Inner Door (75 x 75cm) PrimalPatterns (75 x 75cm) Primal Symbols (120 x 75cm) Primal Patterns - Sticks (122 x 75cm) We All Dance (112 x 81cm) Seagull on a Sandhill (75 x 75cm)

Chris Pantano ‘Another Breath’ Glory-hole to Canvas

Chris Pantano has been a professional glass artist for over twenty five years. His first international showing was in Singapore in 1986 and he has had exhibitions in France, Spain, Italy, Switzerland, New Zealand, Japan and regularly in North America, as well as throughout Australia. He has established himself as a very collectable glass artist and continues to exhibit his glass work in selected galleries.

In working with hot glass as a medium for creative expression he has built a reputation as a master craftsman with a strong emphasis on colour, pattern and story.

He is now applying that experience to the canvas, although he first started exploring the potential of painting in the late nineties.

In his recent works on canvas he continues to explore the themes patterns and colours which established him as one of Australia’s most accomplished and respected glass artists.

Abstract patterns reminiscent of those he developed in glass now emerge from the surface of the canvas. The subtle colour blending which distinguishes his glasswork, continues on the painted surface. The pattern or image is built up in semi-transparent layers much in the same way that his glass designs are created.

Philosophical themes and references to mysticism, science and the art of ancient and tribal cultures continues to be the focal point of Pantano’s new adventure with brush, paint and canvas.

“I have always enjoyed drawing and keep drawing materials close at hand at all times. Colour, as I have played with it in glass, has lured me to the canvas. I love the way I can build up the image with varying degrees of transparency, shades and tones of colour and subtly of brush stroke.”

That which defines mankind's position above the other mammals is our ability to communicate and our innate need to know who we are, where we come from, where do we go from here and what is our true essence and purpose.

We are not content to just accept things on face value. We want answers to the big questions of life and we also have a need or desire to communicate our findings and experiences to others. We want to know what others have discovered, but the intelligent man knows that there is no surer way of knowing than through personal experience. Through communication with others we come to realise we are not on our own in this quest, but each of us must undertake the journey and find the answers for ourselves.

Artists, mystics, poets, musicians and story tellers have been leaving a record of their findings for thousands of years. Many of the marks and symbols used by artists on all continents are similar despite the vast distances and time separating the cultures. They are universal and convey similar meanings, ideas and concepts. I refer to the basic marks as ‘Primal Signs or Primal Symbols’. These marks are often arranged to create rhythmic patterns. These I have called ‘Primal Patterns or Primal Rhythms.

Glass captures or reflects light, making the colours come to life. With the painted canvas light also interacts with the colours and patterns giving life to the two dimensional surface.

We are all drawn to light. Mystics refer to the creative sound as having, not just the quality of sound, but also a quality of light. This primal energy current is said to emanate from within ourselves and is the essence of all being. It transcends all the outer differences.

The highly respected physicist, David Bohm, referred to it’s source as the Implicate Order and it’s projection as the Explicate Order. We call it the physical plane and according to Bohm, it is a lesser reality than its source in the Implicate.

Bohm says that ‘all we see and all we don’t see, are expressions of consciousness and that each level is but a reflection of the level of consciousness above or beyond.’

Physical matter is simply a expression of consciousness and it’s form is an expression of thought, originating in the causal plane or mind, which itself is an expression of the higher consciousness.

Our thoughts and expectations also have some bearing on the way light appears to be and function. There is an interconnectedness between energy/material substance and human consciousness.

Every thing other than Primal Reality is only a 3D image, not unlike a hologram, and while we remain focussed in that reflection or illusion, all in it appears to us to be real, even ourselves, not unlike the ‘reality’ we feel in a dream.
So in a sense, we could say, we are really the contents of a dream. God’s dream.

"(True spiritual) Knowledge is a light that God projects into the heart of the Knower." - Koran

“One Reality, One Essence and One Existence, of which man partakes, to which man relates, in which man finds his own Reality and relationship. Since, as we have seen, that there is no other existent but the One and Only and Unique Existent, the Reality of the universes is again the same as that of man. The difference between man and the universe, of which he is obviously a part, is therefore only a difference in the concentration of consciousness.” - Ibn 'Arabi'