways of seeing and being. For example, we can become conditioned into thinking life is about giving and receiving, winning or losing, etc. Of course, thinking in terms of “2” or “either/or” can be good, it helps us make decisions. But we can get stuck in this binary state and struggle to see past it. When we add a third component, there is movement. We move away from an either/or perspective and move into an expansive creative state, a new paradigm. Art can be that “3rd thing.” When we add art into binaries it creates movement, and a new way of looking at things.
I’d also say art creates different plains. And it allows people to inhabit these plains at once. Of course, the plains are full of paradox. An example: you and I know art draws you out of yourself, but it also brings you closer to True Self. There’s a movie by Julian Schnabel about Van Gogh, and in it he says he paints to stop thinking, and yet you can see how Van Gogh’s true nature comes through on the canvas.
When we’re creating our non-social self has a chance to come through, and this self is not as judgemental because it’s trying to connect with something outside of the individual. Art-making is a space where you let things happen and see where it leads. It slows you down, makes you see shifting details.
Another “plain” to consider is how a painting is a 2-dimensional surface creating a 3-dimensional experience. When you paint a picture, you create depth on a depthless plain. And you do this by adding vertical and horizontal elements, making colour choices that consider the relationship of one element against another, using linear perspectives, etc.
I want to know more about 3s and how it surfaces in art. Your latest show is titled The Nature of Threes. What is the relationship between your latest collection and the number 3?
I’ve been told the show presents an evolution in my painting, that there are progressions of freedom within the work. I’m excited to hear that.
Each piece is a standalone work, and they were all done at different times (before, during and after the pandemic), yet they’re presented in groupings of three, or have three main elements within one piece. Many of these ternary sets contain representations of the Trinity. By Trinity I mean “Source/Power,” “Experience of being of this earth,” and “Spirit.” Spirit is the more obvious element as it’s represented through birds and open air.
The visual elements also add a compositional conversation between the threes, which emphasizes connections between the underlying meanings of the works for myself. But I encourage views to unearth their own emotional responses, metaphors and narratives.
It sounds as though it is all about relationship. Scholar Monica A. Coleman says we are made of relationships. Can we just take a moment to soak that statement in. I really see it living in this show. It’s evident in personal elements that come through in some of your paintings, like your family barn and the farm animals I expect that surrounded you when you were young.
The cows, for example, speak at the individual level, but also at something more timeless and universal.
Thank you Seth for sharing your creative gifts with the world and with my readers.x
You can find Seth on Instagram @sethpaintsus, where you can connect with him to purchase or follow his work. And here’s a link to his website.