Artist Statement -bardo
ARTIST STATEMENT, BARDO - SUNDARA HEART
In the 9 paintings presented here, I could talk about Place, The Female Gaze, Nudity, Religion, Feminism, Identity, Faith, Addiction, Symbolism, Mental Health, The Environment, Society, and Nihilism. These themes are all there. But for centuries Artist’s have documented and discussed the foibles and woes of our species and no matter how much we talk about these issues it often doesn’t elicit real change, it only affirms it. We appear to have become desensitized to our suffering, and accustomed to the atrocities and unjust ways of taking care of ourselves, each other and The Planet .“If you’re rolling in it long enough, your shit won’t even smell” laments singer/songwriter, Nathanaiel Rateliff. "He has a point.
Instead, I want to talk about this notion of bardo, the transitional state, between life and death. Death is messy, so is rebirth. We fear them both. We live in a society that covers up death, is anti aging, promotes long life, youth, perfection, success, not failure, and all of this keeps us detached from our bodies and minds, limiting the opportunity to fully experience what it’s like to be human. In 1908, the poet William Blake was already exploring this predisposition in his texts: Marriage on Heaven and Hell. He writes:,“Our hyperpositive tendencies want us to do a spiritual bypass around the mess of it all, but it's there in that mess that we are most human”. More than 100 years later, and has anything really changed? Our desire for perfection and the facade still holds strong.
Bar in the Tibetan language literally means: in-between. Do means two. Bardo, the in-between state of two events. Used loosely, bardo happens when we leave this skin suits and go up to Heaven, are reincarnated, become space dust, or whatever other belief and faith you have around the end of your life but bardo doesn’t just happen at the end of your life, it is happening to you all the time. Let me explain...As you finish reading this Artist Statement you will move to another task. As you do, there will be a moment of bardo, what you were doing ended, a space was created and then you began the next thing. Theses spaces are places of potential transformations and they are happening all day long as we shift from one thing to another. If we open up to the idea of daily bardo we can begin to see things differently for ourselves and others, instead of the usual patterns and tendencies that are holding us back, continually looped to play and repeat in our minds. There is no Savior, no politician, child, woman, or alien that can save us. We can only save ourselves. And in this crumbling world where things aren’t changing, why not open up to the possibility of daily death and rebirth. Who knows, perhaps our future will depend upon it...
This series Bardo began in 2018, in Oaxaca, Mexico, and will travel back to Oaxaca where the work began, for Heart’s first International and Solo art exhibition in December 2019 and Jan 2020. These paintings are a continuation of the exploration of work that began in Brazil, 2016 titled: ’Self’, and a second series titled: ‘I’m Swimming And There Is No Water” in 2018. “In every series, I die. In every series, I am reborn.” - SH
Artists that inform this work include: Yoshitomo Nara, Wendy Castro and Hector Ventura. Nara’s use of innocent children to address deeper societal messages packs a powerful Pop art punch! Castro’s relationship and exploration ‘of Self’, aligns with my Heart’s own exploration of ‘Self’. Her playfulness with paint, subject matter and use of color resemble that of German born painter, Jonas Burgert. Ventura’s engravings, stop you in your tracks. His use of line creates great emotion and stress to the work that addresses the political and societal issues of his country. His work can be seen pasted to crumbling walls through the cities of Mexico adding an additional layer to his defense of decaying societies. Alchemist, Michael Sendivogius, Psychotherapist and Soul Activist, Francis Weller, and Poet Rainer Maria Rilke where also instrumental in influencing this series of work.
