prolepsis: synthetical time, duration, and imagination

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I am working on a new series of oil on canvas paintings.  Most of them are vertical 20" x 36" and a few are horizontal.  As you can see above, a few are much larger and more complex.  My goal is to complete fifty of these paintings over the next few months. When I paint, I always enter a zone of unconscious memories.  I never begin with a literal style or name for the painting.  However, I often begin with a philosophical reflection.  For this series, I am inspired by many years of my Jungian studies and dream therapy.  I allow my unconscious to guide my imagination and gestures.  In particular, I am focused on the notion of prolepsis, which is a central theme of my philosophical books and journal articles.  Prolepsis emerges from the study of several scholars: William Pinar’s notion of Synthetical Moments; Alfred North Whitehead’s Process Philosophy, Teilhard de Chardin’s Theodicy, Elaine Pagel’s analysis of Gnostic scriptures; Maxine Greene’s Imagination; Thict Nhat Hanh’s Engaged Buddhism; and Henri Bergson’s duree or Duration.  All of these scholars wrestle with notions of time and space, and in their scholarship past, present, and future converge in experience. Bergson writes: “Duree is indivisible; but this does not imply that past and present are simultaneous.  On the contrary, it is essentially succession: only it is a succession that does not imply a ‘before’ and an ‘after’ eternal to each other.”  Bergson often compared his work to music as suggestive and evocative as it invites us into rhythms.  This is much more that aesthetic pleasure. Bergson once wrote in a letter: “The difficulties that you find in my description of Duree no doubt stem from the fact that it is very difficult, if not impossible, to express in words something that goes against the very essence of language.  I can merely attempt to suggest it.”  In my painting (often in the silence of midnight), I elicit an unconscious synthesis of time in the spirit of these scholars mentioned above.  I call this proleptic moments. I continue to dwell on the mystery of these paintings, and I do not yet have a name for them.