Paul Laffoley
(b. 1943, Cambridge, Massachusetts)
Color Breathing
1983
Ink, Letraset, airbrush on rag board.
Silkscreen on Rag Paper Edition of 100 in 1983
23 x 23 in. (sheet); 20 x 20 in. (image)
Signed and numbered by the artist
Subject:
A Color-Healing Device
Symbol Evocation: The Mystery of Color
Exhibited
Architectonic Thought-Forms: A Survey of the Art of Paul Laffoley. Austin
Museum of Art, Austin, Texas,
20 November 1999 – 30 January 2000
Notes
By means of lucid dreaming (being aware of dreaming while dreaming), one
can surround oneself with colored spheres of light and breathe their healing
vibrations. Lucid dreaming provides the most direct experience of non-albedo
light. The definition of non-albedo light has its origin in Goethe’s
1810 study on color theory, Zur Farbenlehre. In it, Goethe states that
both light and darkness are of equal value to the human mind in its quest
to model the universe both backward and forward in time: “Colors
are the actions and sufferings of light as a result of its meeting with
darkness.”
Newton’s concept of light (or the albedo definition of light) states
that colors are fractions of the incident radiation of white light, reflected
by the surfaces of bodies or refracted through mediums which slow their
velocity (first determined in a vacuum). Albedo light is assumed to be
generated from point sources such as candle flames, fires, lightning,
stars, and artificial light sources. As darkness was assumed to be unable
to resist the penetration of albedo light rays, Newton defined a potential
for its complete elimination.
The lux of the mind is non-albedo light. It contains the power of both
light and dark, possessing neither brightness nor opaqueness as its true
nature. However, the lux can offer the appearance of both and any admixture
in between, thus imitating the entire history of the natural universe.
Color healing depends on the manipulation of pure color at will from the
second, third, and fourth dimensional realms. Colors represented in situations
such as abstract art, color charts and wheels, colored lights, water,
or window glass, etc., are only illustrations of pure color not found
in the external world.
It is only in the lucid dream-state that pure color is possible. Pure
color is a volumetric extension of a single color, such as a sphere of
redness in which the color is not propagated from a point source of energy.
Instead it exists in a homogeneous and isotropic state. Pure color cannot
be experienced from the absolute blackness that surrounds it. One must
enter the volumetric extension of the color to experience its purity,
which means it contains no blackness at all.