Can Artists be Buddhists?

 Can Artists be Buddhists?

The obvious answer is yes, why not, but perhaps I will dig deeper and investigate, because it’s a question that keeps popping up in my mind. 

To this day I have spent close to forty years as a guard in a major art museum, which has given me many many hours to think, contemplate, and imagine, while encountering many many different kinds of Art created by artists from all kinds of cultures and backgrounds throughout history. I have also always been  predisposed to observing life and the world as it really is, since childhood. Then about Two or three years ago I began a more formal study of the teachings of the Buddha, using books, YouTube, and meditation. While doing so, I noticed that much of these teachings felt familiar, like Déjà vu.

So What’s Buddhism? It’s when you just observe, as a witness, the way things really are in the present moment. What’s the point of doing that you ask? Its to experience life more fully, and to be free from suffering. There is also a trade-off, because you’re not doing the alternative to observing which is inventing narratives about your desires, based on the past and the future. These narratives are perfectly normal and natural, but they are based on components of  thoughts and conditions, all of which are impermanent, like a shifting cloud. According to the Buddha these thoughts, these desires exist only in the conventional reality, not in pure consciousness, not in the here and now.

So what’s pure consciousness? It’s simply the un-modified capacity to experience and know something right now, in the present; To know that I am breathing, to know that I am applying paint to a canvas.

While patrolling the museum all those years, I saw  many different wall texts describing narratives about art and history for museum visitors to read. Early on I always felt a desire To have my own wall texts in a museum, describing my own art, and I wanted my art to be as impressive as the art in the museum. I felt that in order to get my art into the museum, or to market and sell my art, I needed those narrative texts to communicate and engage with the world at large. The problem was, I felt inadequate to the task of writing these texts for many years until recently. Back then I hadn’t yet realized that words describing my art would only be illusory thoughts, like passing clouds. There would be no true “me, myself” in the texts. Now I realize It was the true nature of reality that made it difficult to write the texts. I thought the texts needed to express something fixed and permanent. That was the issue, not me personally.  What a relief. 

So how does an artist engage with an audience without “Clinging” or “Grasping” at some notion of career success? The second noble truth stated by the Buddha himself, essentially means that clinging and grasping causes suffering. Nobody has refuted that for 2,500 plus years. Do artists even need to do any of that clinging, to contribute their art to the world as it actually and truly is? More importantly, isn’t career success also an illusion like a passing cloud anyway? 

I’ve seen a whole lot of Art on Instagram. Instagram is all about competing for attention and “likes”, and it easily invites reflection on the concept of “Ego”. It invites thoughts like “If I do such and such, people will give me “likes”, I’ll get more attention, my paintings will sell more. The answer to Instagram is obvious, Art doesn’t have to be a popularity contest. Instagram doesn’t matter, but it has its uses.

There are many paintings in my studio. That’s what does matter. I am not my paintings, my paintings are my paintings. They exist in the world at large for reflection. The same is true same for all existing paintings in the world.

So here is my plan going forward: I’m going to be fully present and awake right here, right now, with the world around me, especially when I’m applying paint to canvas, or drawing a picture, or holding my wife’s hand, or listening to the sound of my daughters laughter, or feeling the wind in my face, or being present with family and friends. I’m going to let the world at large do what it will. That’s my narrative.

yes, Artists can certainly be Buddhists. Like all people, they can benefit greatly, even in the actual execution of their art, from being fully awake in the present moment With the World as it truly is. 

May all beings be well, happy, and at peace.

JS

9/7/26

Peninsula

 

Imagine you’re sitting in your living room, in your house at the end of a peninsula, and there’s a nice cool ocean breeze entering through your window. On this particular peninsula, the wind would always do exactly that, because it always points into the wind. Things could get a bit rocky though if there’s a sudden updraft and the wind blows uphill..

Another miraculous alignment

 

This is painting that depicts a hanging mobile that is remotely carried by a distant cruise ship, heading out to sea. The yellow four wheeler cart happens to be in the right place at the right time so that each ruby red jewel lines up with the cups at each corner. It’s another one in my series of “Miraculous alignment” pieces. I suppose I’m quite interested in these ideas that have to do with capturing motion, as opposed to ordinary static objects. (“Miraculous alignment number (?)

Teardrop elevator

 

This painting is called “Teardrop elevator.” It depicts a  tall observatory with four ancient legs, standing on a low island in the middle of the sea. The only way to get up there, as you can see, is on an elevator shaped like a teardrop. It’s a rare, for me, vaguely figurative or animal like image. Something about how maybe it stopped walking millions of years ago, and turned to stone. 

Meeting of the minds number 2

 

This picture was “taken” as if it was a photo, at the exact moment when three boats reached across the sea, and they came together in almost perfect alignment, even though all three were bobbing about in the waves. Underneath the point where they met, there is a fourth arm which has reached across from the land, to support their meeting. 

Four mountains, four marbles

 

 

Once there were four large mountains peeking out from the sea. They were playing a game of marbles using four very large soup ladles, balanced on each mountain top. Inside each marble, on each soup ladle, there was a steel ball bearing. Suddenly, a very long fifth arm, which was balanced at its distant end by a tiny ball, and four magnets at the front end, swung into place, and was about to grab all four red marbles at the same time, when the picture was taken. 

Drone painting

 This painting depicts a miraculous almost union between the bottom half of a sculpture, which rides on three red wheels, and the upper half of the sculpture which is suspended from a drone with four propellers. At any moment, one half might zing away and there goes the almost Union. I’m interested in the idea of suggested or implied potential for movement. It’s way more interesting than something that just sits there, which I guess is ironic because that’s what paintings do, they are inanimate, literally motionless.