The Implicate Order: Statement

The Implicate Order is a series of paintings and drawings which address, on aesthetic, experiential, intellectual, poetic and spiritual grounds, the areas where Eastern spiritual traditions begin to intersect with cutting-edge Western quantum physics models, and inform life experience at its most basic levels.

My center of gravity has always been transpersonal spirituality--an experiential, trans-religious theism which allows me to find and communicate an inner peace that transcends physical boundaries. It is a process which must be grasped in practice, intuitively; to acquire a merely theoretical understanding of mystical spirituality is to miss the entire point of it.

“The Implicate Order,” refers to the theories of physicist David Bohm, who postulated that there is a holistic, underlying order, deeper than space and time, which determines how the manifest, or ‘explicate,’ universe unfolds. These theories begin to converge with the age-old message of Eastern mysticism; that the world as we perceive it is a projection of the split mind, and that unified consciousness is the deepest reality.

mandala, pencil on paper
9"x 13", 2006

When I make a painting, I am not merely depicting an image, but creating an object with a cohesive, palpable energy field that affects the viewer on a visceral level, as well as a visual and intellectual one. The aesthetic goal is to directly communicate a transcendent experience, as opposed to simply illustrating an intellectual postulate.

In 2006 I began creating a series of mandalas, which I use as a compositional basis for this series of paintings. The process of drawing the mandalas is a meditative one, essentially a spiritual practice in itself. The compositions of the paintings are further influenced by direct synesthetic responses to selected pieces of music, by Arvo Pärt and Igor Stravinsky among others. This gives me an integrative formal and working structure within which to explore both the idea and the experience of spiritual freedom.

--Stephanie Lee Jackson, 2007

"Heart," oil on linen
36"x 48", 2007

Trajectory: In painting the San Francisco Series, 1997-1999, I focused very specifically upon the rendering of light. It was important to me that the painting itself have an incandescent glow, and not merely be a mechanical 'depiction' of light and shadow. Additionally, I strove to create compositions of color and form which were dynamic and efficient; to create a mood using the fewest possible elements.	'Morning,' oil on panel 32" x 48", 1998
Upon moving to Mexico in 1999, I continued the light studies, pushing the compositions farther in terms of color and texture, inspired by my surroundings. A visit to the Rufino Tamayo Museum in Mexico City, however, gave me to understand for the first time what visceral impact it is possible for a painting to have. I spent the next few years coming to terms with this experience.	'Día de los Muertos II,' oil on panel 48" x 36", 2000
The late Mexico series and early New York series paintings walk the line between representation and abstraction; I created images which were simple, direct, informed by both nature and metaphysics.	'Dragon,' oil on panel 36"x 48", 2002 private collection
Working in this deliberate and exploratory manner over more than a decade has given me an intimate undestanding of both formal issues and conceptual concerns which inform every work I create, however abstract they become.	''Thistle,' oil on canvas 60"x 48", 2005