I have recently been reading a group of inspiring books that
I've chosen as a means to awaken or recharge a new level of creativity. As part of my art practice, at my mentor
Andie Thrames' suggestion, I have found it is necessary to review my mission as
an artist every six months or so. This
is not only for my own awareness and growth, but so that I can communicate
about my art and process in art statements and in sharing creative enthusiasm
with others. To keep myself engaged and
charged I have to participate in my education by reading, attending workshops
with artists that I want to emulate, and by interacting with art to discover
what speaks to me.
There are four books I'm loving right now in which each
author is talking about our interconnectedness.
David Abrams, ecologist and philosopher, speaks magically in Spell of the Sensuous about the history
of our disconnect from nature and our inner nature due to the refinement of
language and written communication.
Through Abrams mystical descriptions of feeling nature and the ways
indigenous cultures view themselves in nature (which is express it via
storytelling), one is reintroduced to a once common communion with nature. This book has philosophical depth that I can
sometimes only digest a paragraph at a time.
It is rewiring my mind's concepts about perception.
Meditation is been part of my way of becoming more perceptive
and aware my interconnection and inter-dependence with nature. The nature of our minds is nature. We are nature. This isn't new to Buddhism. The
Harmony of Emptiness and Dependent-Arising: Tsong Khapa by Ven. Lobsang
Gyatso elaborates on cause and effect in relation to emptiness. Once again I am reminded of the fault of
ignorance and how ignorance of the ultimate nature of phenomena leads to every
choice we make.
As I continue absorb the teaching-words in these books I
find that something is slipping or softening in how I perceive phenomena. I listen for the ways nature talks to me and
I look for the eyes that are seeing and perceiving me. I wonder how it is that we humans think we
are bigger than and dominant over nature.
Poet Gary Snyder writes so captivatingly in The Practice of the Wild on the wild that we are. In Snyder's introduction he writes, "A
key term is practice: meaning a
deliberate sustained and conscious effort to be more finely tuned to ourselves
and to the way the actual existing world is. 'The World,' with the exception of a tiny bit
of human intervention, is ultimately a wild place." (p. viii)
It is in this wild place that we live and create. I have recently been introduced (by Sue West)
to the art work of Enrique Martinez Celaya.
A well established and visionary California
artist who paints, writes, lectures, educates and inspires others to delve deep
and reconnect. His work is profoundly
spiritual from a scientific and globally philosophical view. In Collected
Writings & Interviews, 1990-2010, Enrique Martinez Celaya ,
taken from Celaya 's
manifesto, he writes, "It seems more sad than ironic that in the process
of mastering our destiny through technology and global reach, we have lost our
respect for nature and our sense of belonging to something larger than
ourselves." Celaya sees the artist role to be that of a
prophet. It is with that inspiring idea that
I explore and contemplate his work and the works of others engaged in nurturing
our awakened minds.
The image above is from my series of painting on California
butterflies. There are over 120 species
of butterflies that live in the Sierras according to Dr. Art Shapiro, professor
of Evolution and Ecology, and his UC Davis research team. They have a fantastic website http://butterfly.ucdavis.edu/ with
images of each butterfly. The butterfly
represents for me the ability to transform.
My mixed media pieces evolve in an intuitive process of cooperating with
the art materials, the subject matter, patterns, and contemplative mind frame.
May you be well and inspired!
Susan
Hello Susan, Janet Riehl passed a link to your blog post on to me, and I was struck by your mention of Andie Thrams as your mentor. Andie is a good friend of a friend and neighbor, printmaker Sherrie York, and Andie stayed with my late husband and I when she came to Salida, where I live, to give a workshop. Interesting connections! At any rate, I appreciated your book list--I love David Abrams' Spell of the Sensuous and Gary Snyder's Practice of the Wild, and will look for The Harmony of Emptiness, and the book with Celaya's writing. After looking at your work and reading this post, I wonder if you'd appreciate reading my memoir, Walking Nature Home. (I don't mean to be annoyingly self-promotional, it just seemed like the book might be useful to you.) http://www.amazon.com/Walking-Nature-Home-Journey-Culture/dp/0292719175
ReplyDeleteBlessings, Susan