Orígenes del Arte

I love to explain the origin of art with the myth Plimius the Elder in his Natural History XXXV treatise, where a story is told that art was necessarily born of love, it is said that there was a young couple who loved each other deeply, the Greeks lo place in Corinth. In the loving bed the young couple meet for the last time, possibly it is thought that the young man has to go to war, and the girl with her heart to the surface, grabs a bit of charcoal from the fireplace and draws lines on it. the wall the profile that is drawn in the light of a candle located in the center of the room, projecting on the wall the beautiful face of her loved one who has fallen asleep.

After his sad departure the young woman does not know if she will see him again, and every day the girl spends more time contemplating the image drawn on the wall, as time passes, her father then applied clay on the drawing, which he gave relief, and made this clay hardened by fire with other pieces of pottery. It is said that this first relief was preserved in Corinth, in the Temple of the Nymphs …

The possible function of the representation based on the shadow is that of an image to remember, that is, to make the absent present. In this case, the similarity (similitudo) of the shadow plays an essential role. A second possible function is derived from the fact that the image / shadow is an image of the person with whom it has not only a relationship of similarity but also of contact. The true shadow, always changing, will accompany the loved one on his journey, the image of the shadow drawn on the wall is a relic that opposes the movement of the journey, thus acquiring an expiatory and propitiatory value. The real shadow leaves with the traveler, while the outline of this shadow, fixed on the wall, eternalizes a presence in the form of an image, consolidates a snapshot.

escultura de buddha para ceramica

As a western-trained sculptor I have the feeling of the love of representation in the pursuit of beauty, and this story perfectly tells the intention of art for my feeling, but as my teacher Andy Weber says, the image of buddha is a guide or a kind of map that takes us from the current confusion to the state of awakening, which is our true nature of the mind totally healthy and lucid and awake … Our mental obscurations do not allow us to recognize these qualities and we live revolving around habits of behavior that the self has not marked out of ignorance believe everything that passes through our mind with the filter of personal interest and forget that we are already in essences buddha from time without beginning …

My experience with Buddhist art has made me feel full of joy for emptying my mind of content and being like an empty channel of myself and having space for the generation of deity, invoking that state of consciousness in formless matter. .and receiving great blessings while my mind concentrates on the mantra and I put all my love in what I do, my work tools are joy and mindfulness.

His Holiness the Dalai Lama has explained it with his words like this …

“Art expresses the perceptions of a people. Sacred art reveals your deepest insights and highest aspirations. Therefore, to be in front of our works of sacred art is to experience in oneself some of our deepest visions. Some of them come from our greatest teachers, who deeply contemplated the human soul, faced reality naked of passions and discovered the human capacities of wisdom and love. ”

(His Holiness the XIV Dalai Lama, Dharamsala, India, October 1995)

In this image you can see the shape of the body of light of the buddha, the artists do not represent the historical character who lived more than 2500 years ago, but we try to represent the body of light, that is, the enlightenment of the buddha, love and Buddhic compassion, that is why the image is not a decorative or expressive function, the image becomes the guide to stop suffering and to follow the path to enlightenment and leave all our paranoias parked and focus on the enlightenment of the consciousness that all can see. That is why the buddha is called the tathagata, the one that already is, the rest of us are from here to there seeking to stop suffering, looking outside ourselves for what makes us happy forgetting that everything is already in you, that is why it is the path of let go and let go of the way to go behind things and start being. what you already are from times without principles we are Buddhas. But our ego has us drugged and we don’t see our true nature of mind. in ourselves.