an uncommon depth of silence

Posted on by miriam louisa simons

When Tania Schmieder contacted me with a note of appreciation for ‘the awakened eye’ website there was no mention of her wishing to be included on the site.  But she had left a cybertrail; I followed it to her paintings, which in turn delivered me to an uncommon depth of silence.  She had come upon the site while seeking out the writing of Frederick Franck, and said that his books had been a great inspiration for her.  Readers here know that Franck was a profoundly important teacher for me; the site takes its name from his 1979 book, The Awakened Eye.  It was clear that Tania’s work would be a perfect fit for the artisans’ gallery.  An invitation was offered, et voila!

 

Tania Schmieder: Lemon, blue bottle and white freesias

Tania Schmieder, Lemon, blue bottle and white freesias, oil on aluminium, 20″ x 32″

 

Tania is quiet about her work.  Currently, she has no website, although you can see her work at a few online links included on her page.  There’s no big sell, no complicated concepts about what she’s saying, no long lists of exhibitions, publications and/or awards.  Her works are similarly quiet, yet their potency is undeniable.

Born in Kenya, Tania grew up in Brunei and has travelled widely. She graduated from Edinburgh Medical School in 2006, but after a year working as a junior doctor realised she would never thrive in the medical environment.

 

Tania Schmieder: Eggs in Okada cup

Tania Schmieder, Eggs in Okada cup, pencil on watercolour paper, 7″ x 6″

 

She is now thriving as a self-taught artist, working at her home in Freiburg, Germany.

It was in England that Tania experienced an interaction with a still-life painting that “brought her to her knees” and made her take up painting seriously.  Hearing this made me think of Albert Camus’ observation:

A man’s work is nothing but this slow trek to rediscover, through the detours of art, those two or three great and simple images in whose presence his heart first opened.

The blessedness Tania experienced when her heart opened in front of that “great and simple image” is her companion as she draws and paints, and the possibility that her work might invite the same blessing for someone else provides its meaning for her.

The ability to take an ordinary everyday vessel and re-enchant it to our eyes; to capture and suspend the transient beauty of a flower, plant or fruit in timelessness; to gently guide us towards a tranquil, simple suchness that cannot be wordified – this is Tania’s genius.

 

Tania Schmieder, Fern

Tania Schmieder: Fern, oil on linen, 16″ x 12″

 

The purpose of ‘looking’ is to survive, to cope, to manipulate …
this we are trained to do from our first day.

When, on the other hand, I SEE, suddenly I am all eyes,
I forget this ME, am liberated from it and dive into the reality that confronts me.

– Frederick Franck

 

The artist who SEES thus, and whose expression can also help others “dive into the reality” and experience its immanent immensity, is a blessing to us all.

Giorgio Morandi described himself as “essentially a painter of the kind of still life composition that communicates a sense of tranquillity and privacy, moods I have always valued above all else.”

In her quiet and modest way, Tania Schmieder exemplifies the same values.  Same species: rare, and increasingly endangered in the frantic overwhelm of an image-driven digital world.

Tania Schmieder at the artisans’ gallery

Frederick Franck:

at the artisans’ gallery

the 10 commandments (guidelines for the creative life)

the Face of faces

seeing/drawing as meditation

the way of nen

artisans

artisans’ gallery

 

This is the first time I’ve been brave enough to ask directly:
If your work has been freely featured on the site,
whether by invitation or submission,
or if, as a reader,
you’ve found the site’s content helpful,
WOULD YOU LIKE TO SUPPORT THIS PROJECT?
(A deep bow to those of you who didn’t need to be asked.)

 

 

sipping tea, sensing presence

Posted on by miriam louisa simons
Introducing the practice and paintings of Bev Byrnes.

 

As boundaries between subject and object dissolve, the phenomenon of presence becomes amplified.  Presence, in this context, is something ‘beyond’ what is seen; it imparts an unseen and yet ‘felt’ sense of illumination. It is this presence which ultimately guides and shapes the direction of my work. 
– Bev Byrnes

 

Bev Byrnes: Bowl with Mandarins, detail

 

It’s probably a given for artists whose practice concerns itself with presence that entry into their creative space will call for quiet, for silence and stillness. As poet Mary Oliver puts it,  Stillness. One of the doors / into the temple.  My own imperative is to establish stillness and silence, both externally and within: I sit down and shut up and empty and keep on emptying…

For Bev Byrnes it starts with a tea ritual.  She’s a serious tea drinker and a true connoisseur.  She writes:

Every morning begins the same.  The dawn quietly fills the studio with gentle light.  To my right, a brown clay water kettle set on a low flame to keep the water hot.  In front of me a small, low table, cut from a slab of rough wood; teacup and teapot at the ready.

 

Bev Byrnes - Studio Tea Ritual

 

The sound of water simmering.  The smell of wet tea leaves.  The stillness of morning.  The taste of the tea.

Drinking tea this way is an exercise in mindfulness.  It quiets inner chatter and brings energetic coherence to the body.  This daily ritual is an important part of the creative process that plays out each day in my studio.  As the focus of the tea session washes the mind clear, an inner silence grows.  From here the work proceeds.   […]

The way the creative process “plays out” might be to birth a highly realistic still-life painting in the tradition of northern European early Renaissance painting, or, perhaps it will initiate a conversation with handmade water-based paints and the processes of Japanese nihonga painting.  She says she loves each approach equally.  To me, there’s something quite remarkable about this bi-hemispheric capacity.  It’s the mark of an artisan fully at ease with her materials, free to wonder where they will lead as she follows them into the great (un)Knowing.

 

Bev Byrnes: Studio set-up for 'Three Bowls'

 

Usually the realist paintings are a still life of a few simple objects lit with the soft light of a north-facing window.  The first layers of paint are straightforward descriptions of form but as layers accumulate and observation becomes more subtle a felt sense of presence grows.   […]

Some paintings are more abstract in nature.  The beginning of these look like haphazard mark-making.  They get the flow going.  From this point on, it’s a matter of listening. The listening must be silent and clear, with no owner, and sometimes it would seem to the mind there is no good coming of it.   […]

 

Bev Byrnes: Landscape of (un)Knowing, detail

 

This post is just an introduction, an appetiser…  
Please view Bev’s page at the artisans’ gallery, where her thoughts are shared in full and you can see more of her stunning work.

 

Bev Byrnes: Red Onion and Winter Squash with Birch Sticks, oil on panel, 12”x24”
 

seeing – painting – being

artisans’ gallery

Images, from top:
Bowl with Mandarins, detail
Studio Tea Ritual
Work in progress – Studio set-up for ‘Three Bowls’
Landscape of (un)Knowing, detail
Red Onion and Winter Squash with Birch Sticks
All images provided by, and copyright Bev Byrnes.

on losing the plot and regaining the world of the holy fool

Posted on by miriam louisa simons

Michael Leunig is a much-loved Australian cartoonist, writer, painter, philosopher and poet whose newspaper work appears regularly in the Melbourne Age and the Sydney Morning Herald.  He describes his approach as regressive, humorous, messy, mystical, primal and vaudevillian – producing work which is open to many interpretations and has been widely adapted in education, music, theatre, psychotherapy and spiritual life.

His commentary on political, cultural and emotional life spans more than forty years and has often explored the idea of an innocent and sacred personal world.  The fragile ecosystem of human nature and its relationship to the wider natural world is a related and recurrent theme.

‘Leunig’ is a household word here in Australia.  Who else consistently reminds us of our collective and individual vulnerabitlties? Our defences, needs and neediness? Who else – like an innocent wide-eyed kid – points out the elephants in the room and the unclothed emperors?

In total disregard of the snobbery around “content” in contemporary art, Leunig sows his seeds of simple sanity in the intimate space where the artist and viewer meet. He speaks in language we can understand, and as we listen to him – immersed in a mix or humour, poignancy and delight – our own wee holy fool smiles and skips about.

To my great delight Michael has given ‘the awakened eye’ permission to share one of his pieces of verbal artistry, an essay titled Regressive Painting and the Holy Fool.  In this work he covers much territory relevant to the theme of this site and of importance to all who take their playful creativity seriously:  What is genuine creativity and what blocks it? Where has our authenticity gone? What is the relationship between the ego and the holy fool? How can we find our way back to the world of our holy fool? Why does it matter?

As an introduction to the illustrated essay – which has its own page here –  this post offers a few quotes. It’s a teaser – read the whole piece and be reminded of what you know so well.

It is a way of painting.
It is a way of living.
It is a way of transcending the banal inhibited self and finding the divine.
It is a struggling downward journey – this stumbling, daring and devout pilgrimage back to mature innocence and raw beauty; to the sublime joy and the natural intelligence and wisdom of the holy fool.

 

Michael Leunig - The Holy Fool

 
… there is surely a measure of the holy fool in all of us.  What adult has not been a delightful or shocking little holy fool in childhood: the primal young creature who reached out innocently for what was forbidden, or sincerely said out loud a simple embarrassing truth?  ‘The emperor has no clothes’ cries the wee holy fool.  And who did not draw and paint in beautiful peculiar ways, or cry and sing freely for a short early chapter of wide-eyed creative life before the ways of the world began to impinge and inhibit?  Who has not known a time of free flowing reverie and wonder in the rich solitude and sanctuary of early consciousness?  Whose outlook and imagination has not been indelibly adorned by the daydreams and visions of childhood?

~

The dire pursuit of creativity in affluent societies is to a considerable extent driven by egotistical art ambition, but underlying this drive may be an intuitive attempt to recover the capacity for wonder, spontaneity, playfulness, openness, mindfulness and access to raw beauty; the qualities that were so natural and easy in childhood; a search for connection to one’s lost little fool – who is indeed the archetypal personification of creativity’s wellspring.

~

The artist needs to know how to lose the plot
– how to not care and how to not know –
and how to actually enjoy that freedom
and understand what a blessed revitalizing state all of that mess can be.

 

Michael Leunig - The Holy Fool

 

The most joyous painting is not done for the art world, it is done for the inner world; it is a self delighting other-worldly thing – a getting lost in regression and solitude; a sub-literate, semi-delirious way to be with the spirited little fool in the depths of one’s being for a while – there to invent one’s art freely, and there to find enchantment, infinite surprise and the bright wondrous question ‘What is this?’

~ Michael Leunig

http://www.leunig.com.au

Michael Leunig Appreciation Page on Facebook

regressive painting and the holy fool

when we talk of art we need to talk of love

Posted on by miriam louisa simons

 

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.

 

Rashid Maxwell - Paramananda series

 

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

there is no end to seeing

Posted on by miriam louisa simons

There’s hardly a better window onto everyday life in Japan in the nineteenth century than the one Katsushika Hokusai opens in astonishing detail, and his studies in nature are pure nourishment for the soul.  This post is prompted by the current Hokusai exhibition at the NGV.  According to the media releases, 176 of Hokusai’s works will be shown, many for the first time in Australia.  (See gallery information below.)  The exhibition presents a rare opportunity to immerse ourselves once again in the genius of a brilliant Japanese artist and printmaker, who, on his deathbed at eighty-nine is reported to have exclaimed, “If I had another five years, I could have become a real painter.”

 

Katsushika Hokusai: Moon, Persimmon and Grasshopper 1807

 

Not having seen the exhibition, I can’t claim the works I’m posting here are included.  (You can find wonderful preview images on the NGV website and in this gallery at the Guardian.)  I’ve gone my own way instead, choosing a few favourite studies from nature that beautifully demonstrate Hokusai’s depth of “seeing” and the scope of his awakened eye.

 

Katsushika Hokusai: Frog On An Old Tile

 

Although I have posted Roger Keyes’ wonderful poem here before it seems timely to give it another airing.  What more heart-full, wise advice could we possibly need – artists and human beings all – as we learn to simply “let life live” through us?

 

Katsushika Hokusai: Surimono Totsuka, detail

 

Hokusai Says

Hokusai says Look carefully.
He says pay attention, notice.
He says keep looking, stay curious.
He says there is no end to seeing.

He says Look Forward to getting old.
He says keep changing,
you just get more who you really are.
He says get stuck, accept it, repeat yourself
as long as it’s interesting.

He says keep doing what you love.
He says keep praying.
He says every one of us is a child,

every one of us is ancient,
every one of us has a body.
He says every one of us is frightened.
He says every one of us has to find a way to live with fear.

He says everything is alive –
shells, buildings, people, fish, mountains, trees.
Wood is alive.
Water is alive.
Everything has its own life.
Everything lives inside us.
He says live with the world inside you.

He says it doesn’t matter if you draw, or write books.
It doesn’t matter if you saw wood, or catch fish.
It doesn’t matter if you sit at home
and stare at the ants on your verandah or the shadows of the trees
and grasses in your garden.

It matters that you care.
It matters that you feel.
It matters that you notice.
It matters that life lives through you.

Contentment is life living through you.
Joy is life living through you.
Satisfaction and strength
are life living through you.
Peace is life living through you.

He says don’t be afraid.
Don’t be afraid.
Look, feel, let life take you by the hand.
Let life live through you.

– Roger Keyes

 

Katsushika Hokusai: Turtles

 

Katsushika Hokusai (1760 – 1849) is regarded as one of the most influential and creative minds in the history of Japanese art.  His unique social observations, innovative approach to design and mastery of the brush made him famous in Edo-period Japan and globally recognised within a decade of his death.

The self-described ‘Old man mad about drawing’ was known by at least thirty names during his lifetime and was renowned for his unconventional behaviour.  Despite his fame, Hokusai never attained financial success and his years of greatest artistic production were spent in poverty.  He travelled and moved his resting place and studio regularly, finding inspiration for his unique style through close observations of nature and interactions with ordinary people.

 

Katsushika Hokusai: Bamboo and Morning Glory

 

In 1909 the NGV purchased five works from Hokusai’s iconic Thirty-six Views of Mt Fuji series, including his most celebrated image The great wave off Kanagawa (The great wave), 1830–34; two works from his A Tour to the Waterfalls in Various Provinces series; and four other major works.  These astute acquisitions established a legacy of Japanese art in Australia that has now extended for more than one hundred years.

Hokusai features 176 works from the Japan Ukiyo-e Museum, Matsumoto, and the NGV Collection that encompass the artist’s remarkable seventy-year career.  For the first time in Australia, seven of Hokusai’s major series, including Thirty-six Views of Mt Fuji, 1830–34; A Tour to the Waterfalls in Various Provinces, c. 1832; Remarkable Views of Bridges in Various Provinces, c. 1834; Eight Views of the Ryūkyū Islands; and One Hundred Ghost Stories, c. 1831, are on display, as well as selected works representing his great passion for the classical subjects of birds and flowers and historical poetry.  A selection of rare prints and paintings that show the stylistic and thematic changes of Hokusai’s formative years, as well as three sets of illustrated books that highlight the artist’s masterful and compositionally innovative book illustrations, including the complete set of fifteen volumes of Hokusai Manga, compete this comprehensive insight into the life and times of this major figure.

Source – National Gallery of Victoria
See the site’s Gallery of Themes for a feast of Hokusai’s work.
Showing until 15 October, 20017

 

Katsushika Hokusai: Okitsu

 

For biographical details: Katsushika Hokusai

 

Images sourced from the public domain.
1 – Moon, Persimmon and Grasshopper, 1807. Ukiyo-e.
2 – Frog On An Old Tile. Painting on paper.
3 – Surimono Totsuka (detail). Surimono.
4 – Turtles. Surimono.
5 – Bamboo and Morning Glory. Brush painting on paper.
6 – Okitsu. Ukiyo-e.

From the bookshelf:

Hokusai
Mountains and Water
Flowers and Birds
– Matthi Forrer