contemplative art – Page 2 – the awakened eye

a certain kind of presence

Posted on September 2, 2015 by miriam louisa simons

I’ve been wondering lately how to better share the rich resource of information hiding on pages in this site. For its first decade, the awakened eye was a self-hosted website, and it seems that the content enjoyed much higher page rankings then than it does now, hosted (freely) on WordPress. I have come to understand that blog posts, being interactive, tickle the toes of the search engines in ways that static pages do not.

My new plan is to present much of the material published on static pages, as posts. These will not simply be replicated pages; they will link to the original pages but/and also contain fresh material. I hope this strategy works to introduce both old and new subscribers to more information that may be of interest, and that it throws a hook to the robots so that the artisans and writers who have contributed to the site will feature more prominently in search results.

Usually when a new artisan is added to the artisans’ gallery, a blog post is published to introduce them and their work. However there are a few who were added years ago when the site made its quiet entry into online orbit, who missed out. Let’s start with them.

Vija Celmins:

Night Sky, 2002

Made, invented – it is not the image experienced in life, but in another reality. – VC

Influenced by Ad Reinhardt’s Twelve Rules for a New Academy 1953, Celmins started to consciously strip away elements in her art and rejected gesture and composing. Returning again and again to ocean views, lunar surfaces and star fields she depicts vast expanses and creates depth through her investigation of the image and her chosen material. Most of her images are painted or drawn very close to the edge of the surface she is working on and seem to extend beyond the canvas and into the space occupied by the viewer.

The focal point is the small compressed image in front of you; the illusion of space from the image stays on it. As the artist describes it, the image is ‘pinned down, in your mind it wants to expand out. Reality (the art) makes it stay where it is on the wall.’

As I was working with the pencil, I got into some of the qualities of the pencil itself. That’s how the galaxies developed.

Although Celmins has been associated with several art movements during her career she seems always to have operated outside the dominant trends of the day. The rigour and the intuitive nature of her process has restricted the volume of her creative output and in turn limited displays of her work. Celmins works at her own pace and has likened herself to the spider for its precise and industrious constructions.

Maybe I identify with the spider. I’m the kind of person who works on something forever and then works on the same image again the next day.

Web #1, 1999

Tedious [work] for some; for me it’s kinda like being there.

For Celmins a work of art doesn’t represent anything but itself. Through the photographic source material of oceans, night skies and deserts she relentlessly explores the image and the richness of its variation. As subjects they are united by their depiction of boundless nature and suggestion of the infinite.

I’m not a very confessional artist, you know. I don’t ever reveal what I’m feeling in my work, or what I think about the President. I use nature. I use found images.

In Celmins’ work however, the subject matter is secondary – her primary interest is that of making.

Sometimes I’m convinced that there is nothing else but the physical act of making the art.

The reason I think I do images that require so much time is that I feel the physical work itself lets some other thing that came through, letting something unconsciously seep through, some subtlety that my brain was not capable of figuring out…

I do like kind of impossible images. I mean images that are hard to pin down. That aren’t like a tabletop and an apple, but images that are really almost like mind images. Images that are space but they’re hard to grasp. But then they’re very graspable here, I mean, I make them accessible through another way, through manipulating the paint.

And from the video, a comment that will strike deep into the heart of those engaged in a contemplative art practice:

I really do like a lot of solitude. It’s impossible to do anything without it.

More: Vija Celmins at the artisans’ gallery

Sources: PBS Website and National Galleries Scotland
More information at Wikipedia and Here

Images © copyright Vija Celmins

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artisans’ gallery

pop goes the perceiver…

Posted on March 21, 2015May 24, 2015 by miriam louisa simons

For those of us whose interest in the mechanics of perception and the arising of visual experience runs deep, contemporary Dzogchen teacher Jackson Peterson offers a pithy lay summary. What are the implications for us as ‘artists’? What are we actually attempting to express? Are we furthering the illusion of a solid-state world or are we inquiring into its genesis? What can we express about the ubiquitous “knowing sentience”? And where does this leave us as viewers of both art and the world we feel is so unquestionably ‘real’? Fasten your seat belts!

Perception is an acquired phenomenon.
– E H Gombrich

Understanding our visionary world experience of ordinary perception as being a mental or brain/mind construction arising instantaneously, from moment to moment, is a profound insight. The Source creates visionary experience through a human brain. Having a human brain is the only way to have uniquely human experience.

Glass Brain Project visualises brain activity in 3D

Perceptions, as neurological, electro-chemical signals, are processed and immediately appear as virtual 3D images like a movie. Along with that arising of a movie-like experience is the arising of a perceiver. It’s not that there exists a pre-existing observer that ‘views’ the various movie-like perceptual images, but rather the ‘perceiver’ perceiving arises with the perceptual vision, as a part of the projection. The perceiver is imagined.

This is identical to what occurs when we dream at night. The dreamed self-identity is not a pre-existing entity that then ‘views’ the separate dream scenery, rather the perceiver of the dream scenery is equally a simultaneous projection of a subconscious creativity. The ‘perceiver perceiving’ is a mental projection. The same is true in the waking state. There is no actual separate ‘perceiver of perceptions’ other than an imagined one. The ‘me’ is merely a projection of karmic propensities. There is no actual aware entity within that milieu of projected me-thoughts, me-sensations and me-beliefs. What that ‘me’ does or intends is purely determined by karmic or brain conditioning. So free will loses all meaning. There is no ‘me’ entity that chooses or decides anything.

Human Connectome Project

There is no stable and objective universe ‘out there’. There is only the world and universe manufactured by your brain/mind at any, and every, given moment. There is however a vast and infinite quantum electro-magnetic informational field that moves or waves through the body’s perceptual organs, which becomes the basis for the 3D movie that appears in consciousness. And actually the movie doesn’t appear ‘in’ consciousness, but consciousness appears as the 3D virtual movie along with its artificial ‘viewer’. All events are occurring only within the brain.

Human Connectome Project

Light is not bright nor colorful. Light is invisible. The brightness and colors we see in our ordinary vision only exist in the brain/mind. Brightness is a brain manufactured phenomena, along with all the objects we seem to see. Again the perceiver of objects, brightness and colors is also a mentally manufactured entity made up of neural conditioning and conceptual designation. There is no actual entity that ‘sees’. When we fall asleep at night that entity disappears and is replaced by a new dreamed entity that also thinks it’s seeing pre-existing dream scenery. It’s constructed to think that, the same as our waking state ‘self’ thinks that it is seeing a pre-existing world.

Human Connectome Project

Sound only exists in a brain. The universe is silent. Movements of molecules cause the ear drum to vibrate, which creates electro-chemical signals from which the brain creates the inner neurological experience called sound.

We think we smell the fragrance of a flower, but instead no “scent” enters our nostrils, only odorless molecules. The brain then creates the fragrance as a neurological experience from odorless molecules.

Taste is the same. Foods contain no flavours; only brains do.

Sensations of pressure and heat and cold are the same as well.

Seeing that the experience and substance of our dream visionary experiences is identical to our day time ‘waking state’ visionary experience, in that both are both equally 3D brain/mind manufactured projections, is a profound insight. Neither the viewing subject nor the scenery viewed are other than subconscious projections occurring in the brain/mind. There is no real person ‘in there’ having experiences. That whole ‘me’ story is also just a projection of electro-chemical neural activity. The entire notion of being a real individual person, an autonomous self, is pure, brain generated fantasy.

Human Connectome Project

But a quality of knowing sentience pervades all experience equally. It’s not viewing the dream, but rather the dream or experience is what ‘knowingness’ is. It’s like the reflections that appear in a mirror. The brain and its functioning are also reflections appearing in the mirror of knowingness. But the mirror is never a person with an identity or personal story. That entity is merely a holographic reflection that appears and disappears completely from moment to moment with no continuity. There is no personal self except as an assemblage of neurological signals arising in the holographic, 3D movie that we call ‘our life in the universe’.

By noticing the inherent presence of knowing sentience to be within and AS all experience equally, that ‘noticer’ itself will dissolve into its changeless mirror-like, transparent awareness without border or center.

No one realized anything. No state became stable. That ‘me’ as a seeker just disappeared, dissolved, like a foggy mist that naturally evaporates in the morning sun.

– Jackson Peterson

See Jackson Peterson’s website – The Way of Light

He is also very active on Facebook, which is where I sourced this article. It has received only minor editing. Thank you Jax!

The top image is from the Glass Brain Project.

“This 3D brain is not a model — it’s a real human brain, firing electric signals as it thinks. “We are not just recording brain activity in real time, but also visualising it for people to experience how the brain functions,” says neuroscientist Adam Gazzaley of the University of California San Francisco, who built the Glass Brain project along with the Swartz Centre at UC San Diego.”

Visit the link to play with the model – it’s a wonder in every sense of the word.

The remaining images are from the gallery at the Human Connectome Project.

“Navigate the brain in a way that was never before possible; fly through major brain pathways, compare essential circuits, zoom into a region to explore the cells that comprise it, and the functions that depend on it.

The Human Connectome Project aims to provide an unparalleled compilation of neural data, an interface to graphically navigate this data and the opportunity to achieve never before realized conclusions about the living human brain.”

You will never think of so-called grey matter in quite the same way again. Or, indeed, your world.

The only thing worth expressing is the inexpressible.
– Frederick Franck

the Face of faces

seeing without shadows

look with fresh eyes

Posted on August 3, 2014May 21, 2015 by miriam louisa simons

It’s rare to come upon an extraordinarily creative artist who also has a wise and poetic way with words. And to find that this artist has brought together her two skills within the covers of a book that is not only a visual delight but an inspiration for the contemplative creative, is such a joy. Her name is Karen Divine, and she hails from that hotbed of creativity, Boulder, Colorado.

Karen joins the Colorado crew – Jordan Wolfson, Robert Spellman and Lisa Gakyo Schaewe (have I missed anyone?) at the artisans’ gallery. I’m delighted to welcome her. She has opened my eyes to the astonishing creative possibilities of iPhone art.

Our world is filled with internal dialogue, judgments, assumptions and analysis.
We choose these perspectives over having a “direct experience”.
When we view the world with these perspectives, we do not see at all.
We live in a world where certainty and familiarity are most important.
There is another way.

16. HARMONY
(LOOK WITH FRESH EYES)

LOOK with fresh eyes at the play of COLOR,
FORM, and TEXTURES that surround you!
This is the most heartfelt approach to embracing
each and every moment. By CONNECTING with HEAVEN
and EARTH you can bring the whole
UNIVERSE into your HANDS

As Rilke expresses beautifully in Letters to a Young Poet: Depict your sorrows and desires, your passing thoughts and beliefs in some kind of beauty, depict all that with heartfelt, quiet, humble sincerity and use to express yourself the things that surround you, the images of your dreams and the objects of your memory.

I have learned to step out of my way, quiet the critic and allow the process to happen, revealing to me a story.

I just shoot my life, stay present and watch what develops.
The opportunities are endless.

– Karen Divine

The image above is from Karen’s book A Small Amount of Courage, which features her iPhone art

“… which you must see to believe. In her book, Karen says, “As an artist, tapping into your own creative spirit is, first and foremost, a matter of developing awareness. This inner awareness allows you to quiet the senses and allows the unconscious to reveal rich imagery.”

Karen used the I Ching as the starting point for each of her images, and her creative process flowed through her meditations, yoga practice, and inspiration from Rainer Maria Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet. The result is 64 images, each accompanied by a short verse, that offer profound insights into the most basic human experiences – those that you are more likely to see in the mirror than on the news.

Karen is an internationally recognized artist with more than a dozen prestigious awards for her iPhone art. After one glance at her work, it’s easy to see why – each image in her book is a composite of many images that feature color, lines, and balance. It is whimsical with a touch of melancholy and offers much for the eye to explore. The verses express Karen’s interpretation of the accompanying image and leave you with much to consider. A Small Amount of Courage is a masterwork that belongs on the bookshelf of all who appreciate art and how it can inspire self-realisation.”
– Jeanne Hansen, editor.

A Small Amount of Courage

Karen Divine at the artisans’ gallery

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artisans’ gallery

slow art day – for mindful makers

Posted on April 10, 2014May 21, 2015 by miriam louisa simons

If we but give it time,
a work of art ‘can rap and knock and enter our souls’ and re-align us
– all our molecules –
to make us whole again.
– P K Page

Georgia O'Keeffe: Bella Donna 1939 Oil on canvas

Georgia O’Keeffe: Bella Donna 1939

Nobody sees a flower – really –
it is so small it takes time – and to see takes time,
like to have a friend takes time.
– Georgia O’Keeffe

The Slow Art Movement, which has its day on the yearly stage this weekend (April 12th) has evolved around the activities of contemplatively viewing and gently digesting works of art – mostly within a gallery context. It’s a worthy idea. Anything that encourages us to slow down and really see (art, or anything) is wonderful medicine for the manic mind, and an effective antidote to the ‘glance-categorise-move along’ habit that rushes us through our days.

The notion of ‘Slow Art’ arrived in my life with a different twist. It was ushered in by Robert Hughes:

What we need more of is slow art: art that holds time as a vase holds water: art that grows out of modes of perception and whose skill and doggedness makes you think and feel; art that isn’t merely sensational, that doesn’t get its message across in 10 seconds, that isn’t falsely iconic, that hooks onto something deep-running in our natures.

– Robert Hughes in The Guardian, June 2004

and brilliantly explored in Slow Art: Painting and Drawing as a Meditative Process by Australian artist Amanda Robins:

The physical act of making and our immersion in this activity is the initial doorway to the productive ordering of consciousness known as ‘flow’. It is through this essential aspect that we can lose the sense of ourselves as separate and unique beings and become one with the activity.

The flow experience constitutes a time outside of the ordinary sequence of daily events where clock time loses its meaning and the constant stream of internal dialogue is for the moment, stilled.

The immersion within the world of the ordinary object leads ironically to new ways of seeing ourselves. … The everyday becomes a way of making connections and creating metaphors which can speak, in the end, about the ineffable.

– Amanda Robins

Neither Hughes nor Robins were writing about the viewing of art. They were talking about its making. Their words were manifesto-like for me, directly motivating the creation of this website and blog.

For many makers, quietly involved in their studio practice, submerged in the mystery of creating, slow flow is the daily way. Their art springs from an inexplicable necessity, often contemplative or sacred in nature.

Gloria Petyarre: Atnangkere iv 1999

Slow motion opens the mind.
Smooth motion opens the heart.
Slow smooth motion
turns on
the inexplicable delight.
– Paul Reps

As Slow Art Day creeps closer, I’m wondering why there isn’t a version for art makers. Why don’t artisans get a ‘special’ day to sit quietly with their chosen mode of expression of visual language and allow their materials and processes free voice without pressure to produce for commissions or shows? Why isn’t there one little day in a year normally lived in a rush of consuming and commodifying set aside for the slow, deliberate, creating of something – anything – we can call our own authentic handwork?

It doesn’t need to qualify as “art” (better it doesn’t, because no one seems certain what that actually is). It just needs to be a simple, quiet, computer-free activity that arises out of stillness and is executed by our own hands with great attention and care. Preferably in silence and solitude – unless one is lucky enough to have the company of folk with similar intentions.

You might be a knitter, taking up needles and yarn for a day’s play without a pattern. Or a potter happy to pinch pots rather than use the wheel, just for a change. Or a photographer stealthily tracking a subject that bridges the gap between subject and object. Or a painter allowing herself to obey the dictates of her hues without design or direction… you get the gist.

P l a y d a y: a day when we enter our studio with beginner’s mind, as though we’re inventing painting or potting or weaving or carving for the very first time in human history, a day when comments from the inner critic will be entirely ignored. (It’s only one day out of 365 for goodness sake!)

As for yours truly, I’ll be breathing. And on each exhalation, I’ll be making a mark. This is how I give thanks for the blessing of the mystery of slow flow, and how I melt into the “inexplicable delight”. My studio is tiny and not properly unpacked or set up yet, but there’s a space for you if you’d like to join me. I’d love that. Let’s start a Slow Art movement of our own…

Image credits:

Georgia O’Keeffe – Georgia O’Keeffe Museum

Gloria Petyarre – Utopia Desert Art

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artisans’ gallery

tracing the ephemeral

Posted on June 2, 2012May 22, 2015 by miriam louisa simons

In making visual equivalents for the elusive experience of silent watching, I appropriate lines from the outside world in opposition to myself and in this way consider the complex relationship between the external landscape and an inner felt world.

Deborah Feiler: Bees over Lavender

Whilst the repetition of line is governed by underlying structures, such as the shadows cast by the arc of the sun, or the formation of cells, the painting is more to do with the experience of looking, rather than a literal representation. I think of my paintings as conflating the tangible with the ephemeral, driven by but resisting our instinctive searching for order within chaos.

The Japanese artist Fujimoto suggested: “the overlapping of lines leads us from the surface to the inner world of that thing” and in this way the intention of my work is to move from the found line in the landscape to a quiet and contemplative inner world.

– Deborah Feiler

Sourced from Deborah Feiler’s website