 Painting
the World cont.
Did you lean towards the philosophy of Buddhism
while you were in South Asia, or has it always been more of a painter's
approach?
I'll never forget a moment when our lama friend Tsampa was taking
my friend and me through some of the old monasteries in the west
of Nepal. At one point he saw one of the monks there who was still
training. The monk became very intrigued that two Western women
were with this high lama, and that the lama was explaining all the
images on the walls to us. The monk had a little English and so
did the lama, and he came over. Tsampa was trying to explain a Tibetan
Buddhist idea about what happens to you in the in-between stage
once you die-the Bardo-and how you're not meant to be afraid of
the fierce images that you see. So part of painting, or meditating
on these images is to prepare yourself to see them and to know that
they are guides, rather than monsters.There is always this gaze
in Tibetan animals and deities that is very fierce, but its purpose
is to wake you, not frighten you.
Well, the monk said to Tsampa at one point-he was
surprised that I could know the story Tsampa was trying to tell
and even help him with finding the right words in English-"Oh,
is she Buddhist?" And Tsampa said, "Yes, she's Buddhist."
And that's as close as I've come to the evidence. In that context,
I am a Buddhist. I do not practice in a morning time separate from
my life. But to the extent that this iconography means a certain
way of understanding the connection between things, I am a Buddhist.
I was reading Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche's book Dharma
Art. Trungpa says, for instance, that "Art refers to all the
activities of our life….It is not an occupation; it is our
whole being." That seems to sum up my feelings about your relationship
with your art.
I've always loved the idea that art can make the
world more beautiful, and it's worth it to do that. And you don't
know to whom you contribute, but you contribute, assuming that there
will be people whose paths intersect at some point, who will take
benefit from what you do. That's a kind of faith, a way of living.
Would you say that this is what drives you to make
paintings? To bring some special kind of beauty into the world?
I know that I could have painted still life, bowls of fruit and
the like, but it's not that kind of beauty that I'm driven to paint.
It's something about ideas. It's about teaching what it is that
is the seat, or the reason, for compassion.
When Trungpa talks about "seed syllables that
contain the essence of the power and magic of the teachings.",
he's making a distinction between symbols that have certain fixed
meanings and symbols that somehow embody the essence and magic of
the tradition. Is that true of your work?
When there is an icon in South Asian art, it is
a seed syllable, it is not a symbol. It is not a thing that is meant
to be decoded mathematically or algebraically. And it will not fit
into the next equation and perform similarly. In my painting 'Khatwanga
Tank', for example, the khatwanga is a tantric staff carried by
practitioners, or imagined by them, that always contains at least
one skull. It's a kind of shishkebob of stages of consciousness-so
you can see in this painting a stacked composition with a skull
on the top. A khatwanga alludes to the different degrees of clarity
that you will pass through.
I've also presented two ornamented skulls facing
each other in 'The Future and the Present'. They are ritual objects
in which priests would place powder, and from this open-lidded skull,
a priest might bless you on your third eye, the spot which sees
through time and space and does not miss what is beautiful. If you
read this in our Western way from left to right, then it's really
the present looking into the future, and what we are really seeing
is the future in the eyes of the present. I like this optical illusion
that the future and the present are part of one design, almost like
the wings of a butterfly, and that they depend on one another.
Then, in 'Dakini Tea' (I wanted to make a painting
about saturation-the idea that your moments are saturated by a daily
texture rich with what is sacred. Not even a cup of tea, not anything
that you take into yourself, is without extreme significance. And
so there is an old, cheap, aluminum tea kettle at the top, beginning
the action of the painting, and pouring into this sumptuous cup
something that is not just water, not just tea, because it floats
the eye of the Buddha. Harmony has to be related to some sense of
lusciousness or richness.
I remember a time walking down a single street in India, and thinking,
wow, this man is working as if in the Bronze Age; ah, this is pre-history;
here's a cyber-café; here's the eighteenth century; here's
colonial England. There were all these simultaneous moments in history,
not to mention races and religions, tolerating each other very well,
without judgment, without condescension, and with some understanding
of each other's talents and traditions. Those layers, co-existing
in one place, have always seemed to me like healthy bio-diversity,
and are represented in my paintings in the mélange of imagery.
Do you think of your paintings as narrative?
I do, but I trouble over the word 'narrative'.
When you look at Hieronymous Bosch's paintings, they take place
in a space, and you can travel through them, but it's not strictly
narrative. It's more like fireworks exploding in many places simultaneously
rather than a road that leads. So it's not linear narrative. But
because my paintings are not just replicating Tibetan images-they're
bringing them into contact with the West-there is a story there.
You know, you're fortunate when you can do some
kind of suturing, or some kind of congregating. Or be a catalyst
for something else that begins to happen. To that extent when you
matter, it's so glorious, because you were there and it was good
that you were.
Suzi Gablik is author of Living
the Magical Life (Phanes Press).
go
back
|
