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Here are some of my thoughts on art and awakening condensed into simple adages:
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True art allows consciousness to explore the act of seeing.
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When art is a mirror it helps us see our madness. When it is a window into Being it helps us see who we truly are.
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The mind is unaware of beauty in the same way that the artists’ brush is unaware of paint.
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As an art teacher my role is like that of the midwife, to simple facilitate and witness the birth of creativity through another.
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Physical sight is a metaphor for spiritual awareness.
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True art invites the viewer to explore the play of form from a point of view that is not of form.
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The awakening artist enjoys nothing more than substantiating a sense of the Indefinable.
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There is a place for art as decoration but art in the deepest sense is about consciousness.
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Some artists paint objects, and some paint bundles of qualities. The awakening artist also blends like a lover into the observed.
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Being an artist is a temporary role but an awakened person never stops seeing from a place of awareness.
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I find the poetry of Rumi to be a rich source of visual imagery and ideas for possible paintings to paint, but the images his poetry evoke would need to be transposed into a contemporary visual language so their timeless messages would be more relevant to the modern viewer.
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Art is about stopping time, and then in that timeless space we observe. That is the only common thread that weaves through all art throughout history.
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If you cannot detach from your identity as an artist you will never know what it means to be a true artist. Morris Graves said it best: “My first interest is in Being—along the way I am a painter.”
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True art is never ‘interesting’ it’s much deeper than that.
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Artist Jim Dine said ‘Pretend ugliness in art is actual ugliness’. I believe this to be true. There are some artists who in protest of some abomination portray that abomination in their art. But all they are doing is repeating the abomination in the form of art. However by expressing the opposite of abomination (which would be ‘to hold sacred’) is what neutralizes abomination.
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Can true art be disturbing? Yes, to anyone who might find the dissolution of the self to be disturbing.
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Attempting to eliminate mind in the making of art by eliminating preconception in art is a preconception about art.
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In true art cleverness is lost but profundity is gained.
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It has been the goal of some artists to breakdown the barrier between art and life, but it’s really as simple as this: Imagine art and life are now one. Now imagine art and life are separate. Now they are one again. And now they are separate again. Making it so is as easy as seeing it from either point of view.
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True art can be a powerful visual koan.
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One way to express true art is to let it point toward the possibility of awakening.
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The awakening artist is a metaphor for the natural creativity of the awakening human being.
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There is only one truly significant art movement and it is formed by all artist throughout the centuries who have contributed their creativity, knowingly or unknowingly, to the awakening of humanity.
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The essence of Buddhism: No self, no problem. The essence of artistic creativity: No artist, no obstruction.
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The artist is an empty space through which consciousness manifests.
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Originality is what happens when the artist becomes nothing.
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Art that is intentionally ‘frameless’ blurring the line between art and not art, is addressing preconceptions of the boundaries between art and life. But in so doing another kind of frame inevitably and naturally appears.
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If only for a moment, art has the ability to stop the illusion of time, space and mental analysis.
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Art is not defined by any form, theory, or expression, it is defined by a context of observation.
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The form of art can be purchased but not it’s meaning.
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Imagine you are on the tip of an arrow traveling at the speed of light and everything you thought was critically important to you one seconds ago is now 186,000 miles behind you.
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© Copyright, Patrick Howe, 2009 No image or text on this website may be used or copied in any manner without the artist's permission. All rights reserved.

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