Shunyo Mahom’s calligraphies in our art gallery: Zen Pearls. He writes, “Each image of this series reflects the spontaneity and spaciousness of Zen as well as a natural sense of grace and beauty.”
(to see the slide show in fullscreen mode click on arrows top right)
In 2006 I did a weekend Zen Calligraphy group with Alok in Sedona. After about four months of painting simple ink strokes, an ‘accident’ happened when a water line in my bathroom broke and flooded the storage room next to it. Most of my calligraphy paintings that were on the floor were soaked and when the paper dried, yellow sections and water marks appeared and ‘ruined’ them. I was devastated!
Of course there are no accidents, and a few months later I heard a voice say, “Put pearls in the yellowed sections.” So I did, and the first of these Zen Pearls paintings was born; I gave it the title ‘Osho’.
Each image of my Zen Pearls series reflects the spontaneity and spaciousness of Zen as well as a natural sense of grace and beauty. During the creative process I enter a space of no-mind through meditation and create a painting with a few spontaneous strokes of ink and a faux-pearl medium, sometimes using acrylics and watercolors to complement the spirit of the initial calligraphy strokes.
In my book Zen Pearls: Creativity Inspired by Osho, that Madhuri has reviewed for Osho News, I write, “The 24 ‘Zen Pearls’ images in this book have been paired with excerpts from Osho discourses to elegantly illustrate how the Master-disciple relationship inspires creativity through meditation. However, the word ‘creativity’ really doesn’t describe my experience while painting. The joy in painting is in playing with colors and forms.
Playing… flowing… consciously… with Osho…
Shunyo Mahom discovered meditation in 1970 and left his engineering profession for the unknown. He became Osho’s disciple in 1981, lived in seven Osho communes, and over the years creativity evolved through poetry and song writing. In 1994, during workshops with Meera, he discovered a natural talent for painting, and in 2006, a love for calligraphy during a workshop with Alok Hsu Kwang-han. He lives in an Osho ashram in Southern California. www.shunyo.org
Review by Mahuri of Zen Pearls: Creativity Inspired by Osho
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