Artistic dabblings

From time to time I dabble in paint and other media to produce visual works. I present some of my favourite productions here as a record, but on no planet do I imagine myself to be a professional artist ... just a dabbler.

Images from meditation

This image series have been reproduced from images arising in meditation.  Those images are often dynamic so to reproduce them like this is not really an accurate representation. But fun to do nevertheless.

Meditation 1

Notes from my sketchbook:

Meditation is often fairly mundane. Sometimes though, something else happens. I was sitting and accessed a thought-free "space." Well, the cognitive mind was still there since memory remains after the experience, but at the same time I was sitting in open spaciousness, not really in my cognitive mind at all. All of this is said with qualification. Images are also cognitive, and I became aware, first of a lack of image as much as there was a lack of thought. Weirdly, the black void I was looking into began, from its centre, to open into a shaft of light, but in the heart of it, the blackness remained. I was able to keep sitting and dispassionately watching, without analysis. It slowly evolved into this. The red streak came last. I watched it for some time and then it faded. Afterwards I sketched it in the notebook I was using at the time and felt compelled to turn it into a painted canvas.

Acrylic and paint pen on canvas. January 2023

Meditation 2: God is not a noun and has no gender

The longing is sacred. God is not a noun and has no gender.
God is great quietitude
and God is magnificent vibrant energy
God is the universe
and yet is nothing. 
(Notes in my sketchbook)

Acrylic and paint pen on canvas board 2023

Meditation 3: Spiralling inwards on myself

Ah Maa, heart leaning into the beloved's promise,
eyes blinded by love's longing,
going in eternal circles,
spiralling inwards on my Self. (From my poem, "The heart's yearning" 2021)

Acrylic and paint pen on canvas board 2023

Save the Forests

Manna 1

Forests disappear
Greed has razed them to the ground
Why are we gasping?

Nature is the greatest artist. I love the patterns of tree bark and eucalyptus have some of the best of all. I photographed this tree on the banks of the Murrimbidgee in 2022.  For this painting I took a detail of the trunk as a reference image (see if you can identify the area.) Completed the day after I attended a Bob Brown Foundation rally and, inspired by the rally, I dedicate it for the benefit of all beings, especially beings of the woody kind that make magnificent carbon sinks, besides being so magnificent and beautiful. We must save the trees to save the planet, to save the habitat and to save biodiversity, and ultimately to save our own species. To dedicate something to trees is truly to dedicate it to the benefit of all beings.

This painting was gifted to my daughter.

 

Acrylic on canvas 2024