SHIELDS - exhibition at the Beaulne

 

BEACH SHIELD

20”/50 cm oil on canvas 2009

CELL TOWER SHIELD

20”/50 cm oil on canvas 2010

ETERNAL FLAME SHIELD

20”/50 cm oil on canvas 2011

Shields, 22 new paintings
March 6 to June 5, 2011
at the Musée Beaulne in
Coaticook, Quebec, Canada


The "Shields" project of 22 round paintings will be installed at the charming Musée Beaulne in Coaticook, Quebec from March 6 to June 5, 2011.  I have been gifted the beautiful, luminous, second floor gallery in which to display this project.  I hope you will come and visit the show.

“Shields” is an exhibition of round paintings which integrate sacred geometry, mandala and the colour symbolism of Tibetan prayer flags. The rich primary colours of the paintings are connected to Tibetan Buddhist colour symbolism and its’ associations with earth, air, fire, water and space. The imagery is mandala-like or draws from observations of nature and the cosmos or, as with “Cell Tower Shield” and “Oil Spill Shield”, our technological influences on these environments.”

The paintings begin with an equilateral triangle within a circle  - the triangle as a metaphor for body, mind and spirit and the circle representing wholeness.  These forms also suggest landscape, horizon, and depths of space and sky.  They create a centre and, from the centre, an unfolding of interconnected flow.

The “Shields”  project is also influenced by concepts of healing, wholeness and the sacredness of the natural world.

SPIRAL FIRE SHIELD

20”/50 cm oil on canvas 2009

More about the Tibetan connection.....
I wrote the following paragraph in the summer of 2009, just before a group of Tibetans monks came to Stanstead, Québec to make a sand mandala and share their teaching.  I am not a practicing Buddhist but I find great consolation and courage in the teachings and the otherworldly presence of the monks.  Their visit and the creation and deconstruction of the sand mandala was an additional inspiration for the Shields project.
It makes me happy that the Tibetans are coming, that I am reminded of my lifelong dips in and out of experiences of Buddhist practice and studies of the teachings, that I see in my work with the Shields the influences of meditation and Buddhist art and culture. A group of monks from the same monastery, Gaden Jangste, in India, were also here in 1993 on a North American concert tour. Through serendipity, they came to make an album of Buddhist chants in our small recording studio. We were blessed and reminded of how life could be lived with kindness, love and acceptance.  For me, personally, their arrival was preceded by dreams and other signs that made the whole event take on a mystical quality. When I am deeply reminded of the existence of other worlds and ways of being I am nurtured, nourished and inspired.