Rashid shows a series of paintings.
(to see the slide show fullscreen click on arrows top right hand corner)
Two daughters were born to my two sons on the same day. What is it about new born babies that so enchants? Why do people stare and stare at them, often with a half smile on their lips?
This series of 16 “Zen icons,” was inspired by the grandchildren’s arrival and starts as a visual wondering about what those new-born babies radiate, what space they inhabit. It continues with images – I don’t say portraits because the attempt was to go behind portraiture – of their blissful mothers, meditators, sages etc; people who seem to exist in a climate of peace and spaciousness, of love and trust; in short the climate of the divine.
I used as the containing discipline, like two banks of a river, two traditions of sacred art; Orthodox icons and Zen ink paintings – the one timeless, unchanging and hieratic, the other unpredictable, one-breath spontaneous.
One of the functions of sacred art is to paint the invisible. Spending time in a cathedral, standing before a Byzantine icon or a seventh century Buddha we sense the beyond. These paintings are therefore just metaphors for the ineffable. I hope that they will inspire the spectator to encounter their interiority and enhance their sense of life’s spectacular journey.
Paintings and text by Rashid
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