Robert Pasternak: The Christess Within, 1999.
Acrylic on board.

By SYD BAUMEL

Robert Pasternak has vesica on the brain.

If he were mentally unbalanced, spit would be dribbling from his mouth, his eyes quivering red orbs, his arms flailing fitfully.

But seated comfortably – effusive, playful, quick to laugh – in his Portage Avenue loft studio across from the Richardson Building, the 38-year-old Winnipegger is a dapper portrait of the artist-cum-magus as a young man.

So one doesn’t find it strange when he says those eyes and mouth, a woman’s vagina, the opening of a penis, navels, nostrils, seeds, leaves – a myriad of biologic forms – are vesicas, pointed ovoid forms that are "portals" between worlds.

Robert Pasternak. Photo self-portrait.
Pasternak has been passing through one of those portals himself in recent years.

His surreal, often sci-fi/fantasy-genre paintings and illustrations have long graced the covers of CDs, magazines, and books by the likes of Timothy Findley, Guy Vanderhaeghe, Phyllis Gotlieb, and Robert Enright. He was the art director of the now defunct Zygote magazine and a commercial artist (still is to pay the bills).

Circles beget vesicas.

But like Lawren Harris before him (an acknowledged influence who helped pioneer metaphysical painting in the last century), the North End father of three is also building steam as a metaphysical fine artist, with three one-man shows since 1998.

Which means that while other painters worry about light and shade and colour and form, Pasternak also worries if his spirit helpers will show up to work.

"I wonder if I’m actually corresponding with specific entities or spirits," he says, describing how his meta-"doodles" and paintings evolve as if channelled by unseen forces. "One of these things will start, and it might be weeks, months, or a year before I can connect with it again, as if the planet has to go around once again," he laughs, bemused by the mysteries of his muse.

In recent years, the vesica has become a dominant motif in what Pasternak calls his "meta figure" paintings

Robert Pasternak: Flame of Conception, 2000.  Acrylic on board. Vesica Consciousness If you look at a human body head on, and in your mind’s eye draw the simplest curve that can surround it, you get a narrow oval that approximates to a vesica.  Robert Pasternak believes the vesica is, in fact, the shape of the metaphysical "egg" that brings our bodies into being. "It’s the larger I. It’s the larger aspect of us," he says. It’s "the outer shell" from which our material, bodily form arises. It’s "the logos, the word made flesh. . . .It’s an opening. It’s an eye. It’s a portal. . . .It’s a very, very important structure . . . probably more basic than any of the other ones. I think it’s the beginning of the universe." And the portal opens both ways. Vesica begets body; but body transcends its limits by moving through that same portal, Pasternak suggests.  "It’s the key, our body is the key that opens this door, that opens this outer shell, that opens this outer dimension." With vesica consciousness flowing from his hands onto paper and canvas, Pasternak believes he’s painting himself into greater balance and wholeness. For people who view the resultant colourful, mind-altering imagery, the effect could be catching. S.B.

– and in his evolutionary trajectory as a human being. He sees it as a key to reclaiming the wholeness and integrity most of us have lost.

"We’re living with missing pieces. We’re living not in our totality. That’s why things are messed up," he says. "There’s an unbalanced quality to our existence."

What’s missing?

Hint: starts with a v.

Although the vesica is an historically recognized symbol (it’s the fish shape in the astrological sign of Pisces, for example) that formally results from the overlap of two intersecting circles (see illustration), it’s not exactly a household word.
 
 

Robert Pasternak. "Portrait of Jesus Christ." Adobe Illustrator.

For years, Pasternak has been cornering people and asking them to name three basic shapes. "Without exception," he reports, "everyone has said circle, square, and triangle – in that order." He’s still waiting for someone to say "vesica."

"Why are those shapes the most prominent in our minds!" he exclaims. "This is what I ask. Why is it? Why are they these ones?"

Well, perhaps if they knew what a vesica was. And perhaps if they were more in touch with themselves.

In touch with ourselves?

Pasternak believes the vesica is the archetype of the human body. But Western civilization has tended to shroud and deny the body – until now. In these times of self-exposure, self-exploration, and mind-body-soul healing, Pasternak thinks we are ripe to pull that old vesica, like some long-buried talisman, out of cold, subconscious storage.

And we are ready to resonate with vesica-infused imagery like his.

As Pasternak puts it: "I’m not painting self-portraits. I’m painting portraits of the spirit."

Portraits of the possible human?

Syd Baumel is editor of The Aquarian and an occasional artist. Robert Pasternak‘s paintings can be seen on his websites at www.mts.net/~lukwan and nakvision.tripod.com. He welcome studio visits. Call first: (204) 956-7675.