Archaic Visions – Extended Absence – An Update!

I apologise for the extended absence from this blog since September – I didn’t intend for it to be quite so long! This has been for a number of reasons, not least my participation as Lead Artist in a major upcoming mural project for Dreamcatcher South Africa in the township of Melkhoutfontein, near Stilbaai, Western Cape, South Africa which I have been preparing for since the last time I posted and which has occupied much of my time. This is very exciting – Melkhoutfontein is close to many fascinating archaeological and rock art sites, so I hope to visit a few of them while I am there. Watch this space for articles if I do!

The Swift People, Sketch for Mural, Bruce Rimell, 2015
Dreamcatcher South Africa, Melkhoutfontein, Stilbaai, Western Cape, South Africa

Another project has been “Liminal Contact: A Cognitive and Anthropological Response to the ‘Death’ of Painting”, another book essay I intend to publish at the end of summer 2016, and which suddenly burst into my consciousness while I was away travelling in Crete. Time to reflect led me to realise I had found a comprehensive way to kill off the Modernist so-called ‘death’ of painting once and for all! So I have been devoting much energy to this new book recently.

These projects led me to postpone the formal publication of my first book ‘On Vision and Being Human’ until April 2016, when I return from South Africa.

Cover Design for 'Liminal Contact' - featuring the Swift people again!

There has also been a sea change in how I approach my writing, and my book ‘On Vision and Being Human’ (of which there are as yet nine more chapters to serialise here) has made me realise that I have in its pages the bones and rough edges of a possibly-new philosophy, which for now I am calling ‘Visionary Humanism’. This is much wider than the purview originally envisaged for ‘Archaic Visions’ and so in April/May 2016 I will be reorganising my online writing projects to align with that new venture. This blog will form an important part of that of course, but regular book publications – one a year I hope – and a new blog of musings and speculations on medium.com or elsewhere are likely to emerge from that reorganisation.

So, in summary, I promise that normal (or perhaps better 'altered and improved'!) service will resume very soon, around April 2016. The serialisation of ‘On Vision and Being Human’ will continue, as well as some stand-alone articles and responses to my South Africa visit. Until then, keep glowing creative and thanks for reading!