In any creative pursuit, it will eventually come up with the idea of an Artistic Voice. The unique expressiveness that makes you’re art yours, your take on the world. It’s a combination of materials and inspiration, methods that make you different from others. Find out what you want to say and how you want to […]
Buddhism: Jiriki-Tariki – Do you find enlightenment or does it find you?
Big questions occupy our religious musings: ‘what extent does hard work help us find salvation or enlightenment? Is that impossible, out of our hands, or do our efforts make a difference?’ In Japanese Zen, this debate is between Jiriki and Tariki, or Self-power and Other-power. Jiriki Vs Tariki Jiriki (自力, one’s own strength) is the […]
Zen Buddhism, going meta and postmodernism
What’s the connection between the Buddha and Deadpool? It might seem an unlikely comparison, a wisecracking anti-hero and a spiritual icon. The answer is linked to the most amusing thing I learned from my battle with anxiety and what I learned from Zen: its responses are seemingly counter-intuitive, even paradoxical. You can’t understand Buddhism by grasping for […]
Authenticity, Impostor Syndrome and Creative expression
γνῶθι σεαυτόν (Know thyself) Oracle a Delphi Feeling like a fake can be a real issue with creative expression and finding success. I get this feeling of fakeness when the art seems to come too quickly. I often think it should be more involved more complicated, more difficult. The attitude art has to be a […]
Finding your art style through elimination
Finding our artistic style is part of the process of becoming an artist. We struggle to define it even as we paint and draw our way towards it. Part of the journey is asking ourselves what art we like and dislike, what influences inspire us. We struggle to answer what our style is because it’s […]
Art on the wall: my love of physical media in art
My desire is to produce paintings to go on walls or a diptych on a table. It’s a tactile object, not digital. Digital imagery is throw away. There’s so much of it the impact is mostly lost among the deluge. It’s how I feel about books; a real hardcopy book is better than say blog […]