My Conscious(ness) Demands

August 1st, 2019

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So, I recently spent six days in a hospital bed at the UCLA Seizure Disorder Center, wired to an EEG monitor and observed on video camera 24 hours a day in order to discern whether my partial-onset focal seizures might be cured through surgical means, or not.

Self-Portrait As A Guy With Seizures, 2016-17, ink, graphite, burning, wax color on birch ply, 12"x12", $325

What they now know with more certainty is: the seizures originate on the right side of my brain (the visual side), probably very close to where they can see a good-sized lesion/mass/cyst/scar-tissue-thingy on MRI images, in my right mid-temporal lobe. And, pending the results of several more rounds of risk-assessment tests, there may be a potentially curative procedure that involves removing this mal-functioning part of the brain (my brain), responsible for the seizures...

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I've been fascinated by vision, consciousness and memory since I was...well, since I've been conscious. Growing up being shuttled between worlds and cultures and realities (my ethnic/white parents divorced when I was an infant), I've always used memory patterns/schema overlaid onto my present experiences to create safe spaces; controlled spaces: imaginary companions, scenarios, narratives; musics and drawings and stories. Using creativity as a means of self-soothing. Imagining through traumatically discontinuous experiences: part and parcel of how I've lived life since I was a baby:

Baby, 2007, mixed media on panel, 26" x 8 ", private collection

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My seizures are typified by an intense feeling of deja-vu, a visceral sense that the present waking moment is in actuality a memory, a dream, or a simulation. Perhaps something as contrived and artificial as a cinematic or theatrical production. A certainty that wherever my real consciousness, my true being, may be residing, is actually out there, beyond the ten thousand thousand things, and that this is a recollection, this waking life that causes so much heartache and joy, running the gamut from splendor to squalor, mundane to magical, that all of it is inconsequential, because it has all already happened. There is an attendant heartache, as the seizure subsides, a fear that I may have been right, that all of the effort and striving and attachment and intention and connection we all are investing so heavily, is only in an illusion. That somehow, somewhere, there is a demi-urge- some furious super-computer, writing simulation code faster than black holes can swallow, trying to find a path that is not a sum-zero game. Looking for a way out.

Prospero, 2013, oil on panel with hand-made, up-cycled redwood frame, 21" x 27" (including frame), $1175

Phanes, 2014, oil on panel with hand-made, up-cycled redwood frame, 21" x 27" (including frame), $1175

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I've been having these deja-vu, seizure, vision things a long time, maybe my whole life, and, looking back, I can see that making sense of them has been an essential drive in my image-making. I've really felt that I had some sort of 'true vision', my work always felt so urgent, so important: I was the one that would decode the Matrix. I would free us. I could go into the energy storms, this chaos of the real the echoes so sharply the chaos inside each of us, with eyes, literally, wide open, painting all the while, creating beauty and order out from the chaos. Look you in the eye and say, "hey, we've been here before, I'm glad I keep getting the chance to know you, but we can move forward."

(You and I, that are part of the same dream, that are, in fact, parts of the same dreamer...)

Butterfly Coast, 2014/'15, oil on panel, hand-made oak frame, 25.5" sq., $1500

I know we can.

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Turns out those high-falutin' delusions of grandeur are quite stereotypical of individuals with uncontrolled electrical flair-ups in the right mid-temporal lobe of their gushy lil' overly-salty brains.
Some theorize that the great religious figures in history, Jesus, Buddha, Muhammed et. al. were all temporal lobe epileptics trying to make sense of their seizures by developing their profound world-views.

It is what it is. I just want to make paintings.

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The episodes have grown more frequent, (and more intense), do not respond to the medications that I've been eating like pop-rocks for going on four years now, and at this rate are likely to "generalize", (meaning to spread to both sides of the brain), which would result in periodic losses of consciousness and the typical spasmodic and un-controlled type of seizing that most people think of when they think of epileptic seizures.

So, there is a surgical option, potentially curative, and, I figure, maybe it's time to face the music....?

Arroyo Del Oso Nymphs, Pt. 2, 2018/'19, oil on panel, 24"x18", un-framed, .75" dp. box edges $1125

I have two more rounds of tests scheduled for next month that the doctors say they need before they can give me a hard answer on what the options/risks/benefits actually might be, but in preparation for the possibility of an operation, and the potential of an extended period of rehabilitation, I have worked very hard and catalogued and inventoried all of the artwork that is still in my proprietorship and am creating this article with the intention that it provide an opportunity for you, my wonderful, loyal, brilliant, intimately cultivated and inter-connected network of humans, to acquire some special token of the creative process that has been my life's work and, at least partially, the product of this mystical mis-firing lil' mass, and also because I thought you might think the brain stuff is interesting.

The work below is what I'm selling. The prices are based on my current market-proven program, with works essentially broken down by a good ol'-fashioned square foot price, with some cost of material added for framed works, and oil paintings at a slightly higher square foot cost than mixed media work.

For the purposes of this promotion, the list prices include sales tax, but not shipping costs, so please contact me directly at jordan.quintero@gmail.com to get a shipping estimate, if shipping is needed, before you purchase any work. Studio pick-up at my new gallery/studio space in Los Osos, California is of course free, and I'd love to see you.

*Note on sales-y-ness:
To me, this is my soul's work, and, same as it ever was, I am still much more interested in the value of human inter-connectivity than I am in market-capital performance i.e. if a piece captures your attention and imagination, speaks directly to your innermost person, and you really want to give it a home, but you feel that it is perhaps out of your budget, I encourage you to reach out to me directly and tell me about your connection to the work and propose a financial arrangement that might work for you. These might include financing/payment plan options, partial trade for goods or services, discounts, affordable high quality reproductions(between $40/$60/S.F vs $325/$375/S.F. for original work), or design/artwork commissions that we can tailor to your budget and vision.

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My whole life I've had certain intimations, of "the great mystical is-ness of it all", a feeling that dreams and waking life and stories and myths and the physical closeness of everything and the vast spaces of everything were all just...a dance. That there was some ineffable aesthetic justification for it all, that the flavor and satisfaction of eating of the fruit of the tree of life was as important for the tree as it was for me, that there was an essential harmony and consonance to the apparent random incidences of my flow of experience. This is a fascinating case study of someone with a much more severe condition, poor fucker, but perhaps the same mechanism is at work with my artsy lil' brain.

detail, Self-Portrait As Dr. Manhattan, mixed-media on panel, 2010, private collection

An interesting note: my roots and trees series began around the time (2010/11ish) that I first remember the deja-vu experiences taking on the deeply terrifying and visceral characteristic (I call it an 'adrenaline jolt', with enhanced heart rate, mild nausea, a typical "fight or flight" physiological state) that led me to, eventually, when I had just about finished healing up from that terrible back injury, mention the "episodes" to the doc during a routine physical in 2015. In a way, it seems that I had been self-diagnosing a neurological condition through an elaborately orchestrated development/extended exploration of a visual metaphor in my artwork. Approximations of both neural networks and temporal malleability had been central to my work for years before I had any conscious awareness of my physiological condition.

You might say it began with the automatic-gestural abstractions of the Stop Motion Project:

Stop Motion, Pt. 6; Is That The Human Psyche?, 2010/11, last piece extant, mixed media on panel, 30" x 30" x 3.5", $2,350

And continued in the fragmented & memory/quotation-filled compositions of the Urban Organic Mixed Media series:

Late Rains Pt. 2: Remembering Her, 2011, mixed media on birch ply, 19.5" x 19.5" including frame, $900

Developed into a pre-classical phase, with the Lovenotes/La Vie arc:

LoveNotes 5, 2011, graphite on maple ply, 10"x10", $225

And, probably, has always been an underlying informant since my earliest figurative and portrait work, the archaic period, that weird self-thinking-thing pre-occupation. That mystery-of-consciousness-thing that started in the vagabond wanderings of my youth:

Moonlight, Myth, Everything, 2004, oil on panel, 72" x 48", private collection

And that eventually flowered into a high-classic phase with the Trying To Be A Tree series (2012-'15):

Eros & Psyche, 2014, oil on panel, 36" x 48", $4500

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Recently, while doing intensive research into the science of consciousness, I came across the Attention Schema Theory, which attempts to explain how consciousness might have evolved, and which, again, reflects eerily my recent work. The landscape is the dominant metaphor, oddly enough with erosion/dissolution and the tectonic forces of that anti-entropic mystery, biological life, as the point/counterpoints of the compositions, with their corollaries in the AST being competition and attention. The weathering of of the soul.

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There is more in heaven and earth, dear Horatio, than is dreamt of in (y)our philosophies.-Hamlet (1.5.167-8)

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I have just re-located into a new studio in Los Osos, Ca and am hoping to generate some energy to pay for some much needed studio time. In the cue are large-scaled mixed-media paintings that explore the concepts in the small works I've been making in my scant free time during the past few years (during which time I've been slugging away at learning how to be an architect). I'm interested in examining the landscape as a metaphoric play of natural forces on attention and consciousness, with echoes of social organization, politics, and technology. It feels really important to make a good chunk of work if/before I go in for this surgery deal.

Northbound Pt. 2
2017, graphite, ink & burning on sanded pine, 14" x 10", $325,
email for invoicing options jordan.quintero@gmail.com
see full portfolio

Adrift
2017, graphite & burning on sanded pine, 11" x 5", $145
email for invoicing options

Place-less-ness
2018, ink, graphite & watercolor on paper, 11"x14", un-framed $200, framed $245
see full portfolio

Most of the work catalogued below is from what I would consider the post-classical phase of the trees metaphor, what I dubbed the "Organitexture" work, created since my diagnosis in 2015.

It would probably be a good time to invest, because of all the possible scenarios ( A.) I get the surgery and die, and everybody knows what happens to artwork values after the artist dies, so you're stoked. B.) I don't get the surgery and stay all seizey my work just gets gnarlier and better and you've got the early stuff, so you're stoked C.) I get the surgery and it zaps my mystical painty vision, so it's basically the same as A, so you're stoked, and I'll probably become a little more left brained and better architect then and blow up in that way. Or, D.) I get the surgery and I come out stronger and doper than before and you get warm fuzzies and pivotal-phase-work and my undying gratitude for helping me through this BS, and I blow up as both and architect and an artist, so you're stoked.)
you'll be stoked.

HMU loves, you can't loose.

Giclee's prints (paper or canvas) available of all work.

Please allow 3-6 weeks for delivery.

Click on prices to open up webpage on JQFA, where you can click on prices to check out through Paypal, with Debit/CC, or with bank account transfer.

PLEASE! Email with any questions: jordan.quintero@gmail.com.

Thank you, thank you, thank you. Blessings.