Art, Peace & Painters Pilgrimage

Hello Friends from around the world,

Welcome to Nimbo Fork, where the Tumut River meets Nimbo Creek. A magical place, I took this photo last Monday, just down the hill from the cottages booked for our Painters’ Pilgrimage Retreat. Half an hour from where I live, my easel is right there where country curves and creates a place made gentle by the shade and shhhh-sound of Casuarinas.

Country of the Waradajhi people, Aboriginal women would nurse and comfort their babies under these trees. Their soft needles carpeting the ground, Casuarinas are my favourite tree for their gentle energy.

More gentleness is what we need right now. That doesn’t mean being weak or a push-over. No. I mean being gentle and true to oneself and one’s convictions; gentle and steadfast, gentle and persistent. Gentleness is a quality of soul, spirit or the aspect of our nature that simply is. Effortless. The opposite – rough – is forceful and destructive. Given our world, gentleness is radical.

And that’s what art and soulful living is about.

Aware of world events, and the dilemma of making art in times such as these, our recent Art & Peace Webinar was made extraordinary by NZ artist Claire Beynon. Known for her ability to illuminate through her poetry and visual art forms, I’m very grateful to Claire for sharing her art and thoughts with us.

Does making art feel too luxurious in these troubled timesDoes it feel wrong to experience creative expression when others are suffering?

I’d love to hear your thoughts. My thoughts? My knowing rather, is that making art, looking at art, being with art is more important now than ever.

Nick Cave articulates this position poignantly. Here’s a part of his letter to artists who worry they’re not doing enough:

If we are to call ourselves artists then we must avoid the myriad excuses that present themselves and do our job. Yes, the world is sick, and yes it can be cruel, but it would be a whole lot sicker and a whole lot crueler if it were not for painters and filmmakers and songwriters – the beauty-makers – wading through the blood and muck of things, whilst reaching skyward to draw down the very heavens themselves.

NICK CAVE except from a letter in the Red Hand Files

So… when you create, did you know you’re reaching skyward and drawing down divine energy? Not what we’re conditioned to believe, right? Liz Gilbert called it Big Magic, and if you’re human you have access to it.

Painters’ Pilgrimage intends to nurture true experience of creating your way, from guiding practical steps to the visionary. A little more on this at the end of this newsletter.

The Art & Peace Webinar

I promised we’d help webinar participants gain a new understanding of the power of art and how it contributes to peace. The vibe was good and the feedback affirming.

Our heartache especially for the suffering people of the Middle East led to having this webinar. I’m sure, like me you’re deeply troubled too. I notice my thinking, like wheels spinning, going nowhere. What can I do?!

The anxiety that backgrounds our lives is intensified by the news. And, we cannot be helpful while freaking out. Claire reminded me of words from Nigerian-born philosopher Bayo Akomolafe: “The times are urgent. Let us slow down.”

Yes. Our best thinking requires slowing down. Art does that – being present to one’s purpose, intending, contemplative making, listening, attending to process, allowing, gently beholding and releasing into the world, sharing, rippling out….

I’ve marvelled at the power of art for more than four decades. For the first half of my life, I did not realise that intrigue pointed to my reason for being.

The dismissal of the arts – or as has been the case, my art during those early, tentative years, and perhaps yours too – as generally useless and even irresponsible, is because of the prevailing zeitgeist of urgency has many of us in fright/fight/flight mode most of the time. The stressed mind thinks fast, depends on logic and wants comfortable answers – safe and pronto!

The imaginative mind is curious, entertains mystery and expands into unbound territories of what might be possible. Fast-thinking minds got us into the mess we’re in, but imagination will save us. Einstein said this in a number of ways, one being ‘Imagination is more important than intelligence.’

Why is that? Here’s one response: The use of pure thought can be completely without empathy; without love for humanity and the planet, which are one.

Common thinking might ask: What good can art do?

If art is useless and powerless, why is it then that artists’ lives are threatened? Why is there a need for Artist Protection Programs? Just ask Salman Rushdie. Ask my friend Kabir, and many others. Art touches and moves people to think differently.

Art is most powerful in its’ capacity to inspire and from that inspiration, galvanise a person to take an imperative course of action.

The fire in them ignites a fire in others…and that, to an authoritarian, is dangerous.

Art tells the truth. And because of the way visual language bypasses the need to read words, art can communicate in an instant, and in ways that are highly memorable.

A person who loves to paint – a painter – willing to find their unique way, seeks to  understand the power of visual language and how they might use it to convey; to share; to bring a message. You are free to do this; you get to make choices.

Choosing means you’re in the driver’s seat of your life. You’re not doing what someone else has done or allowed someone to think for you. That’s powerful.

Through sharing your work with others, whether it be a friend, community or unknown audience, you can open people’s eyes to lightness, beauty, previously unthought thoughts, and not least, the humanitarian goodness of making. Making with your hands … You are better than the machine because you have hands. Have you ever thought about how astonishing your hands are?

And when in creative flow, you’re resonating at the high frequency of peace. You are peace in action. Our state of being is measurable – see the work of David Hawkins (Power vs Force) and peace is right up there, just beneath enlightenment!

Where we go and what we do as we resonate in that state, has an effect on everyone we meet and everything we do. So, the more creative we are, the more peaceful we are and the more difference we can make at a grass-roots level.

That’s where change begins.

Peace begins within one person.

Dictators know this – the power of visual language to communicate more deeply and instantly than words – and consequently use and abuse artists.

Art is so powerful, Hitler labelled artists of the avant garde as degenerates, burned many modern masterpieces in huge bonfires and many artists died in the camps or fled the country. The artist-teachers who went to the US changed the course of twentieth century art. And that’s another extraordinary story!

Soon afterWW2, Hannah Arendt was talking about acting with mindfulness and purpose when she said ‘Love the world. Think what you do.’

Susan Sontag wrote about the normalisation of the torture that happened at Guantanamo Bay Detention Camp. Her main message? Without normal free creative expression, there is ‘… a descent into barbarism.’ Living her truth, Sontag took Godot to Sarajevo.

During the Sarajevo siege in 1993, Haris Pašović helped Sontag stage a production of Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot (1953) in his hometown. Directed by Sontag, In her essay The Solace of Art, Jennifer Higgie tells us the cast members included Muslims, Croats and Serbians, while the costume and set designer was Jewish. In interview, Pašović made it clear that such gestures were important to counter the barbarism of the war.

Did you know the art galleries of New York were full the day after 9/11?

Australian writer Drusilla Modjeska pondered Kimmelman’s report about this in the NY Times. Essentially, she suggests that when our world view is shattered, we’re drawn to experience the  solace of human connection, sense of belonging and meaning that art can give.

Visionary Judge Antonio Cassese found solace among Vermeer’s paintings. Essayist Lawrence Wechsler went to the Hague to sit in on the hearings of the Yugoslavian war crimes. Horrified, he asked presiding Judge Cassese how he kept himself from going mad. Cassese replied that he went to be with the Vermeers at the Mauritshuis whenever he could.

Wechsler noted that Vermeer painted his contemplative scenes of women in interiors at a time when all of Europe was at war. ‘Vermeer was not a painter in the epic tradition’ he wrote, ‘on the contrary, his life’s work can be seen, within its historical moment, as a heroic, extended attempt to steer his (and his viewers’) way clear of such a depersonalizing approach to experiencing one’s fellow human beings.’

Vermeer’s paintings continue to emanate gentleness, peace and light hundreds of years after the master painter lived. Powerful.

Now you might be saying I can’t paint like Vermeer! Vermeer painted like Vermeer, and you and I create as we create. Unique. The fulfilment from going your way is only to be gained by going your way. Taking risks. Exploring. Feeling your way. Following what lights you up offers a sense of purpose, and the opportunity to ‘come home’ and feel true, centred, aligned and fulfilled (whatever are your words) more and more. It has to be an inner journey first. Not selfish. Personal.

We cannot know the impact, only do what we must and know there is an effect – perhaps even a ‘butterfly effect;’ where a tiny change in one place causes a huge effect elsewhere. What if?

Beyond terror, there is a still place; a place of knowing.

Expected not to have much time left, I asked ‘What would I really love?’ The memory of Iona came to me. Years prior I’d wanted to go on a pilgrimage there and had not done so for a number of reasons. Now it seemed my last chapter had arrived, and excuses melted away. I so wanted to answer the question Mary Oliver asks so beautifully –

‘Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?’

Ever since, I’ve been answering the question, learning, healing, painting, teaching, mentoring and dreaming up this special retreat/pilgrimage and other programs.

And going to amazing places…

Iona was a healing pilgrimage, and like any experience that changes one irrevocably, not much can be said. Rather, it’s how one lives on the other side of it! Other extraordinary transformational journeys followed, each remedial in their way.

Creating the Painter’s Pilgrimage Retreat feels like a container of fruits harvested from those experiences, along with new teachings on colour, composition and meaning.

RETREAT PAGE – updated – IS HERE

Ask your questions directly in a one-to-one conversation with me: BOOK HERE Early-bird offer ends November 14.

With peace and blessings for your way,

Suzanne

PS. Thank you for reading to the end! Here’s a GIFT from my latest series of e-books