Samadhi Through Art

 


Zen Stones
Pen and watercolors

Samadhi: collectedness of the mind on a single object through (gradual) calming of mental activity. A nondualistic state of consciousness in which the consciousness of the experiencing "subject" becomes one with the experienced "object".

While I thoroughly enjoy doing artwork, sometimes I get so overwhelmed with trying to pick the next project to start, I get stressed. (Does this happen to other people, too?) Once I am over that bump, the actual practice of creating the art gives me a reason to get up in the morning.

I have two main project lists: one is for large, ongoing projects which I dip in and out of, and the other is for one-off hand lettering and illustration pieces. As I think of ideas, I add them to the lists.

Once a piece is finished and crossed off the list (so satisfying), I look forward to starting something new….. but then that sense of being overwhelmed takes over. Do I work on a section of one of the larger, ongoing projects? Do I pick a hand lettering idea? What about an illustration? Or I could do some sketching for future pieces I may want to develop. And, of course there are non-art task lists too - write a blog post? Organize my supplies? Update my portfolio? Post something on social media? Once I’ve decided on which task to do, then I have to decide on the details. Ok, an illustration. Which one? With or without any hand lettering? Should it be large or small in scale? Watercolor or black and white? Or colored pencil? 

Once I commit to something, I intend to follow it through to its end. If what I am working on isn’t going well, there is a conflict between wanting to stop so I can move onto something that might go better, and feeling the need to finish what I’ve started. Often, at a certain point in a piece, I’ll do something that, at first, seems to have ruined it. An imperfect line, or a color that isn’t quite what I’d thought it was, or a smudge of pen ink, or an impulsive addition. Initially, I want to crumple it up and move on. But, I have found that if I stay with it, the “error” ends up either improving the final piece, or gives me an idea to incorporate into it that I wouldn’t have thought of otherwise. This happens regularly enough that I usually have confidence that seeing it though is the way to go.

Because of the stress I feel from deciding what sort of piece to start, I appreciate all the more the flow I get into once I get going. When I am focused, and working on a piece, everything else falls away. The best way I can think of to describe it is Samadhi, through art. 

 






 




       


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