Art Making, a Spiritual Practice?

Every now and then I invite people to my studio for a visit, I make them coffee or tea and serve muffins and cheese or, sometimes, cookies.  We talk about our lives and art, philosophies (in the broad sense) and this and that.

This week Lam Wong, whom I met at Vancouver's Eastside Culture Crawl this year, visited me. You can see his wonderful paintings here. Art making is a spiritual practice for him. He has good things to say about what that means to him on his website.  I see art making this way too.  I think my ideas of spirituality are rougher and looser than his but we agree on core principles.

Here is a photo of us having a good time.  I have a few seeds growing out of the top of my head. Lam is wearing a great sweater.

Today I am back here in my studio looking at the two paintings I am working on now and taking the time to move back into that spiritual relationship with them where I know, on a completely non-verbal unexplainable plane, what to do and why I want to do it .  When I am there it is good.

Is this how you see art making, if not a spiritual practice, how would you describe your art practice?

New Paintings in the Works

This is one of my recent larger paintings (as opposed to the 6 x 4" and 5 x 7" pieces painted outdoors).  When I worked on it I was calm and focused and enjoyed every minute of the making. I've been seeing dried flowers and plants all over the place recently and, as spring is sproiging around here, I had a sense of all the potential in these small bundles of seeming lifelessness.  I'm working on the third in the series right now.  It took me a while to post this to my Facebook painting album because it is a bit of a leap from earlier work and I wanted to sit with it and keep it to myself for a while.  I'm feeling the same about the next pieces after this one.  I am very pleased with all the good response it got from Facebook friends when I was finally ready to share it. This piece will be in the U8 Event. 

U8 Exhibition Coming Up

Here is the invitation for the U8 show I will participating in in April.  April 5th to 15th.  I am excited to have 5 paintings showing in this exhibition.  If you live near Kelowna or are traveling in that area, pop in and have a look!