Spiritual Art Blog - *Ed P

Contemplation

This piece tries to illustrate the effect of contemplation. I mentioned it a in this post before. This is a work in progress of the picture.

You’ll notice it’s in black and white, or grayscale. I’m trying this out as a method of producing the picture faster. I’m a subscriber to the magazine ImagineFX. It’s all about digital art, the artists, galleries, and workshops. If you’re into doing this kind of art I’d highly recommend it. Anyway, one of the workshops in issue 22 was by Bill Corbett entitled Portrait Speedpainting. In it he recommends starting in grayscale and adding colour at the end. The theory is, you don’t get distracted by working on the colour as you get the elements of the piece together. Check his site, go to Tutorials and click the image on the right and you'll see a video of the workshop, it's pretty cool to watch.

It might be working, I think I have nearly all the elements together after about 15 hours. I’m not sure how successful my colouring is going to be. We’ll see soon enough.

Manifesto
In the last post I mentioned the Manifesto opening. Well it didn’t happen, the judges were all away on the date and it now takes place next Friday but I don’t think I’ll be able to make the opening. It’s a pity as I’d like to have met Jim Fitzpartick who is opening the exhibition.

Where do you get your ideas?

October 11, 2007 |

During the week someone asked me, where do you get your ideas? Here’s an answer…

When I’m talking with people I think in a visual format. So if we are talking about a bus coming at 7.00pm which will bring us to the cinema. The images I will see will be a bus, a clock at 7.00 probably with a night sky, a road with street lights, a cinema building, cinema screen and probably a recall of a recent ad for a movie. I think most people would see the same if they are any way visual.

Now let’s say we are talking about a more spiritual subject like our inner make up. We have our body, our emotions, our memories, our mind, subconscious and possibly something even deeper our Soul. Now what are you thinking or seeing in your imagination or your mind’s eye? I will occasionally see a fairly concrete image of the whole concept. That’s the easy bit.

My professional career is a graphic designer and as such we are required to visualise a concept or idea that will communicate a message to the public for a client. So over the years I’ve developed the skills to capture what I see in my imagination and put it in a form people can see.

So at this stage I now have some of the skills to put philosophical or spiritual subjects into a visual format. These are my images but by you seeing them you may get a better understanding of what goes on within your self, in your inner worlds. Hopefully there is some insight or knowledge to be gained in whatever you see in the pictures.

The picture above Soul Overseeing is the image I saw when discussing “our body, our emotions, our memories, our mind, subconscious and possibly something even deeper our Soul”.

Does this answer the question or does it beg more questions? If you have more questions put them in the comments and I’ll try to answer them for you.

Rio Art Gallery

On Thursday evening I was at the opening of a new art gallery in Newbridge, Co Kildare, Ireland. It's run by Deirdre Groves who is an artist herself. The space is really a shop selling handbags and jewelry but there is an upstairs dedicated to displaying contemporary pictures. Deirdre has has some of the pictures around the shop. There was a good buzz there with a lot of the artists there and it was constantly busy with viewers. There ware a few photographers in too so there may be publicity in the local papers.

Next week I hope to be at the opening of Outside the Box exhibition at the Manifesto Gallery in Waterford. The legendary Jim Fitzpatrick will be opening it. Jim was a big artistic hero of mine when I was younger. I first noticed his work in Captain America's restaurant in Grafton Street in Dublin. You can see some of his art still on the walls there. This link will take you to the Captain America's web site with photos. It'll be interesting to see what he's doing now days.

The Manifesto gig is a competition entitled Outside the Box and it inspired me to create this pic with the same title.

View this photo

Ideas? same question different answer!

Where do I get my ideas? The short answer is, from my imagination. To help develop my imagination and very often the place where I see the images, is during my contemplation which I do each morning. Contemplation is different to meditation, from what I understand, because during meditation the object is to blank the mind and keep it clear. In contemplation you observe your thoughts and images as they pass across you attention. I’d spend about 30 minutes each morning in contemplation.

I usually start by chanting the word Hu (pronounced hue) on an outgoing breath for a few minutes, rest a few minutes a repeat the chant again. With my eyes closed I watch for light or glows to appear on my inner screen. At the same time I will listen for an inner sound. To hear the sound I will listen to any outer sounds like birds singing, traffic, etc and dismiss them from my attention. When all these sounds have been eliminated there will be a very soft and subtle sound to be heard. Some people hear the sound of bells, running water, a deep hum or in my case a high pitch note like an electronic sound.

So while observing the light and sound within, some images will solidify, or my imagination will take me on a journey. Often when I return I’m not able to mentalise where I’ve been or what I’ve seen and sometimes I can which is where a lot of my art comes from. Who needs drugs when you have a trip like that?