Artist Spotlight: Jason McDonald

We had the pleasure of interviewing artist, Jason McDonald on spirituality, sacred technology, and the vision-led practice behind his work—plus his custom flower essences and why Lascaux acrylics feel "alive" in the studio.

Have spirituality and art always been connected for you, or is that something that's developed over time?  

Yes. For me, it's always been connected. Even when I was young, six, and drawing nature where I grew up, the river and trees, there was something that happened when I was in that space of drawing, that I can now understand as spiritual. Whilst I might not have had the language then to say it was an intertwining with the spiritual, it definitely was. Something else was alive in me through practising art. 

How do you create the configurations of your pieces?  

Is it an intuitive process, or is there some kind of formula?  

 When I'm doing the sacred technology work, it's largely coming from visions. When I take myself away on a retreat—for example, last year I went to Nepal, I lived in a monastery and sat in a cave for a couple of weeks—what happens is my being becomes deeply, deeply still. And in that stillness, things appear in the mind's eye...I'll see these forms, and I sketch them. The forms, their curves are communicating something, there’s an intelligence in them beyond my mind, and as well as seeing and sketching them down, I also get a sense of their meaning and what they are able to convey. Now, is it my job to explain what they are communicating? No. It's my job to translate the sketches and the intelligence I'm connected with, through colour and artistic refinement.  

You've studied brain waves, neurobiology, philosophy, the energetic field...religions, physics, quantum field theory. 

How do these learnings inform your practice?  

What it tells me is that the world that we see is vastly misunderstood. There is so much more available to be sensed and seen. So, the things that I already have intuition towards get qualified through those studies...There are so many ways that the unseen, and the mysteries of life— through the subtler realms, are something we have become disconnected from. 

You've said you have an interest in bringing the invisible into visibility. What is the intention behind this?  

The way I look at it, the field is full of a vast, wise, largely benevolent intelligence. The more humans are able to interact with that intelligence, the more we are able to understand life and the human condition. When we are making ourselves more available to the profound, when we allow our perceptions to expand and connect with the rhythms of this greater field of intelligence, then we are able to have a vastly more profound experience as a human. Life doesn't have to be closed in.

Mystery is not something to turn away from. Mystery is something to turn into.  

Can you tell us a bit about your experience using Lascaux products, why you prefer them over other options and the various ways that you use them?  

Lascaux is...alive. That's the easiest way of explaining it. It's far more nuanced and richer than that, but the paint is alive. There are certain other brands or products that technically work well, but they're kind of...dead. It’s sort of like there's something missing in their vitality and I don't mean colour or hue or anything like that. I mean a vitality of life, a vitality of essence, a vitality of energy, and Lascaux products are carrying that. They are imbued with something that is connected to these unseen realms I've been taking about. 

The conduit of the artist, the line of inspiration to the mystery, to the sensitive, is supported through the use of the paints. If you're able to actually be really present and connected with the sub-perceptible, Lascaux paints really help that inspiration and information move through the act of an artist's creation. They activate it. 

For some of my recent series, I developed my own flower essences. So, I take the energetics and the information available within different flowers by putting them in the sun, in water, and things like that, to create different flower essences. Then combining those essences and the intelligence that they carry, with the intelligence of the colours from the Lascaux Sirius system, which has its own incredible primary colour format—I found the interplay of those two was deeply harmonious...very holistic.  

Technically, I also love the Lascaux studio range of acrylics because of their versatility. They can be buttery and creamy, but even when diluted with a medium or water or even flower essences, they maintain an atmospheric more natural quality - whereas other acrylic products tend to have a plasticky film to them. You can have a Lascaux product for years, because you don't need to use heaps to get the desired result.  

As an artist who is trying to work in more sensitive realms of creative endeavour, the whole experience of being an artist feels better with Lascaux. If my work is hoping to inspire, ignite and bring more beauty to the world, then Lascaux, for me, feels deeply aligned with that.

Jason McDonald, The Living Awake, 61×91.4cm. Sprayed acrylic with flower essences on raw linen Flower essences: Kangaroo Paw, Fuchsia, Pink common heath & Wild Iris

Products used by Jason include Lascaux Sirius Acrylic paints