Frank Luke, Mar 26, 2009, 2:13PM EDT

Hiya, ,

I'm glad to have this forum, more specifically about art than Losing Your Religion. Wanted to share this with you:

It occurs to me that my painting is a metaphor and corollary for my progressing toward enlightenment. I imagine most would agree that painting, as are all creative efforts, is a meditation. I understand there's that instant flash-of - lightning kind of enlightenment like Zen folks talk about, but there are other schools of thought that talk about a gradual progress of attainment. I'm talking about this slower kind, though I wouldn't decline a flash of lightning enlightenment, if it happened. ;-) When I began to paint (how many years ago, it seems ages) my work looked like over-exposed photos, all black; I failed to understand that shadows don't have to be black and therefore continued making my pictures all dark. After a while, I had an aha! moment, took heart and began to use not black but brown for shadows and succeeded in lightening the images somewhat, but still getting these dark pictures. Gradually, with more courage, technique and sense, I've gone through the whole spectrum, applying blue instead of black to delineate receding planes and shadows , then green, then a dark crimson, orange, yellow orange, and succeeding in lightening my pictures to the point where they look like they're lit, I can now see something instead of black on black and my subject has emerged from shadows into the light. This has taken me decades to figure out with attendant discouragement and days of elation discerning progress. This is how I consider my progress toward greater awareness and understanding, toward enlightenment, where my consciousness has been slowly raised so that I'm able to realize more and more clearly what "truth" is. It's also like an elevator ascending or a plane climbing higher, where the vista and mind are expanded as greater height is gained. Higher for me means more joyful, lighter, nearer to "heaven". Creativity--achievement and progress toward greater accomplishment-- is my ticket, the wings beneath my wings. I feel blessed to have this great "G-d given" gift, feel a need to use it to communicate my "message", loveletters to the world. Aloha,