The great “painter of light”, Joseph Mallord William Turner, now has a page at the artisans’ gallery.
Turner, and Turner only, would follow and render on the canvas
that mystery of decided lines,
that distinct, sharp, visible, but unintelligible and inextricable richness
which, examined part by part, is to the eye nothing but confusion and defeat,
which, taken as a whole, is all unity, symmetry, and truth.
– John Ruskin
on the man he regarded as the greatest landscape painter of all time.
Turner travelled extensively in the search of the sublime and beautiful. The paintings on his page are a small selection which (admittedly to my very subjective taste) express these qualities, regardless of whether one knows their location or subject matter; paintings which, in Ruskin’s words, deliver to the soul “unity, symmetry and truth”.
Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775-1851) was just 15 years old when he exhibited his first picture at the Royal Academy. His talent in the application of paint to render land, sea, sky and atmosphere was unmatched in his time. Commonly known as “the painter of light”, we can thank Turner for taking painting to the edge of abstraction and playing there, unafraid. His priceless legacy to the generations of artists who followed gave them (us) permission to engage this fearless and playful expression of the sacred sublime.
When we trust our creativity we encounter a supreme kind of enjoyment – an amazement at the natural unfolding of life beyond our ordinary way of looking at things.
– Kongtrul Jigme Namgyel
Jigme Namgyel (b.1964) is the present Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche. He is also an abstract expressionist painter. Kongtrul Rinpoche views creativity as “something very large – the essence of everything.” His training in the arts began at an early age with the practice of calligraphy, music, ritual dance and other traditional Tibetan arts. After his introduction to Western culture, Rinpoche became increasingly interested in modern art, particularly abstract painting and the work of Picasso and Kandinsky. He began painting under the guidance of his teacher, Yahne Le Toumelin in the mid 1990’s.
This post introduces a new page on the site – a talk given by Jigme Namgyel as a companion to his 2008 exhibition Natural Vitality at Tibet House, New York. Gratitude for his kind permission to share his wisdom and inspiration here!
Enjoy these excerpts, and read the entire talk here.
Art, when it is free of such notions of beauty and ugliness, ‘shoulds’ and ‘shouldn’ts’ can be used to express this complete experience of mind. When art evolves from this understanding it provides the possibility for those who see it to also experience the natural and unfabricated nature of their own awareness.
Imagine a life without music, without sculpture, painting, poetry, theater or dance. The purpose of art is to reflect and enjoy the richness of the world – not just what we think is ‘good’ and ‘pleasing’ – but the entirety of human experience. The primordial instinct to express creativity has been part of the human appreciation of life since the cave men. Creativity expresses itself at the very beginning of life – it could be said that our first cry is our very first song. But we really engage our creativity when we begin to play. […]
When we speak of natural creativity and its expression we are not talking about something separate from our own mind and experience.
The energy put into the creation of art reflects our own richness and in turn communicates this richness to others. When we appreciate a beautiful piece of art it is not limited to the piece itself – we experience the process that the artist went through as well; it is a transference of consciousness. Whether we are an artist or a spectator we feel the creative energy. When it has been formalized into a piece, the artist’s energy has not become the piece itself – but the piece is blessed by the creativity of the artist.
We usually think of creativity as ‘belonging’ to the artist. But in a larger sense creative energy is innate and spontaneously present, not fabricated by hammer and nail. It is unborn, with no center or boundary, yet nothing exists outside of it. The mountains, oceans, the sun and moon, the seasons arise spontaneously from it. What has become ‘our life’ – everything we are and everything we have been since we stepped into this world – is spontaneously present. Our genetic make up – the egg and sperm of our parents – arose from and is encompassed by the creative energy of our basic nature. The great Buddhist practitioner Kunchyen Longchenpa said: “The universe is spontaneously present, who could have created it? It is the grand production of its creative energy.” And all appearance is blessed by it. […]
Just remember, this natural energy created the entire universe – a humbling thought that puts our own artistic creations in perspective!
My instruction from Yahne [Le Toumelin] reflects a discipline that integrates the view of meditation and art: She would say: “When you get attached to anything that emerges on the canvas, destroy it!” I would watch her create something beautiful and then paint over it or scrape off the paint. “Destroy, destroy, destroy.” This is not to say that beauty or attachment to beauty is a problem. Destroying them is not an aggressive act, an annihilation of self or a rejection of experience. It enhances creativity. It is a natural wearing away of attachment and becomes a part of the creative process itself – a way to engage bigger mind. The more I do this, the greater the satisfaction. I am not fixated on creating something ‘good’ or ‘pleasing.’ My interest or focus is on the process of creating and connecting to my natural creativity. The main discipline is to let go. […]
When I have exhausted my fixations through the process of destroying I let the painting be. At this point I have reached what I call the ‘mark of non-creating’ – a state of uncontrived creativity where the artist just steps out of his or her own way. When I find that I have arrived at that point I just drop any activity – stop – and leave the painting right there without trying to improve or manipulate it. I never judge my paintings – I always appreciate and spend time with them because I appreciate where they come from. […]
I feel in awe of the whole process – not in a narcissistic way – but of the expression of this primordial creativity.
When it comes to art, the process we engage in is reflected in its expression. If we trust in the basic nature – it is communicated. If we are insecure and self-conscious – it is communicated. Ultimately, because everything arises from the creative nature of primordial mind, there is nothing that is more profound, miraculous or ‘creative’ than anything else. […]
For a few months – more than I intended as it turned out – I had a trial relationship with Facebook. I set up a page associated with this site, for the sole purpose of nudging readers over to explore its contents. It didn’t take long for the page to gather almost 500 followers, meaning folk who liked the page itself, not just the posts.
Several things happened. I discovered the existence of two separate audiences for my blogs – those who use FB and those who don’t – and noticed how different these audiences are; I learned that putting up good material on FB (which I endeavoured to do on a daily basis) was no guarantee that anyone would click through to the website – in fact the average was about one per week; I noticed that it became somewhat stressful to ‘feed’ the page and monitor the activity; and further, I learned that FB was not actually showing the page to its followers in their feeds. Why? Because I wouldn’t give them $ to do so. I grew weary of the constant harping for payment to “optimise” my posts.
In short, I realised that the cyber-world of blogging is much more satisfying to me. While I will always value my FB friends and continue to use my personal timeline as a noticeboard for the things that are important to me, I am making the return to the deeper and more rewarding blogosphere.
Sean Scully‘s video is a good example of the kind of post that I’d have shared on the now-retired FB page. It’s an apt one for my post today, because he too realises that creativity and painting (and life) is all about relationship. But there’s so much more. Whether you appreciate his work or not, his observations are worth consideration. I love the way he speaks of his obsession with “repairing the world”, and how he wants his work to express “a kind of subjective universality” rather than “telling stories.” How knowledge + craft = freedom. These notions are in alignment with all that this site, and yours truly, values.
If you landed on this page via an email notification or social media link, it probably won’t be obvious that the site has had a complete overhaul – including a new theme. The ‘home’ page is now a portal that makes the enormous amount of material in the archives more readily accessible: theawakenedeye.com
Feedback is most welcome!
Australian painter Suzanne Moss is a welcome addition to our artisans’ gallery. The title of this post, painting light, touching space, is also the title of her beautiful book, which is available from her website. Please visit her page to read her insights about her practice and view her ethereal paintings.
Metta 2010
Inspired by Fra Angelico and the ancient mariners navigating their way across the oceans, I find my way when engaged in making. Creativity for me is the way to listen profoundly, and live from that. – Suzanne Moss
Suzanne Moss is an artist who works with light. She is a former Visual Arts Lecturer at the Australian National University School of Art, and has been researching creativity for over 20 years in theory and in practice.
Suzanne’s doctoral research on the painting of light began by asking impossible questions, such as: “What might love look like?” As a result of her questioning, she envisioned inspirational, luminous, natural phenomena.
Her compositions are informed by the symmetry, concentricity and meditative intent of mandalas, as well as that of artists such as Agnes Martin and Josef Albers.
Suzanne has developed a curriculum of courses and coaching which offers a unique blend of mentoring and introspection. She teaches a form of ‘meditative art’ which focuses on mindfulness. The simple visual art practices used in these courses facilitate the creation of beauty – something most people believe they are not capable of expressing. Find more information about these courses on her website.
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.
the awakened eye 