Art at the Service of Being

Before you read this article, today (November 17th, 2023! Yes, a long time after publishing this page!) I’d love to add a comic strip I’ve just found on Facebook, because it tells beautifully the REAL motivation behind a whole life dedicated to art! I hope it will make you smile… Then, if you like the idea of reading something more serious, just go on after this lovely comic strip…  

The author of this cute comic strip is Guy Kopsombut, who offers a worderful service: he creates comics on commission! Just send him your favourite animal and a topic, he’ll do the rest!  4amshower@gmail.com 

In 1988 I graduated in Painting at the Academy of Fine Arts of Perugia, Italy; the title of my dissertation was: The Doorless Threshold: from Jan Van Eyck to Lucio Fontana. My thesis advisors were my teachers of History of Art: Prof. Bruno Corà and Prof. Aldo Iori. Studying painting in an Italian Academy – in the country that is believed to be one of the cradles of Art in the world – is an experience I can only recommend to anybody who feels that Creativity might be his/her right path of life. It is soul-nurturing. The simple fact of meeting other people coming from all over the world, their head full of dreams and projects, in a lovely place right in the centre of Italy, is worth a try, I can tell you!

Nonetheless, during those four intense years of discovery, instants of pure joy and inspiration were sometimes followed by periods of doubt, hesitation, even solitude. None of the teachers I turned to were able to show me the way out, when the creative stream was seemingly disappearing in the underground of my being. This is something that happens to many people who choose creativity as the mainstay of their whole existence – but I would have learned and understood this many years later.

In one way or another, I sensed something fundamental was missing from the teachings I was receiving. Moreover, in the large classrooms of the Academy there was a lot of competition: everyone was striving to achieve who knows what, and why. The main feeling lingering around was dissatisfaction. Something was in gestation inside of me, still formless and impossible to express into clear thoughts, let alone words. This incubation state is somehow perceivable in the last page of my dissertation, which seems like suspended, unfinished. The author of the following chapters of my thesis actually was my own life, that is, what I was about to experience every single day after the years at the Academy. In the chapter I’m living now, many questions have finally found an answer, and all the pieces of the puzzle are coming together, in a wondrous way. Here is the final page of my naive, but passionate thesis:

The two Mezcala stone temple models are one in front of the other, unmovable and absolute; one seems to whisper: “shut down!”, while the other is the mouthpiece of Openness.

But are they really a pair of opposites? If we let our gaze gently slide from one to the other, it is as if our eye built an invisible bridge, and our soul starts sensing that there might be a secret passage between closure and openness.

Artists have gradually become aware of the existence of this passage; they have speeded up the time needed to finish a painting, they have thinned the painting surface more and more, until they broke through the last, tiny barrier with one single, dashing and irriversible gesture. “Pictures of nothing and very like” [1], paintings in which the idea of passage puts both the artist and the viewer, side by side, in front of the artwork, in the face of the world, uniting them in a same attitude of deep listening.

As a consequence, what seemed to be an irreconcilable dyad of opposites turns out to be a pair of distinct moments belonging to one single phenomenon: the creative act is suspended between them, in a vacillating and elusive space, the arena of paradox, where fullness and emptiness share the same, dazzling presence.

Kai/He – Open/Closed       Acrylic and charcoal on paper – by Panna

I find it really wonderful today that the last word that emerged from my still naive mind was PRESENCE, which by now I know to be the KEY of any authentic creative process. Now I can also understand why I sticked onto my pc’s screen this quote from the artist and non-duality teacher Rupert Spira:

I am like an open window; I make the viewing possible but am not in the view.

Discovering that I am a vast space inhabited by Light, Stillness and Presence has been for me the “side-effect” of Qigong and Meditation practice. I later realised this is the same space that is available during any authentic creative process. These two paths lead to the same inner glade opening onto a bright endless sky. This is the reason why I’m offering this blog as a vessel to convey some musings about Qigong and Creativity, especially about what I like to call Sourcing Art. This is the path I’ve been walking on every day for the last years, and which I’m happy to partake with anyone wishing to take a few steps with me. My purpose is to share, as I feel that a joyful and meaningful life is the birthright of any human being.

I will write more extensively about Qigong (just put this word on the Research Bar of this blog to see what is already there). Let’s just say for now that Qigong is an age-old practice that proved to be essential for my recovery after a serious accident. Here, I’d like to quote one sentence that has been most nourishing for me in the last few years – a sentence I wrote down during one of the countless encounters with my unforgettable friend and teacher Wang Ting Jün:

Qigong is the tool that enables us to use the Body to practice Perception, and Perception to know the Body. Perception is a bridge between the outer world and the inner world of Awareness. First, you know your Body, then, thanks to this knowledge, the Heart/Mind will be transformed.

The term Awareness – Consapevolezza in Italian – is often used by many spiritual teachers; it refers to something (that is NOT a thing) mysterious and intangible, and maybe there is a better word to express that which is above all an experience. It is an experiential deep knowing that involves the whole Being and always entails the presence of these ineludible ingredients: Love, Beauty and Wisdom. We could also call them Expansion/Openness, Harmony/Grace and Meaning/Transparency, respectively (2). Feel free to use the words that best resonate with you!

The experience of this open, luminous and harmonious space inside of us is OTHER than everyday existence, which moves only from the already known – the past – and unfolds under the often tyrannical guidance of our ordinary chattering mind. Karl Gustav Jung used to call it numinous experience (3). Using a simple analogy, if everyday life were a thriving city, the numinous experience could be its most beautiful garden or park, rich in colours and scents, offering its peace to the sky, like an altar, and deeply rooted into the earth, like a tree. A magical garden, where even the “little me” can also find rest, as it is much vaster… A sort of oasis out of time and space, where the exhausted inhabitants of the city could bathe in silence and recover the natural rythm of life every time they would wish to.

Many paths lead to this magical garden inside of us all. As I mentioned before, apart from Qigong and Meditation, you can also enter it through the creative process. What we call Art is only the tip of the iceberg, or perhaps the panache of a volcano, as creativity has a magmatic and dynamic nature!

In these pages and in everyday life, what I love experimenting and enjoying is the Art imbued with Silence, or Stillness – that is, the Art that is created FROM this inner luminous and intangile space. I think that only the artworks that emerge from this space can REVEAL to its viewers – and of course to its creators – the numinous essence of human soul. I don’t want to come out against any kind of art, as I do care about freedom of expression. But I confess I’m tired of art used as provocation, where “originality”, sought for at any cost, does not blossom from the Origin, from the Source, but merely from the desire to shock or to flatter self-absorbed intellects… I have enough of the artworks that hightlight the atrocities we humans are unfortunately so prone to commit. I rather agree with the English composer John Tavener, who says: “there are plenty of artists who can show the way to hell“… I prefer the art that leads us to Heaven! Of course, this is only my opinion. And I honour all the artists whose work is dedicated to social and humanitarian activism.     

True art comes from transparency, not from feelings of isolation, separation or despair.

–  Rupert Spira  [4]

Moreover, I don’t focus on the result, i.e. the final artwork, but rather on Awareness, Discovery and Imagination. These are the sparks that light up in our synapses when we are touched by wonder and meaning – the inevitable by-products of any authentic artwork and creative process. The ultimate container of every human experience is Consciousness. I’m really interested in the subtle threshold of Presence, the “doorless door” we cross when we are immersed in a creative process or in meditation. My greatest wish is that every single human being may discover his own innate creativity, as it is one of the paths leading directly to a full, joyous and ever-new life.  Living a mindful life brings us precious gifts: creating makes us more mindful, and mindfulness makes us more creative. A wonderful rainbow-snake biting its own comet-tail! Furthermore, both meditation and the creative process are experiences, not merely mind concepts or intellectual inquiries. They are experiences deeply rooted in the body, leading us to Being.

I love calling the Art that emerges from the Source and reveals its numinous essence “Sourcing Art“. This word first spontaneously appeared in my mind during a conversation with my friend and Qigong teacher Wang Ting Jün. The theory behind the particular Qigong form I learned from him, called Xing Shen Zhuang, mentions the Hun Yüan Qi (混元氣) or “primordial and undifferenciated life breath”, which is both the origin (Yüan) and the invisible texture of all that exists. A sort of Source prior to any manifestation, any concept, any representation or classification. In the old Chinese pictograms, Yüan was written like this : a man under the line of the sky, meaning “that which is above or before a man”! When we tap into this Source, the body and the mind/heart swiftly dance together, both in Qigong and in the creative process. It is an experience of pure joy and freedom. The mind is empty and bright like a cloudless sky. It IS a form of deep meditation.

When breath dwindles and mind dissolves, non-dual, homogeneous Bliss is found; this is meditation.   (2.15 Saubhagya Lakshmi Upanishad)

In conclusion, I really wish that you – you who are reading this little post and everyone else! – may journey your life with wonder and bliss…