ZEN ART
LUISMA BERROS
When I ask myself what I can do to be useful to others through painting the feeling
takes me to the art as an ailment, as breath and as the return to the origin by the balance,
the harmony, the order and the connection with the cosmos and nature, reflecting our
inner universe.
In my youth, after a basic training period, I went deep into practicing the
expressionism, especially the neo-expressionism area, but also into the abstraction and
inot the landscaping, all of which lead me to the zen art where I am presently working
on, at the same time as I practise zen in the sangh of Plum Village, on the basis of the
venerable Thich Nhat Hanh and his lineage.
Nevertheless, the work coming out of my soul has always been somewhat zen,
looking for silence, peace, emptiness, catharsis, the transcendental, the autenticity, the
essence.…, in fact, Zen leads to the essence.
The ancient Chinese painting has evolved from a realism marked tradition
towards an increasingly spiritual conception. The word "spiritual" in this context does
not refer to any type of religious painting but a kind of painting, which tends to become
spirituality. This type of painting does not pursue just a beauty element; it tends to
become a micro-cosmos, which creates once more, just as the micro-cosmos does, an
open space where a real life is possible. Thus, reproducing a total micro-cosmos where
the Breath-Soul unifying action takes priority, where the emptiness itself, far from being
a synonym of vague or arbitrary, it is the internal place where the vital breath net is
established. It is there where one assists to a system, which acts by integrations of
successive contributions rather than by brek ups. And the Brushstroke, whose art is
taken to the supreme point of refinement by the artists, when incarnating the Single and
the Multiple to the extent that it is identified with the original Breath itself and with all
its metamorphosis, it does not contribute any less to this permanence of a significant
practice tirelessly pursued.
François Cheng
The penetrating experience of the no-mind will arrive in a natural way when you
keep internally empty and quiet while you are externally (?????) from your perceptions.
Then, the worries will not affect your thoughts and your spirit will remain
imperturbable in the middle of any disturbance.
Maestro Yuan Wu
Painting this way, unidentified from perceptions, form the essence of an intact
significance.
Once the spiritual contact has been established, the essential forms will be
carried out; the spirit of the universe will be perceived, too.
Won't the painting be then as true as nature itself?
Zong Bing