Posts Tagged 'curious'

310. A delicious drama

And suddenly it was finished.

I was still trying to see more colors in the two upper leaves on the right side, as the knowing that the painting was finished started to occupy some space in my being.

This also was the time when the name came. You cannot give a name to a piece before it is finished. Well, maybe in most cases.

Sometimes you know the name even before you start. It is a strange thing, the name. It is the “what is it about” of the piece. Sometimes it happens when you recognize something special about it. In other times it is an interesting feeling that you have even before you start, and are curious enough to explore it with the art.

In any case, what has given the name immigration to this piece?

For me it is this strange line that crosses through almost everything else. Here you have this plant or whatever is depicted as the main subject, and with no logical reason, in comes this beige line, wrapped in orange, and dares go through the leaves that have color, the thick beige trunk and the empty leaves, as if it has grabbed the right to come in at the level of its choice and disregard the prevailing order.

You could even say that this stranger has cut through the old and established areas and it is aiming at the most vulnerable but alive green. Isn’t that green the best of all places in the plant, where life is experienced in its strongest impulse to grow, and its boldest claim to the adventure of being a body in space? If you had to choose a place to experience life, where would you go?

And yes, the plant was just all right without this beige and orange intrusion. Everything was just working fine. But coming in, as this new line did, has just given the most interesting and the most intense experience to this old plant.

It has introduced drama to the composition. How poor would the composition be with only all that is okay in it? Now something is breaking the routine. Something is happening, sweet, tasty, maybe even spicy.

You really need to look at immigration from a composition point of view, to see what it means to everything that is involved.

A delicious drama, this is what it is about.

293. Colors that run away from each other

FullSizeRender 4

In this painting you can see the pain. It is in the lines, it is in the intensity of the colors, it is in the way the colored areas run away from each other, concentrating in themselves, as if the whole picture is falling apart. And you also see some environment: A horizon with two trees, a part of a cloud and maybe a fruit on a limb.

The drawing is of faces overlapping, worried and separate, in spite of the closeness, pressed into the presence of each other.

The white is like the knuckles of a clenched fist.

At some point I discovered some dirt that was somehow transferred to the paper after my hand touched some food. I erased some of it but could not get rid of it completely. Erasing vigorously leaves marks too. The solution was to place the signature on the stain. It is like placing myself on some mess that I had created, to cover it up. Here is one of the things that life seems to be about sometimes.

My artist friend H observed in my art that even when I speak about torturous pain, the paintings have some cheerfulness to them. He recommended, carefully indeed and lovingly, to express the pain more freely, and maybe there will be a physical relief from it, not to mention the psychological relief. Maybe this is why there is a bit more expression of suffering in this painting than is usually expressed in my art. Or maybe it is because I came to the table at 3 or 4 at night, when the pain made me jump out of bed, and I started to draw right there.

But I can’t escape myself. Even the suffering in my life is viewed from an aware place that is basically calm, curious and loving.

I love my friend for who he is and for how what he is, is being expressed in everything he does. And I also love myself enough to allow what-makes-me-nowadays, to express itself with all the facets that it has.

Maybe it is strange to many people that there is no full expression of the suffering in my art. Instead there is what looks like a distanced or muted expression. How can one not scream about his suffering in his art and indeed tear people’s hearts when they become witnesses to it? But this would be untrue to my experience.

Yes there is some distance when I experience being more than my body. My body shakes with pain many times, but there is the bigger me, to whom this looks like a fantastic, colorful, emotions-full, drama that I had created for myself, not knowing who I am. Yes, it is not the usual life, to have one foot in the body and another in a much freer place.

 -And what if I hit you on your toes with a heavy hammer, will ask an imaginary friend?

-It will hurt.

290. Who needs a subject?

Birdman

I finished it yesterday and wrote a mistaken date, as you can find in the signature. It should be 050418.

I started it in the night that lead to the forth. I came off bed where I did not sleep and sat down to do a drawing.

The colors will come in the day, I thought. This is indeed what happened.

I had a feeling about how I wanted the language of the painting be. It was a pleasant feeling, like a feeling that I used to get when I would be on my way to the swimming pool, already imagining the sensation of water touching my body everywhere.

I want to write about this language.

But first, it seems there is some form that is being depicted in the picture. Maybe it is some sort of a big man with a bird’s head. Whatever it is, it is made of a flimsy structure of moving lines that hold a strange gathering of soft, mostly translucent shapes.

These shapes of colors; what holds them in place? Are they confined? It does not seem so. It looks as if these shapes can move away and be free of the drawing. Some pieces do radiate away.

Do they want to be together? Maybe their behavior has nothing to do with wanting? Maybe this is just what they do when they are in certain circumstances?

All these details are told with the language of the artwork. You can say, maybe, that the language and the story that is being told cannot be separated.

Just like in any language, when the language and what it describes cannot be separated, the whole thing becomes a poem. Or maybe, since this is a visual art piece, maybe we can say that it gives the feeling of something true. If we experience this feeling, we tend to like the painting and usually it is hard, if at all possible for us, to explain why we like it. The whole experience belongs in a different realm than the one we usually describe successfully with a language.

But is this at all possible to describe any experience in a language?

This is why for some of us the language of numbers feels more capable of describing phenomena or experiences. If it is three, then it is three and nothing else. At least we know this. But do we?

Maybe this is good enough for now, for this discussion?

I want to aim the light of our thinking onto the use of the visual language. I think that the language shares more information than the content.

So the lines here seem as if they are not sure where they are going. They try and fail to describe something. But in their failure, a feeling is created that something is there. We are not sure what exactly the lines do. Do they try to describe a shape, or do they describe the quivering of the energies as they move through the form? Is it a living form, because there is energy moving through it?

How does the form feel? Does it want to be there? Is it wondering about itself and its environment?

Is it just trying to be filled with enough being, so it can experience everything around and in it?

And as such, does it matter at all what the form is? It is a wanting to experience. This is enough.

And let’s take the colored forms.

They come together as different units of being, made of what? Maybe too made of wanting to know or wanting to experience? They touch each other and overlap, where they mix with each other. They accompany the quivering curious delineated shape of lines and they interact with it too.

And all the parts, the lines and the shapes, are free in their nature. They don’t have to be there. They have just come together as a strange occurrence, involving all kinds of being, stories and feelings, out of their common curiosity.

Are they focused on the inner world, so to speak, or the outward one? It seems that there is nothing really substantial in their gathering. Nothing is heavily real in both the inner and the outer world that they create. Only deep, rolling, playing interest in what can be made up and be experienced.

But since there is nothing very substantial in that coming together of these suggestive, wondering lines and the friendly mixing together color shapes, then who is experiencing anyway?

You see? All of this is given or shared through the language of this art.

Who needs a subject then?

Well, we need a subject for this coming together and experiencing. But it is never as substantive as we make it to be in our thoughts.

Think about it if you wish, or maybe it will become a poem?

 

243. (re)Discovering

p1000350

Discovering who you are is the main issue of life on earth.

You can find yourself in many ways and in many places and things. Actually, in every thing.

The best way is through doing what you love to do and taking this way as a trip to the depth of who you are.

You will change along the way, and maybe what you love doing more than anything else will change too. You have to always choose to do what you most love at the moment.

You will start finding yourself in small steps or maybe big. And every time you find yourself, you will feel satisfied. Finding yourself is the source of satisfaction. I want to say the only source, but I’m not sure yet. All this knowledge comes to me as a surprise, and at the same time as something that I have known before.

After the satisfaction periods you will start being curious again, and you will again use doing what you most love at that time to move on towards the depths of yourself.

All of the trip happens between you and eternity, which is you too.

 

156. One poem with three names

1. The Green

2. The Habits and the Flow

3. The Human Condition 

The reds go to the green

The reds go to the green

But he is overwhelmed and afloat

The river flows rigorously by him

And everywhere else

He remembers the river from a dream

 

The browns are curious, supportive and showing the way

Just as the lines of his drawings are

And the Green welcomes them

 

There are golden drops all over the place

I told you he is overwhelmed

I did not tell you it is joy

 

The reds are riding in dutifully

Hoping they are in the right direction

Reminding of biblical tribes of nomads

Who always go to where the green goes. 

A few notes: 

The nomads who follow the green are the subconscious habits that we have. Of course I did not think this when I wrote the poem. You try to escape them by changing your life and there they are with you again.

This is a description of my life at the moment. Of course I did not think so when I wrote it. The lines help me a lot to see clearly.

The joy is all over the place, in the curiosity, in the creativity, in the love, in the beauty, in itself.

The poem has power because it speaks in pre-language. You put words to it but it is the pre-language that speaks.

The river was seen sharply and clearly in a deep state, showing me that the flow of real life is always right here with us, strong and eternal.

Why is the green the hero?

About satisfaction: 

When beauty is created through you there is satisfaction.

It is the beauty that came through, that puts you in wonder, provoking deep appreciation and thankfulness, that you can also call satisfaction.

You feel you did something that is meaningful. You expanded, surprisingly. You have more love now. This is satisfaction.

Do you need anything? No. Thanks. Everything is OK.

118. Full of curious life force

I am going through changes and for some time I felt as if I was floating in space in some way, not feeling like doing anything, because it was not clear to me why to act at all. A whole old paradigm, so to speak, became obsolete and the new paradigm is unfolding still.

I did a lot of drawings during this process and won’t be able to show them all to you. I never was able to sow all that I was doing. I try to show the important ones. Some of the work included pretty intense release of old programs from the subconscious. Thinking about what I intended to do, I found myself afraid one day and started to draw, which lead me to feel wanting to grow but escaping, then there was a big self cancellation, then an experience of shock, then anger and more anger, and eventually good feeling. This was done in twelve drawings and quick writing, in one evening and the morning that came after it.

Then there was a shorter, four pictures version of the same thing, as it repeated itself like an echo.

Then these two:

For the first, five short poems came, instead of a single long one.

Curious

Curious

As they are looking for something they forgot

They are making a tapestry

Of happy swimming.

Tickling each other pleasantly

Telling each other they cannot find their goal

They are full of curious life force.

Laughing

Sliding bodies

With open eyes.

Filling up the space

Many fish are

Swimming nowhere

To the sun they come

From the depths

Of darkness.

Looking at the drawing now I feel I did not express something about the quality of the lines in the lower part. They seem to be rotting. There is a Zen book called Swampland Flowers, which is a collection of letters written by master Ta Hui to a student, about how to practice in everyday life. The name means to hint at the idea that the lotus flower, which represents enlightenment, cannot grow in the clean fresh air of the mountains. It has to grow in the swamps of the valleys, where it is hot, humid and dirty.

I see in it all the joy that arises from all of my self-work and the peace I feel about pleasant, light hearted touching.

The next drawing is from two days later.

Touching lightly

Touching lightly

Standing one behind the other

Curious and interested in experiencing

The parts that were banned

And what a blessing it is

There are many ways of saying no

But the yes is one

And always there, inside of all of them

As it is

Forever true.

Looking at the two drawings and words you can see how things work themselves quietly in the subconscious. The constant exposure to the flow of intuition, or maybe I can call it the flow of truth, gradually dissolves everything that is not true and leaves what is true untouched, as it can never be taken away. It was a surprise for me when this happened, because I did not work on it knowingly. This too shows something about the method of intuitive flow. You just do the work, following what comes up and there is a wise order of what is being tackled, happening on its own, guided by deeper knowledge. We could not arrive at this wise order through thinking and analyzing. Life, as it turns out, is much easier than your think.

I remember working with a person who came to me to get rid of his depression. We worked on whatever showed up. Sometimes it was possible to see that it was related to the depression, and sometimes it was other things. Dealing with all that just floated up to our knowledge, one thing after another, one day there was no depression there any more. And this is for life, as all the mental software that created the depression, all that tapestry of many small issues, dissolved and was not there any more.

114. New world

Incredible light on the floor

Incredible light on the floor

 

Into the soft shadow

Comes a ray of incredible light

It is on the floor

Here are my sunglasses

I use them to see in different colors

You are curious like a baby, aren’t you?

I am the leaning love

Your fur is shining and colorful

I even like what you have just spilled

On the floor

Come, do you want to play?

You are so soft, aren’t you?

And so interesting

Here, I am giving you a flower

Mommy,

Does a dog have a Buddha nature?


Awards

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Join 372 other subscribers

My Pages

The healing process

Entries 1-58 show how I use the method of Intuition Through Art to heal myself from Peripheral Neuropathy.

Archives