Thoughts on Process: Meditation

Beach Day, by Lisa Feather Knee, 2011

Every artist has pre-artmaking rituals. For some, these are merely physical acts that get one 'in the mood'. This could be putting on music, mixing paints or sketching out ideas. My ritual of starting a day of painting begins with meditation. I do my preliminary work on a painting with my eyes closed!

When I was a child, I was instinctively drawn to churches. We were not a religious family. What attracted me were the hushed tones, and that feeling of a sacred place where one could step out of the daily chaos. While studying Art History in college, it struck me that art and the sacred have long walked hand in hand. 

Once, while spending the summer on the Côte d'Azur, I wandered into the Matisse Museum in Nice. There was so much to love there. Among the items that struck me were his windows designed for a small church in Vence. Matisse was not a particularly religious man, but he was a cancer survivor. A nun who nursed him during his illness asked him to create the windows as a favor. Looking at his windows evoqued a spiritual mood for me. That was 15 years ago, but it may have been the seed of inspiration for my recent painting Beach Day.

Matisse's windows at la Chapelle du Vence

Even Picasso, the modernist who wanted escape from all that annoying meaningfulness in everything, said that 'art washes from the soul the dust of every day life'. (Although, to be fair, he lifted this quote from the musician Auerbach.) It was considered modern in his day to thumb one's nose at sentimentality and icon worship. This paved the way for Andy Warhol to iconify soup cans. It needed to be done, I suppose.

We have gone from art that was purely sacred, to art that is purely meaningless, and all that lies in between. We now find ourselves in the sea of postmodernist white noise. It's sort of like fashion. Bellbottoms or skinny jeans? The choice is yours, Honey. Just do what you feel!

I believe this leaves artists with a world of possibilities. We are not faced with a dogmatic choice of painting to accepted standards or rebelling against them. It's all been done. You can paint photorealistic fruit or pickle half a cow, and everyone will agree that it's "art". There is a long creative history to draw inspiration from. We can express spiritual ideas or ridicule them. It can also be purely about surface, a pretty decoration. It's all good, as they say in the sorta-English realm.

So what is there for a modern artist to do, other than try to find my own voice in there somewhere? Perhaps in creating art from a place of spiritual clarity I can not only reinforce that part of myself but also create a sense of communion in my art for those who seek it.