I have always wanted to be a human being! Seemed a worthwhile endeavour because you can then be animal, plant, mountain, tree whatever comes to you- A bit of everything in you. I have tried for twenty five years now. No, I don’t feel completely human yet; there are still vestiges of a tail that keeps popping out of my trousers. The process of being human is what I call art. The person who tries is called the artist.
Would like to share my experiences as artist and as human.
Magic, gut feel, coincidences, all three are linked.
Still, and you’re alive, shift and you’re dead
A sigh is a tilt, less than perfect, less than love. When the benchmark is love, even a sigh matters.
Radha is a craving and Krishna the sweet fed to children; Radha is the parched land, Krishna the water that fulfills; Radha and Krishna can never sit on the same swing together; If Krishna comes Radha dies, Krishna comes only when Radha dies.
How do you become human? By erasure
In other words it means ‘erasure’ has been my game and my goal. Erasure of the tags that followed you and you collected as you journeyed. Identities of gender, possessions, desires, understanding, knowledge, life, names (artist) – all empty tin cans tied to you and rattling away behind you. You erased some emotions, replaced them with new ones, and called it by different names. Your art helps erase and sometimes unfortunately adds to the baggage without you suspecting it. Sometimes there is the baggage of concepts, at times of even finesse, presentation and execution; and maybe these can never be erased, being deeply ingrained.
Right now the medium I am using is talking, sharing, and as I talk there is an understanding and an erasure of my mind space, a portion of my being, that is happening simultaneously. Or it should happen.
Creativity and the process
The process is of following an idea, stumbling, falling from a height, discovering, leaping, rediscovering, peeling erasing and the feeling of glee, love, joy- we call it by various names. In one word it is also called creativity- it is an action word.
I find that process fulfilling my needs of losing my self. It is a living process like life itself. So this is what you will mostly see in my paintings. I sometimes sacrifice composition, concepts, sometimes colors, line, sometimes communication- whatever it takes to be myself, see myself.
Whenever one has understood or realized something, it is not always accompanied by a need to paint it.
‘Our potential is to discover ourselves as this quantum creativity not as the conditions that are the side effects. We can live in the approximation of concepts (mechanical) or step into the flow of creation’-
Steven Harrison
