In my work “practice” I am exploring and creating Sacred Tantric Art across a variety of mediums. My current focus is on abstracting the subjects of classical thankas through meditation on their subjects—Tara, the female Buddha, the Dakinis, Hindu Goddesses such as Kali, and the sacred partnership of Tantra. Thanka is a form of spiritual art traditionally passed
down within the monastery setting. To create a thanka painting, the artist works in a defined grid. The subject’s positions,
facial features, mudras, as well as the landscape settings, are pre-determined by centuries of tradition. My work starts in
the grid and then vibrates the grid into movement. The entire process is part of my meditation practice.
To create a Nihonga painting, I begin by invoking Tara, asking her to reveal herself to me as I blend and mix each pigment, cook the pigment with hide glue, and begin to paint. As I do the visions literally come into being through my pigmented brush stokes—manifesting on wooden panels. Currently I am working on 64 panels equaling 48 square feet of an abstract story, which will be incorporated into my original monoprints and Nihonga studies of Tara & Tantra. The panels will become a
“visual pictogram” designed such that viewers will quickly scan the installation; find themselves each drawn to a particular image—one that speaks to their spirit. And then allow Her to whisper into their space.
My daily meditation is on Tara. Over the last 10 years I have welcomed her various incarnations. In my work, Tara is seated in the “hero/heroine posture”, her right leg extended, indicating that she is fully active in worldly or earth bound activities. Her left leg is folded in the “posture of meditation,” indicating that although active in the world, she remains in meditative equipoise. She appears to be both sitting in contemplation and dancing. This is my pose JJin life as I believe that through being fully present one can be both active and at peace. In this series, Tara’s auras are multicolor rings, she may hold many lotuses, and her companions may be represented as circles of color or abstract marks. In my watercolors, Tara is painted in soft colors with multiple arms offering her many gifts. In another, more traditional piece, Tara has a gold leaf halo, is surrounded by rainbow aura and floating in a clear blue sky. This artwork is a combination of watercolor, pencil, monoprint, and gold leaf. In “A Thousand Petal Red Lotus,” Red Tara is appears in her symbolic form. The Nihonga painting vibrates Tara’s energy— mesmerizing the viewer as the Lotus rises out of murkiness.
I have tried to capture the energy of Tara in bold strokes of color and at times celebrate and honor her with the addition of gold leaf and mixed media. The colorful dots represent the colors in a rainbow cloud signifying re-birth; the golden sunspots, which jump from one’s eyelashes represent the golden auras—bestowed upon us freely if we are open and accepting. Lastly, the midnight blue and black dots represent the idea of dark stars, signifying the void—the powerful silence nurtured through meditation.
Inspiration and background: Beginning in 2006 I took an extended travel in India for six weeks. Attended a ten-day Kalachakra teaching lead by the Dalai Lama. The Kalachakra is a special teaching concerning Tantric tradition and the honoring of the female energy. After the teaching I spent the next weeks exploring, sketching and absorbing the goddesses of India in the ancient temples and studied the technique of miniature painters. In 2007 I spent the summer in Kyoto and Tokyo studying temple compounds and their landscapes, Shinto shrines, antique indigo textiles and hand-painted kimonos, as well as Nihonga paintings—traditional and contemporary. The trip inspired me to explore and study the paintings and techniques of the Japanese painting tradition Nihonga, as it has been abstracted and spiritualized by Hiroshi Sengu and Makota Fujimura. The technique attracts me because it combines my love of “concocting” of textile natural dyestuffs from my background in designing and producing contemporary “by commission” carpets, such as 1000 Petal Lotus, and applies a similar alchemy to my fine art. The teachers that have guided me in these linages include: Pema Rizan, contemporary Thanka artist; Iona Kleinhaut, mixed-media monoprint artist; and Judith Kruger, abstract Nihonga artist.