The Story of Frank Reed Larkey Art
That Reminds me of a Story.1 My art chronicles the story of my desire to seek an understanding of myself, others, events, situations and The Truth. I was profoundly influenced by my religion, my art teachers, my family and my imagination. I always had a highly active imagination, that, upon reflection was probably a fundamental difference in how I used art to shape this desire to understand. And, from the beginning words, language, and stories shaped my thinking and contemplation. My created world of images was highly dependent on the stories and language I listened to and believed – from Beowulf to the Apostle Paul.
Today, upon reflection, I would describe the development and emergence of my art categorized in general as cognitive intuitivism such that any value my art brings to others would be “as a source of knowledge and understanding.”2 Thus, at the most basic level of engagement, my art work requires the acceptance that:1) I have and will continue to live a life of the spirit, 2) that I believe all human experience is subjective and we construct are own individual model of the world, 3) all human knowledge is really self-knowledge, 4) and art (aesthetics) provides a potential transcendental experience moving towards ontic reality – an authentic spiritual reality, if you will.
Consider two contextual/conceptual narrative bookends
As the first bookend, the fundamental context for my art identity development was a deep enculturation into a Biblical world interpreted through a millennialistic literal interpretation of world events. I was taught and lived in a world of “end-times” theology where my primary responsible as a member of my religious community was to bear witness that most people alive were doomed to destruction by God and his angels and only true followers of Jesus would survive. I lived and believed this theological thought until I was twenty-nine years old – many years into my art as ideas development. I became a full-time minister at the age of twenty.
As the last bookend, the context for my current artistic endeavors in the thought world of the cognitive sciences. I had experienced many paradoxes in music, art, theology, philosophy, biology (evolution) that were first reframed within developmental cognitive psychology and later within the emerging interdisciplinary field of the cognitive sciences – the revolution of cognitive science is how it was described then3. Early, I developed a deep interest in AI, neural networks, and text processing4 which is now the third thread for the thought fabric I am striving to weave. In the cognitive sciences, I found many answers to my questions when I came to understand the embodied mind and the fundamental constructive nature of human thought. My art had found its place in my aesthetic thinking. I had found the cultural community where I belonged.
My paintings tell the narrative not only of the book ends but all of the stories in between. Each of piece of art that I have created tells a story, sometimes a very short story and sometimes a much more deeply engaged story of my searching for understanding within a world that often just does not make sense. I understand now that from the beginning my journey always was inspired by questions and so it is probable that the end of my journey will end with more questions. For me, my art are pictures in a book where the thoughts are written in language embedding my art in the thinking and the searching for meaning of this particular story – always ending in a question that will introduce the next story. This website was created as a map to understanding one person’s art identity development which I hope you will contemplate, and then be inspired to begin or continue your search for self-knowledge and in your journey in aesthetics – and becoming.
My final words for the journey: seek to understand the betweeness and beyondness of my art and ideas - & AI.
Gregory Bateson, Mind and Nature: A Necessary Unity
Page 52, Gordon Graham, Philosophy of the Arts – An Introduction to Aesthetics (1997 – 2005)
Howard Gardner, The Mind’s New Science, A History of the Cognitive Revolution
Frank Reed Larkey, Nonwillful Knowledge Categorization as a Natural Cognitive System (1994), Introduction to Neural Newworks, Courses 6397, 4398, University of Houston, 1995, Categorization Effects for Expository Text Processing: A Multiple Memory Approach (1997)
