I watched a webinar recently from Dr. Juss Kaur about her mantra art. She talks about using art as a meditation, to quiet the mind and absorb into the oneness of the universe through the Waheguru mantar. She uses oil pastels and then writes the Waheguru mantar overtop of them in ink (special inks work on oil pastels). I posted about her book Mantra Art in the past.
I am always surprised at the diversity of art forms. I think there is something for everyone and for many people, there are multiple art forms from singing, drama, dance, and musical instruments, to physical art. Examples include poetry, weaving, embroidery, drawing, woodworking, metalworking, crafting, calligraphy, candle-making, soap-making, crochet, knitting, sand painting, painting with acrylic, oil, water, ink, drawing with pencil crayons, crayons, pens, paint pens, pencils, baking; jewelry making, origami, scrapbooking, sewing, movie-making, collages, clay, stone/ice sculptures, miniatures, puppets, fashion design, photography, rubber stamps, nail art, felting, card-making, resin, chalk, pressed flower art, pottery, gardening, digital art, glass art, foam art, and more. I’ve tried nearly all these art forms and recently decided to explore acrylic painting more and found out you can do string art, pouring, heavy acrylic medium (3D) or different mediums like gloss/modelling paste, palette knives, mantra art, loose paintings, abstract, sponges etc. on the canvas.
Art can be an incredibly healing modality, but also a hugely expressive one that puts feelings and thoughts into a form that is understandable by others. Something that might be impossible to describe in words can be captured for communication to others. I think the other learning is a lot of people have had bad experiences with self-judgement, or others judging them for their art, usually when they were young and they stopped expressing. Every single human being has creative energy. Our standards of this expression don’t have to be measured against the art of other people. I too, have written about my bad experiences in elementary school with art and going on to find the space to be able to really just love and enjoy the creation. Even sometimes knowing that it can be painted over again is helpful. It doesn’t matter really what other people think of your art forms, what matters is that it is a form of expression. I encourage you to try out new art forms. I’m going to share a real mixed bag here so that you get some ideas. Your inspiration might be personal events, or it might be events from our history, or social justice issues; it might be from nature, or metaphors in Gurbani, it might be anything! (also a heads up that the feedburner subscription service that notifies you of new posts will be ending).
No comments:
Post a Comment