William Eckhardt Kohler

Thus men forgot that all deities reside in the human breast. -William Blake from The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

I see the physical world alive with potential sacredness. For me the process of painting is an invocation and excavation recovering the wisdom of myth, dream and imagination. The intent of this work is to convey the drama of revelation; the moment when the material and invisible realms converge.

My artwork is indebted to ideas prevalent in archetypal psychology, especially that of the Gods as personifications of internal qualities and feelings. I seek to convey my experience of archetypal energies rather than illustrate preexisting mythologies. The paintings enact their own creation myth as form and imagery emerge from shifting and paint and color. In this way I honor the authority of the image, not for its utility, but for its unique power.

I am inspired and stimulated by the places I go and the things that I see, in nature and in art. I am particularly drawn to places that remind me of primeval ancestry; ancient burial mounds of Denmark, ruins in the South of France, the wild woods of Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. These travels have opened me up to a vocabulary of archaic imagery, such as the Bird, a metaphor for beauty, transcendence and love.