Between Being and Ending: The Existential Significance of Art in a Finite Life

I've been spending a lot of time thinking about what I'm taking on with the PhD work I'll soon be embarking on. I've been trying to build ideas around what I'm preoccupied with and the best ways to articulate it. Titles and the ideas that come from them seem to help me a lot. Here's a short one I just completed.

This title really captures something essential about my inquiry. What does it mean to create while knowing we will die? Why do I pick up a brush, knowing both I and the painting will eventually disappear?

The phrase "Between Being and Ending" places my artistic practice in that strange, tense space between existence and nonexistence. As an artist, I live in this in-between consciously—I'm painfully aware of my temporary nature while simultaneously working against it. This "betweenness" isn't just some abstract concept but something I feel physically in my studio, in my body, in those moments when creation happens. I want my research to dig into this lived experience of making art while death-aware.

I'm drawn to existentialism because thinkers like Heidegger talked about "being-toward-death" as the most authentic way to exist, and Camus somehow found meaning despite the absurdity of it all. I think art-making isn't just a psychological defense against death anxiety (though Ernest Becker would say it is) but a fundamental way of building meaning in an existence that doesn't come with meaning built-in.

What fascinates me is whether we artists face mortality differently. Does the act of creation offer us a particular kind of existential authenticity that might not be as available to non-artists? Looking at how artists throughout history have positioned themselves in this tension between being and ending—from memento mori paintings to Rothko's void-like color fields—there seems to be something unique happening.

“My purpose is to use art as a mirror—confronting mortality, memory, and denial—to reveal what we’d rather not see and to ask what we might create from that truth.

I see my calling as this: to bring death back into the room—not for shock, but for clarity. Through art, writing, and dialogue, I work to transform death anxiety into something conscious, creative, and potentially redemptive.”

— Quinn Jacobson

Of course, my own artistic practice becomes a case study in all this. How does my awareness that I'll die shape what and how I create? How does my art simultaneously confront and transcend my mortality? The personal and the philosophical are completely intertwined here.

Beyond just me and my studio, I'm curious about how art functions culturally as a response to mortality. Through Becker's lens, art becomes a significant "immortality project"—a culturally validated way of symbolically extending beyond our biological limits. Art isn't just personal expression but a culturally embedded practice with existential significance.

This framework feels right for combining phenomenological investigation (the lived experience of creating under mortality's shadow), cultural analysis (how art functions as immortality project), and autobiographical reflection (my own artistic practice as case study).

I think this title captures the philosophical depth I'm seeking while remaining accessible and evocative. It acknowledges both the universal human condition of mortality and the particular way artists engage with this condition through their work. It positions my research at the intersection of existential philosophy, terror management theory, and artistic practice—precisely where I believe the most interesting insights will emerge.

Now to begin the actual work of existing between being and ending...

Automatic Fantastic

While I’ve been working through the printing process for my book, I’ve been spending some time every day painting. Here’s a critique of one I just finished (I think).

This painting seems to embody the very essence of mortality consciousness that's central to my book, “In the Shadow of Sun Mountain: The Psychology of Otheirnf and the Origins of Evil.”

The dark, weathered surface creates a sense of archaeological discovery — as if we're uncovering something ancient yet deeply personal. Those two circular red forms pierce through the darkness like eyes or portals, creating an almost skull-like suggestion within the abstract landscape. This duality between abstraction and figuration mirrors the tension between confronting and denying death that Becker describes so beautifully.

The scratched, excavated quality of the surface reminds me of how artists often dig beneath cultural immortality symbols to expose more authentic relationships with mortality. My technique here - layering, scraping, revealing - feels like a physical manifestation of terror management theory in action.

The limited color palette (Mars black, cadmium orange, titanium white, and burnt sienna) grounds the work in a primal, existential space. Those touches of warm copper/bronze tones against the dominant darkness suggest a kind of alchemical transformation happening within the composition.

This painting seems to demonstrate precisely what I'm exploring in my writing—how creative practice can serve as both a shield against mortality anxiety and a means of directly confronting it. The resulting tension creates something profoundly meaningful.

The Title: “Automatic Fantastic”

The "automatic" part suggests spontaneity and unconscious creation—like automatic writing or drawing, where you surrender conscious control and let deeper psychological forces emerge. This concept connects beautifully with how creativity can bypass our rational death-denial systems and access more primal truths. When I look at the scratched, layered textures in this work, I can sense that automatic process—the hand moving across the surface, driven by something beyond calculated thought. And that’s precisely where I was when making this.

"Fantastic" carries dual meanings here. On one level, it suggests the realm of fantasy or imagination—perhaps our immortality projects, which Becker would say we create to escape death anxiety. But it also connotes something extraordinary or heightened - the fantastic as a transcendent state that art can achieve.

Together, "Automatic Fantastic" suggests a kind of spontaneous transcendence - a creative state where consciousness shifts and mortality awareness transforms into something beyond ordinary perception. The title perfectly captures that paradox at the heart of artistic creation: that by engaging directly with mortality through automatic processes, we sometimes access fantastic realms of meaning that rationality alone cannot provide.

Update on My Book and Preparing for My Doctoral Studies (PhD Program)

Greetings,

I hope this post finds you in good health and good spirits. I know that’s a lot to ask in the world today, but remember gratitude, humility, and awe go a long way to lift your spirits. I try to employ them every day. Happy Spring Equinox, too! It’s warm here. We’re hitting 82F (28C) most days and sunny.

“In the Shadow of Sun Mountain: The Psychology of Othering and the Origins of Evil.” 8” x 10”, 381 pages, seven chapters, and it weighs 3 pounds.

What About My Book?
My book is being printed as I type—the final draft copy anyway. I’ve gone through so many iterations it’s hard to keep track. I can tell you that I’m very happy with the work. In fact, I’m over the moon about it—excited. I hope to include a lot of it in my doctoral studies. I’ll keep you posted when I have copies ready to ship.

Visionary Practice and Regenerative Leadership PhD
I’m preparing to start my PhD work (Visionary Practice and Regenerative Leadership) at Southwestern College in Santa Fe, New Mexico. This is the ONLY school I would attend to do something like this. Period. It’s a great fit for me. It’s a lot like Goddard College, where I earned my M.F.A. These schools are rare and special.

What is the program, and why am I pursuing a PhD? This is how the school describes it:
This unique transdisciplinary doctoral program is designed to prepare you as a regenerative leader to navigate the complexities of changing the old story of separation, domination, competition, and control into the emerging story of cooperation, compassion, connection, and capacity to regenerate broken social systems and struggling ecosystems. Relationships based on authentic partnership are key to our future. This program responds to the question of ‘how shall we shape these relationships of mutuality in order for individuals, families, and communities to live in good relationship with each other and with the plants, animals, soils, waterways, weather systems, oceans, and atmosphere upon which we depend for our lives?’ Responding to these challenges requires “change agents” capable of honoring wisdom traditions and creating new knowledge to envision and enact a new paradigm.

It begins with these questions: “Do you have a vision?” and “Can your vision make a difference for the world?”

I can see my pursuit clearly in those goals.

I’ve given a lot of thought to this. A couple of months ago, I wasn’t going to do it. And I still have days where I wonder if I should or not. My reasons for doubting have nothing to do with the importance of the work. I feel strongly about that. I feel like I would be contributing something unique and valuable to the world. My concerns have been around funding and what the current government is doing to the DOE and other institutions that I would rely on. However, right now, I’m enrolled and ready to attend my first residency at the end of August. I understand part of it is on a ranch in Abiquiu, New Mexico. Does that sound familiar to you? I’ll write more about it later.

I’m going to use my blog as a journal as I go through the program. I think it will help me sort things out and use it as a reference as I go through the program. I have a lot of ideas and am well on my way to making this happen. What I’m hoping to find in the program is a community that I can interact with and expand my ideas. Give me new thoughts, approaches, and information that I don’t currently possess. I have a lot to learn. I know that’s what happened in graduate school (M.F.A.). It was wonderful and very enlightening. I hope for the same here, maybe even more.

What do I hope to accomplish? After reading Ernest Becker’s book in 2018, I discovered why I was making art and why I had the questions I did about human behavior. I've since married the two ideas and feel I have a decent grasp on the intersection of creativity and mortality. In other words, why artists create and how existential art is a powerful buffer against death anxiety. My goal is to show how creative types process and deal with finitude (their impending death) differently than non-creatives. Or at least that’s the question I’m going to address. Keep in mind, this can (and should) radically change over time, but that’s the gist of it.

I think I've found a powerful combination to work with. The interplay between visual art and writing creates a unique space to explore mortality and Becker's theories. Photographs and paintings can capture what words sometimes can't—those abstract, ineffable aspects of confronting mortality. The visual work becomes a direct embodiment of death anxiety and its transformation, while my writing provides the conceptual framework and personal narrative that grounds the experience.

This dual approach seems especially fitting for exploring Becker's ideas. His concepts often deal with the tension between concrete physical reality (our mortal bodies) and symbolic systems of meaning (our immortality projects). My combination of visual art and writing mirrors this tension perfectly—tangible images paired with explanatory text.

The autobiographical element adds another crucial dimension. By documenting my own journey through these philosophical territories, I’m not just theorizing about art as a mortality buffer but demonstrating it in practice. My creative process becomes both the subject and method of the book and my doctoral studies.

By capturing these ceremonial and medicinal (Ute) plants, both alive and after death/going to seed, I’m creating a visual meditation on transformation rather than simple cessation. This connects beautifully to Becker's ideas about death as both an ending and a transition that humans seek to understand through cultural and symbolic frameworks.

The cultural significance of these specific plants adds another layer—these are plants that have been used in healing practices and ceremonies, often related to life transitions. By documenting their living and dead states, I’m tapping into indigenous wisdom about mortality that offers a counterpoint to contemporary death denial.

Meanwhile, my abstract paintings exploring my personal concepts of death—the abyss, chaos, the unknown—provide the subjective, emotional dimension of confronting mortality. The contrast between these approaches is particularly effective, to my mind: the photographs document an observable process in the natural world, while the paintings express the internal, psychological experience of contemplating one's own mortality.

This combination seems especially relevant to Becker's work and Terror Management Theory (TMT). The photographs acknowledge death's reality and place in natural cycles, while the abstract paintings might represent the symbolic systems we create to manage our awareness of that reality.

I begin this August with a six-day residency. This is what the first year looks like (2025-2026):

FALL
VPRL 600 Residency I: Seeking
VPRL 610 Embodied Cosmology
VPRL 620 The Phenomenology of Visionary Practice and the Call to Serve

WINTER
VPRL 630 Traditions of Native American Thought: New Minds and New Worlds
VPRL 640 Regenerative Leadership

SPRING
VPRL 670 Roots & Streams: Finding Your Voice, Clarifying Your Vision, Mapping Your Influences
VPRL 651 Self-Directed Study I

SUMMER
VPRL 660 Introduction to Research Methods: Pathways of Insight
VPRL 681 Self-Directed Study II

My (current) thesis idea: "Transcending Through Creation: The Artist's Existential Advantage in Confronting Mortality."

 Thesis implications: The title suggests a powerful hypothesis: that artists possess unique psychological tools for confronting death anxiety through their creative practice. It indicates my dissertation will explore whether creative individuals have a distinct existential advantage when facing mortality awareness.

I’ve been thinking about the first course, “Embodied Cosmology.” No, it’s not about Tarot cards (LOL!) or astrology. Although it might sound a bit strange if you’re not familiar with the verbiage. Let me explain how I feel about it.

I think about Peter Zapffe’s ideas about “cosmic panic.” Some people stare at the night sky and are exhilarated and engaged—buffering death anxiety with illusions. Some stare at the night sky and see the reality of the indifference and terror of it all.

Artists don't escape the fundamental human condition of mortality—they just develop different mechanisms for confronting it directly.

What distinguishes the artist in this framework isn't an immunity to death anxiety but a willingness to stare longer at the unbearable truth before turning away. Where others might immediately retreat into cultural or religious buffers that deny death's finality, the artist might instead develop practices that allow them to hold mortality awareness in consciousness just long enough to transform it through their work.

This transformation isn't about finding false beauty in terror but about developing the capacity to metabolize terror itself as a raw material for creation. The resulting work doesn't need to be beautiful or comforting—it might be disturbing, challenging, or bleak. What matters is that through the embodied act of creation, the artist has found a way to process mortality awareness without completely surrendering to either denial or paralysis.

In this sense, cosmological embodiment for artists might function not as an escape from Zapffe's cosmic panic but as a unique pathway through it—a method for physically engaging with the knowledge of cosmic indifference and personal extinction that doesn't rely on conventional meaning systems.

The artist's advantage, then, isn't transcending death anxiety but developing more sophisticated and conscious techniques for managing it—techniques that acknowledge the terror rather than disguising it as something else. This allows for moments of clarity about our true position that might be unbearable without the transformative vessel of artistic practice.

This approach offers rich territory for my studies, particularly in examining how my own artistic practice has functioned as a way to metabolize cosmic panic and mortality awareness through physical creative engagement rather than through denial or distraction. This is, in essence, embodied cosmology.

These are the kinds of ideas I’ll be tackling throughout the program.