Red on White

Life is raw as all forces of nature and often we suffer from expecting it to be something which it is not. In our minds we create all sorts of rules that life is supposed to follow, construct meanings and strive for some obscure perfection. Life however is an experience, not a thought or idea.

The Red in the pieces is the life itself, between the black and white, it’s both angry and loving, cozy warm and burning hot, it’s the birth and death. The white is the field and the scene where life occurs.

Inspired by the art and practice of Asian calligraphy this project accumulates the artist’s play and study of the state of no-mind or Mushin. Practiced by Zen and Buddhist monks as well as calligraphers and martial artists. This state is referred to as shape without form, direction without direction, action from inaction. Mushin is achieved when a person's mind is free from thoughts and concepts. There is an absence of discursive thought and judgment, so the person is totally free to act and react without hesitation and without disturbance from any thoughts. In state of no-mind you rely only on instinct and intuition. Your actions become raw and unadorned, natural and pure.

This state is never lasting however. We do return to our minds, thinking and building concepts. The pieces included in the project are a product of the free flow of the artist’s intuition. The captions and this abstract is the attempts of the artist’s mind to reason with it and explain why and what the intuition was referring to.