The Enchanted Loom: numinous-like-auras explained through painting

Abstract

This thesis was motivated by my lived experience of Temporal Lobe Epilepsy (TLE), a condition where enhanced affective associations within the brain result in numinous-like-auras. Through the following question, How through art, can one explore a neurological condition? a heuristic practice-based inquiry developed. The Enchanted Loom: numinous-like-auras explained through painting, alludes to a weaving metaphor that traverses philosophy, paraphysics and science, including pseudoscience, to synthesise diverse, informed and interwoven parts. It proposes that by acknowledging the biological factors of a numinous-like-aura, the discourse in neurology then intersects with that of the numinous. The binding of the fragmentary, subjective experience of TLE is grounded in Rudolf Otto’s supra-rational theoretical structures of the ‘non-rational’ numinous. Within this framework, new ground is proposed that regards the universal characteristics of the origins of the numinous and theories of electromagnetism as being inherent to the numinous dimension.

Within this intricate but definable domain of congruent encounters, seminal practice in historical and contemporary painting is contextualised. The studio component of the thesis links and reinterprets material culture of the numinous to neuroscientific concepts concerned with the numinous and TLE. The outcomes traverse the neuro-numinous through a definitive focus on the synthesis of ideograms in relation to neurocognitive structures. Within this realm my paintings are categorised as ‘templates for perception.’ The research contributes to new understandings in the field by establishing that neuroscience enables an appraisal of the numinous where aesthetic reflection disrupts rational structures of thought and forms of art. Thus, the neuro-numinous succeeds by converting cognitive failure into confirmation wherein the mind discovers an unspeakable and wholly other inner domain.