The Absolute Image Series of Paintings began in 1995 (see Absolute Image). They are all crafted by hand in acrylic on canvas. There is no computer work whatsoever involved in their creation. All is just paint applied by hand to canvas. Even the domed-up points of color are built up in layers of paint. This complete purity of the discipline along with the traditional process of handcrafting is the only way that the ‘absoluteness’ of Absolute Image can be fully realized (see Handcrafting, and Inner Visualization).My mission has been to bring fulfillment to the visual arts by exploring them in the light of a new and complete science of consciousness—Maharishi Vedic Science and Technology (see Transcendental Meditation ). This exploration has been conducted with reference to the continuing series of paintings presented here, Absolute Image: The Structure of Consciousness in Visual Form (see Absolute Image). It is a re-evaluate of the discipline of painting in absolute terms.
Maharishi Vedic Science presents the manifest universe as the material expression of an unmanifest field of pure consciousness. It equates pure consciousness—the Absolute (Pure Consciousness, the Absolute, and the Unified Feild of Natural Law)—with the unified field of total natural law recently identified by modern quantum physics (‘unified field of total natural law’ means all the unchanging laws of nature together that govern all values of change). As a complete science of consciousness, Maharishi Vedic Science provides intellectual understanding of this absolute level of reality and, through the Transcendental Meditation technique (see Transcendental Meditation), gives direct subjective experience of it in human awareness.
The theme of the Absolute Image Series is that knowledge and experience of pure consciousness as the source of nature’s unbounded creativity can bring fulfillment to the visual arts. By enlivening pure consciousness—the field of all possibilities—within the awareness of the artist, within the awareness of the viewer of art, and within the very material structure of the medium of expression itself, a unified foundation for the discipline can finally be created in absolute terms. Maharishi Vedic Science, in thus aligning these three basic constituents of the visual arts with the Absolute—pure consciousness, the totality of natural law—the full cosmic potential of the discipline can spontaneously begin to unfold. With this the visual arts as a whole will rise to fulfill their highest purpose. It is proposed here that the highest purpose of the visual arts is to support the happiness, health, and unlimited progress of society towards its highest goal—a heavenly life on earth.
Measurement Theory tells us ‘Knowledge has organizing power’. Complete knowledge, therefore, offers complete organizing power. Completeness within the discipline of the visual arts in absolute terms will empower all artist’s whatever their chosen style of expression whether figurative or abstract.
The geometrical structure of Absolute Image naturally associate it with a variety of other topics: topics such as Sacred Geometry, Sacred Art, Yogic Art, Mandalas, Yantras, as well as Platonic Solids and Analytical Geometry etc. The questions I wanted to answer were what is the root of ‘Sacred Art’ or ‘Yogic Art’? What is the root of ‘Mandalas’ or ‘Yantras’ (Mandalas and Yantras)? In this same context, what do the most fundamental of all geometries point-line-circle-triangle-square have to do with the structure of human consciousness, or for that matter, what do they have to do with the unified field of natural law now glimpsed by modern quantum physics? For me, the answers to all these related basic questions have arisen from the Absolute Image Series of Paintings and the examination of them in the light of Maharishi Vedic Science as the total knowledge of natural law.
A full discussion of these themes central to the visual arts is offered in my two books Art, Consciousness, and Maharishi Vedic Science and its companion book Absolute Image (Books and Videos). Step-by-step these books take the knowledge and experience of consciousness provided by Maharishi Vedic Science and applies it in practical terms to the discipline of painting. This re-evaluation of the visual arts establishes the cosmic potential of artist, the cosmic potential of the viewer of art, and the cosmic potential of the material structure of the medium of painting itself. In creating an absolute foundation for the discipline both in theory and practice the spiritual dimensions of the visual arts will be freed from the confusing garbs of mysticism. This will finally offer a universal scientific framework within which the deepest mysteries of our visual aesthetic reality can be fully unfolded and explored (for more details of the books mentioned above, see ‘Books and Videos’).
— Lawrence Sheaff