I have studied and practiced visual art since childhood. From 1967 until 1972 I attended Massachusetts College of Art in Boston, graduating with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in painting. During those years the political and academic worlds were in upheaval. The war in Vietnam was raging, college campuses were in turmoil, and all forms of education were being questioned. As young artists we heard statements such as, “Painting is dead,” or “Museums should be destroyed,” or “Art and life are separate.” This was provocative and disturbing to many of us. The uncertainty of it
all catalyzed me to develop more deeply as an artist, to discover what meaning or benefit this might have in our bewildering times.

In my studio classes at Naropa University, I sometimes describe artistic discipline as comprising two areas of development: the theoretical and the yogic. Theoretical understanding arises from investigating the historical, philosophical, and technical application of any area of study. The second area of development, the yogic, (derived from the Sanskrit word yoga, which means joining, union) is how a practitioner of a discipline becomes one with the activity at hand. I have been interested in developing this yogic understanding since my time in art school. It has led me to an intensive investigation of mind as it is understood in Buddhist philosophical systems of India and Tibet wherein the nature of mind and experience is examined minutely. This entails a methodical and sometimes arduous dismantling of preconceived ideas about reality. One begins to glimpse nonduality, the absence of separation between mind and phenomena, subject and object, inside and outside. This nondual joining or yoga must occur experientially, not theoretically. Those who have followed this inquiry to its fruition serve as brilliant examples of clarity and accuracy of being.

The union with phenomena described here offers practical guidance for artists, musicians, athletes, and mothers. It is the freedom from mental fixation essential to the initiations in many traditional societies. It is a timeless way of being in which verbal, visual and physical communication can elucidate, transcending mere skill or display.

Along with the investigation of mind and phenomena, I have been developing the ordinary skills of an artist as they have been understood in the west for the past five centuries: drawing, watercolor, portraits, painting landscape and still life. At the time I graduated from Massachusetts College of Art in 1972, I was experimenting in painting various forms of spontaneously invented imagery. This gave way to a period of total abstraction. During the late 1970s most of my creative energy went into studying piano and musical composition. This foray into music continues to influence how I work in visual art: recognizing motif, working with variations on a theme, and improvising within set boundaries. In 1979 I took a class in life drawing (during my art school years life drawing had been deemed “irrelevant”) that set me on a course of retracing the history of traditional forms of two-dimensional representation. In this endeavor, which is ongoing and current, I work directly from life--either with still life, models, or outdoor painting.

At first, this retraining in traditional western art proceeded parallel to the Buddhist investigation of mind. As time goes by it becomes less relevant to distinguish between the investigation of mind that occurs in meditation and the investigation of perception that occurs in painting. Both require suspending fixed notions; both hold the potential for going beyond habitual mind; both develop accuracy within one’s medium and, in a larger sense, within society.

Since 1993 I have been teaching painting, drawing and watercolor both privately and at Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado, where I am associate professor in both the visual arts and religious studies departments. Teaching requires repeated examination of my life as an artist. This has been edifying: a greater sense of purpose is emerging. In 1996 painter Joan Anderson and I co-founded Mountain Water, an artists’ retreat in rural southern Colorado where we continue to explore the interface of artistic disciplines and meditation. The artistic forms that evolve over centuries contain the wisdom of a culture. When these essential forms are learned and embodied, their infinite reconfiguration provides up-to-date richness, clarity and guidance for oneself and others on the most profound levels.