The Art Path: Reclaiming our lives through creative practice

The Art Path website is live! This endeavor is the culmination of many years of painting, drawing, making, experimenting. Many years of tai chi, qi gong, meditation, mindfulness exploration. Many years of struggle and pain over finances, relationships, raising a family two different times on different continents. In other words, the messiness of life - the grit and tears along with moments of overwhelming love and amazement. The thing that made it all not just bearable but beautiful has been this thread called "art" that I was lucky enough to find early on in the maze of life. It has helped me find my way back to the truth countless times. I can only hope that through this project, I might pass this thread to others that it may guide them to their place of inner knowing, to their innate sense that we are all here to marvel at the wonders of this world.

Art is transformation. It transforms materials from one state to another. It transforms lines on a page into imaginary worlds. It transforms colors, shapes and lines into shared human experience. It transforms those who make it, and anyone who encounters it. It is a manifestation of one of the divine qualities of humanity - our creativity. As human beings, we need art to live. We need creativity like we need air, and love, and food, and water. Creative health is just as important as any other part of our mental or physical health, yet it is often the most neglected. Unless we know how to nurture and value our creative health, it is also often the first thing we sacrifice. We suffer greatly for this, with the symptoms of deprivation manifesting themselves in all aspects of our lives, especially through a dull or painful sense that something is we can’t quite name is wrong or missing - because it is. We may try to fill that void in a number of ways, when what we really need is to reclaim is the part of ourselves that knows about play, magic, spontaneity, and freedom. 

If you’ve ever heard someone say "Art saved my life," they are not being dramatic. The very purpose and nature of our creative power is to touch the soul, and its impact is no trivial thing. It can bring us from the dark depths of despair to illuminating revelations of joy and amazement. Art has saved my life more than once, so I’m not really exaggerating here when I say that it is my mission with The Art Path to save lives - especially if it means saving them from the purgatory of being cut off from our most important source of knowledge about ourselves and the universe - so that we can spend our time here awake and aware of the limitlessness of the experience of being alive. 

Creativity is one of our senses. It is a mechanism of the heart through which we receive information from sources beyond our understanding and sometimes translate it into something visible. The noise of life, especially the anxiety inherent in our way of life today, can interfere with these delicate transmissions. If we lost our sight or hearing, we would be immediately alarmed, but we have become so accustomed to functioning without our true creative capacity, that we often don’t even realize what we are missing. Pema Chödrön likened this state of blindness to the beauty of existence to standing in a field of daisies with a black bag over one’s head. Being cut off from the way we sense the magnificence of this world can leave us wandering in the dark. Mindfulness practices are a way that we can start to regain our inner and outer vision. By bringing us into pure perception of the present moment, mindfulness opens space for us to connect once again to our creative vision, the sense through which we experience the awe and wonder of this life. 

 In his book, "Coming to Our Senses: Healing Ourselves and the World through Mindfulness" Jon Kabat-Zinn writes, 

"That is why painters often prefer to feel their way into a new painting rather than have it come out of the conceptual. The conceptual has its place, but follows and only informs those raw feelings that move the senses to awaken in fresh and surprising ways. Bare perception is raw, elemental, vital, thus creative, imaginative, revealing. With our senses intact, and by way of awareness itself, we can attend in such ways. To do so is to be more alive." 

Art and mindfulness work together in beautiful and mysterious ways. Holding a brush invites a moment of focus and presence in a way that can sometimes be more easily accessible than sitting on a cushion. Mindfulness practices bring us into an awareness of our body and our senses in a way that helps us make art that is more natural and alive. At their core, they lead us to the same result - an awakening to our inner and outer worlds. 

The art path is about seeking beauty, even when it seems impossible. looking for the magic even when you don’t feel like it’s there, and knowing this path is always available.

Welcome, fellow traveler on The Art Path. Maybe you are no stranger to this road and your shoes are well worn, or maybe it has been calling you for a long time and you are just now venturing out. Maybe you are curious about this road and have only seen it in your dreams. Wherever you are on your journey, I’m so glad to meet you here so we might travel together for a while and share stories of our adventures. 

-Marlowe Emerson