The power of music...

Wonderful concert last night at the Zipper Hall with the Camerata Pacifica. Reminds me again of the power of music. Just watching the amazing cello player Ani Aznavoorian be absorbed in her play taking the whole audience with her. She was playing together with Lera Auerbach on the piano in a composition by Lera Auerbach for the second half of the concert, just pure ecstasy! It is difficult to explain how music just touches every fiber of our bodies in such a way. Stunning!

Wish paintings could convey that feeling when being seen. Here is a small painting that I finished recently that doesn't even come close.

acrylic on canvas,

12 x 16 inch

(31,5 x 40,6 cm)

CCAG art show

I felt honored to be hanging my paintings with to so many talented artist from the CCAG at the show on Saturday. There was such a variety of mediums and styles that I was glad I wasn't in the shoes of the judge who had to make decisions of first and last.

Here is a link to some photos.

Please call me by my true names...

My last painting got me thinking and wondering about what that angel is doing, looking a bit burned. And who is that (Satan?) who seems to pull it down into the dark?

"Coincidentally" I was reading that according to Mansur Al-Hallaj, a Sufi saint, Satan used to be an angel who "fell from grace" because he wouldn't obey Gods wishes to bow down to Adam. "The fall of Iblis (Satan) occurred when God demanded him to prostrate before Adam and Iblis retorted "Not before another (but Thou)! My rebellion means to declare Thee Holy! What is Adam! He is nothing without Thou."

Rumi repeatedly asserted that Iblis "is a representation of one-eyed intellectualism" unable to see that Man was created after Gods' likeness and the Divine spirit breathed into him.

(source: Sufi wisdom, Marietta T. Stepaniants)

I was wondering how close that is to the concept of Shaivism of seeing the manifested world (including Adam/us) as an expansion of God. And perhaps Satan by not bowing down to Adam rejecting God in him.

Oh well, that is just another opinion I guess; I am still a bit bewildered :-)

But I was really moved about how Thich Nhat Hanh put in words the perfect completeness of this world including good and bad...

PLEASE CALL ME BY MY TRUE NAMES

Don't say that I will depart tomorrow-
even today I am still arriving.

Look deeply: every second I am arriving
to be a bud on a Spring branch,
to be a tiny bird, with still-fragile wings,
learning to sing in my new nest,
to be a caterpillar in the heart of a flower,
to be a jewel hiding itself in a stone.

I still arrive, in order to laugh and to cry,
to fear and to hope.
The rhythm of my heart is the birth and death
of all that is alive.

I am a mayfly metamorphosing
on the surface of the river.

And I am the bird
that swoops down to swallow the mayfly.

I am a frog swimming happily
in the clear water of a pond.

And I am the grass-snake
that silently feeds itself on the frog.

I am the child in Uganda, all skin and bones,
my legs as thin a bamboo sticks.

And I am the arms merchant,
selling deadly weapons to Uganda.

I am the twelve-year-old girl,
refugee on a small boat,
who throws herself into the ocean
after being raped by a sea pirate.

And I am the pirate,
my heart not yet capable
of seeing and loving.

My joy is like Spring, so warm
it makes flowers bloom all over the Earth.

My pain is like a river of tears,
so vast it fills the four oceans.

Please call me by my true names,
so I can hear all my cries and laughter at once,
so I can see that my joy and pain are one.

Please call me by my true names,
so I can wake up
and the door of my heart
could be left open,
the door of compassion.

Thich Nhat Hanh,
Call Me by My True Names: The Collected Poems of Thich Nhat Hanh

New painting (Untitled 21)

acrylic on canvas,

24 x 24 inch (61 x 61 cm)

Culver City Art Group exhibit

I will be participating in the annual exhibit of the Culver City Art Group with some of my paintings. There is going to be a broad variety of art from local artist including oils, water colors, acrylics, ceramics, photography, collages and more! The show is judged with awards and prizes.

If you are in the area have a look, come at 3:30 pm to meet the artists and enjoy our snack buffet...

A body of original artwork by members of the

Culver City Art Group

Saturday, November 14, 2009

Noon to 6:00 pm

Rotunda Room, Veteran’s Memorial Building

4117 Overland Ave, Culver City, CA, 90230

(Culver Boulevard at Overland Avenue)

Meet the artists!

Artists’ Reception

Refreshments and awards

3:30 pm - 6:00 pm

(View printable Invitation)

Prayer

acrylic, mixed media on canvas

18 x 18 inch (46 x 46 cm)

"Prayer is not asking.

It is a longing of the soul.

It is daily admission

of one's weakness.

It is better in prayer to

have a heart without words

than words without a heart.”

(Mahatma Gandhi)

painting in process... and musing about certainty...

It seems there is a lot of uncertainty in the air lately, in the world and in everybody's life. Perhaps as an artist we don't noticed it much before because uncertainty seems to be a part of making art. Do we ever know why we make this or that paint stroke or why we choose this or that color? I may have learned about color and form and line and proportions etc. but when I paint I am not sure why I do what I do, but eventually I do make a stroke, this way or that. Then I might paint over it again and in the end it might look totally different from what I first thought it would look. There are a thousand different ways the painting could turn out, why this way? Does it matter?

Buddha and many other saints have said that, impermanence is the state of this world and it is constantly changing. So why do we have this tendency to want certainty? Like in an earthquake we instinctively hold onto that what we think is stable, the table leg, the wall etc. while the ground is moving. Most people center their lifes around something they percive as stable, their job, their family, having a routine makes us feel grounded and gives a sense of certainty.
I sometimes dance while painting, sometimes I whirl around like a kid or a dervish and noticed that the less my focus is on the world flying by, the less dizzy I get. In yoga we are taught to focus on a point on the groundfeeling grounded, being ground.

Lately I have started to paint in silence. It is later in the night that the silence gets so exquisite and thick that the hand hardly wants to move. I think it gets easier in the night to switch off the weary mind and surrender... just paint without knowing what one does is right or wrong... just doing, just being.

There is nothing in life that is for sure except death, and even that is an illusion :-)

This is how Tukaram (an Indian saint) puts it.... see previous post!

(To view the final painting click here.)

There is nothing in your life that will not change...

CERTAINTY

Certainty undermines one's power, and turns happiness

into a long shot. Certainty confines.

Dears, there is nothing in your life that will

not change - especially your ideas of God.

Look what the insanity of righteous knowledge can do:

crusade and maim thousands

in wanting to convert that which

is already gold

into gold.

Certainty can become an illness

that creates hate and

greed.

God once said to Tuka,

"Even I am ever changing -

I am ever beyond

Myself,

what I may have once put my seal upon,

may no longer be

the greatest

Truth."

~ Tukaram ~

Silence speaks...

acrylic on board on fabric mounted on wood, framed.
10 x 7.5 inch (25,4 x19,3 cm), 17 x 13 inch (43 x 33 cm) framed.

The backdrop for the painting only shows its pattern when the light is shining at a particular angle. It is from a Jacquard that I designed way back in time...

...and the frame goes even further back in time. From when working for a carpenter while still in school. So much wanted to be a carpenter apprentice and so distraught that it didn't work out. Oh well, glad that it lead me to where I am now, long way, and who knows were else the way is leading...

Very little grows on jagged rock. Be ground. Be crumbled, so wildflowers will grow...

"A Necessary Autumn Inside Each"

You and I have spoken all these words, but as for the way
we have to go, words are no preparation.  
There is no getting ready, other than grace.
My faults have stayed hidden.  One might call that a preparation!
I have one small drop of knowing in my soul.  Let it dissolve in your ocean.
There are so many threats to it. Inside each of us, there's continual autumn.  
Our leaves fall and are blown out over the water.
A crow sits in the blackened limbs and talks about what's gone.  
Then your generosity returns: spring, moisture, intelligence,
the scent of hyacinth and rose and cypress.  
Joseph is back!  And if you don't feel in yourself the freshness of Joseph, be Jacob!  
Weep and then smile.  Don't pretend to know something you haven't experienced.
There's a necessary dying, and then Jesus is breathing again.
Very little grows on jagged rock.  Be ground.  
Be crumbled, so wildflowers will come up where you are.  
You've been stony for too many years.  
Try something different.  
Surrender.

(Rumi, Mathnawi I: 1878-1912)