when we talk of art we need to talk of love

Awakening the eye is admitting the love and enquiry into self
to guide us back to harmony.
– Rashid Maxwell

Rashid Maxwell embodies my idea of a Renaissance man. His profile reads like a prompt for a writers’ course where the task is to create a character both credible and unlikely.  (There are many threads that run parallel to my own – perhaps that’s why I relate so keenly to the way his life has unfolded.)  He was never a candidate for the typical, mundane and mediocre, but followed his innate thirst for truth – the truth of life and the truth of his wide-ranging creativity.

He is a published writer and poet as well as an exhibiting artist, art lecturer and pioneer in the field of art as therapy.  He not only designs furniture, but also meditation spaces and eco-environmental projects – including a park, a reafforestation venture, a wetland bird sanctuary and a nature reserve.  Having lived and worked in many countries he now resides in rural Devon, England, where he practices organic gardening, keeps bees, continues to draw and paint, and to walk – as he puts it – “the pathless path of inner exploration.”

For the artisans’ gallery, Rashid has contributed a selection of watercolour paintings inspired by the Love that flows beneath our everyday passions – Paramananda, the bliss beyond bliss.

I call this series of watercolour paintings Paramananda. They have been prompted by expressions of this love that I observed in people who have meditation in their lives. Sometimes they are dancing, sometimes sitting silently, sometimes passing through grave illness and sometimes waiting for their lover. If these images transmit to you a figment of that underlying love, love has done its work.
– Rashid Maxwell

Continue reading at Rashid Maxwell’s page.

artisans

artisans’ gallery