Macy West

MFA Painting, 2025

manifold 

adjective many or various* 

noun 1. (in mathematics) a collection of points forming a certain set 

2. (in Kantian philosophy) the sum of the particulars furnished by the senses before they have been unified by the synthesis of the understanding 

*Used in a Biblical context to denote the depth of and the intricacy of God’s holy wisdom. See Ephesians Chapter 3 and Romans Chapter 11. 

Beholding is the essential and undiluted impulse of the desire to see more clearly. In our material state, beholding is tied, though not exclusively, to biological sight. My paintings deal with sight, literally, and as a metaphor for knowing. Sight, as mediated by the biological limitations of our anatomy, is incomplete, meaning we rely on abstractions to make sense of material and immaterial reality. My work generates abstractions which continuously reorganize the perceivable in an effort to understand the whole from the parts. I work to bring disparate parts together on the painted plane. 

I abstract from observation and have isolated the ribbon motif, an extension of the brushstroke, for use as a flexible measuring stick with which to establish proximity. As a painted gesture it maintains a certain speed especially against the solidity of the square or the grid. Such forms operate as technologies for mapping and establishing proximity and have served as another avenue to explore reframing. As a simple technology, they aid the communication of sensible information if you know how to use it, but as an abstraction it can also be a barrier to entry when you don’t have the key. Cartesian planes which allow for iteration or repetition and measure the breakdown of translated information are foundational to, though often obscured in my work. 

Employing measuring devices, the scientific method and the impulse to name and know starts me down an avenue ripe for discussion of how these ways of thinking and showing have embedded themselves in our collective Western culture since the Enlightenment. But the Enlightenment at its most basic level is just a refocusing, a prioritization of some part over the whole and with it came such ignorance of those things no longer beheld. Its refusal to admit its own blindspots wreaks havoc as it makes progress. In Manifold, I explore the cultural desire for knowledge and the visual communication of that information. I examine how we use images to share information, what gets lost in translation, and what is overemphasized or even fabricated. These methods provide clarity while at the same time blind us to other parts of the whole. Acknowledging our limits means acknowledging a greater whole, a hope not yet realized but in the process of being revealed. Beholding clarifies that future hope, a hope of improved sight. 

We need a revealing. The current distribution of the sensible prevents us from seeing a utopian future clearly. Our task is participation in that hope, beholding our desire, a means of turning theory into praxis of breaking the feedback loop of fixed representations. As Heidegger supposed, we do this by calling forth, by enframing, and by revealing, but the execution of his saving power, of poiēsis, is only achieved with eyes fixed on what is being revealed, eyes that behold what we do not fully understand as it lives in the future. There are hints of this utopian reality embedded in the present so long as we do not perpetuate it. We must fix our eyes on the future reality and be transformed into that likeness. Certainly, this is a challenge when our experience mediates what we can and will make. Escaping that loop means a beholding of the not yet and a yearning so strong that we strive for the becoming future. 

It may be said, this is a murky conclusion. But I am not sure we can escape this in a not yet world. This is my act of beholding and, as the poet said, by beholding 

we are transformed into the same image 

from one degree of glory to another.

2 Cor. 3:18 ESV