Introducing Aethereal Moods 2.0
Here we go, jumping off a cliff, and expanding self-expression beyond the canvas.
I’ve been wanting to write for quite some time now but always find a good reason not to. Truth is that my relationship with writing has mostly been informed by academia. It’s all tangled up with the need to perform, get good grades, and get external validation from an authority figure that I’m a good girl, a smart one. I don’t really know what writing outside of this context will be like for me, but I have a feeling that it’ll be an opportunity to be a lot more authentic—despite the impulse many feel to self-censor in a polarizing and incendiary digital landscape.
So, it’s time I stop pussyfooting and get it done. Send little bits of me into the Internet void and see what happens. If anything, this Substack is an act of self-accountability. It’s an invitation from me to overcome my impulse to hide for safety’s sake.
I also have stuff to say, and it might even interest you so you’re welcome to tag along on this journey and read on.
A few months ago, I was put on the spot by an artist friend who likes to offer generous critiques of other people’s work. The essence of his feedback was that my work is pretty but meaningless—what every artist longs to hear. To be fair, I totally sucked at explaining my work to him at that moment. And he’s not the only one. I so often get asked to talk more about the symbolism behind my art and immediately shrink.
I want my artwork to speak for itself (so I don’t have to do the talking) but that’s not always fair to an audience who is genuinely interested in uncovering the deeper themes I’m drawn to work with. So far, Aethereal Moods has been solely an avatar for my artwork—my brand since creatives need to have one nowadays if they want to operate/be relevant in online spaces. Although I’m not envisioning this Substack as a space to explain my paintings to you, my intention is to openly discuss some of my work’s recurring themes as well as topics that may not seem directly connected but still are because everything is connected in this wild, mysterious Universe.
Here are topics you might read about here:
The Creative Process
I want to go deeeeeep into the mysterious creative process, from the practical to the metaphysical. Yes, it’s relevant to painting, but my interest in it goes beyond that. I want to look at this bewildering, multi-faceted jewel from all possible angles. I see birth, sex, and death as the elementary triangle upholding this process on the physical plane. It’s primeval, cyclic, and archetypal. Every culture, past and present, has a way of looking at it, taboos around it, and myths to make sense of it. There’s a golden thread though, and I hope we can engage in constructive dialogue that instills awe, surrender, and respect for this great Unknown.
So, beyond simply sharing my creative process with you, I am interested in exploring what it means to lead creative lives in the first place—for what purpose, and in service to what? How do we overcome creative blocks? Why are we blocked in the first place? I am interested in understanding the role of the psyche, both individual and collective, as the source we draw imagery from. It’s infinite. I’m also interested in discussing the role of the nervous system and embodied practices play in receiving information and inspiration from Psyche. How can we become better at consciously and intentionally engaging with it?
Technology, Media, and Culture
My academic background is in communication. It’s a field of study that’s quite broad, and my main interest revolves around technology’s role in shaping and mediating a society’s driving cultural myths. A functioning democracy requires a healthy public sphere where issues can be fairly discussed, and public opinion reasonably formed. Unfortunately, this isn’t the case and has perhaps never been. Still, it’s a good ideal to aim for if democracy is to mean anything moving forward.
Media and power are always connected and today, I am rather concerned considering the unprecedented capacity for surveillance, censorship, and propaganda in the digital age—which is why I chose to write on Substack. I don’t mean to alarm you, but the world is slowly slipping into a techno-feudal-dystopian-future where a handful of billionaires own the platforms essential to a healthy public discourse. I think it’s fucked. I think more people should be aware of this. I mean, many are but the implications of that go completely unnoticed. We quickly scroll to the next shiny thing.
Lately, my art has been exploring transhumanism, the elite’s driving ideology. As a woman, I believe that it’s an important worldview to consider and self-locate in relation to. It’s insidious and lurks in places we don’t expect it to. What presents as scientific, materialistic, and atheistic on the surface is actually also deeply rooted in theology and a collective fear of nature, women, and the body. You may dismiss it as a tech utopian fantasy, but it will regardless have irreversible impacts on society. I will be discussing (and deconstructing) transhumanism’s many guises a lot on here.
Consciousness Evolving
I’m not anti-tech but I do think that technology needs to be salvaged from the incentive model and flawed values system that shape its design and purposes in a way that’s essentially anti-human. Tech won’t save us. The billionaires won’t save us. The government won’t save us. Human beings working together might.
I am hopeful and this is perhaps because of what ties these two previous topics together: consciousness is evolving to ever greater, more complex, and integrated conscious and intelligent wholes. We are an expression of a creative process much bigger than what we will ever understand. And I don’t think it’s a random one. Digital technology and AI have a role to play in our evolution. We might not get it right the first time around, though. And that’s ok.
So, I’ll leave it at that for now. At this point, it’s the vision I have in mind for Aethereal Moods’ next chapter. However, if painting—and life—have taught me anything about the creative process, it’s that these things tend to take a life of their own. Thank you for reading. If anything resonated with you, please leave a comment.