I recently showed my paintings at the Project100 gallery space here in Nelson and offered an opportunity for viewers to rest in the gallery environment with the art of Yoga Nidra. It was such a wonderful opportunity to bring together two of my main passions and practices.
Yoga, meditation and somatic inquiry are a big part of my art practice and my paintings are a way of turning sensation, energy, emotions and thoughts and my experience into visual matter. I call this approach Somatic Abstraction. A somatic practice allows us to let go of thinking and come back to our own experience in our own body in this moment… it’s an empowering way to come back to the present moment and allows for us to be connected with our first person experience rather than being told what to feel.
Yoga Nidra acknowledges the different levels of consciousness or mind states that we can inhabit by weaving together practices of body sensing and breath sensing in order to release tension, let go of thinking and arrive into a rested state. One might describe Yoga Nidra as a liminal state of consciousness that is neither deep sleep nor hyper alertness. It can open us up to a hypnogogic state in which we can connect with more creative states of being, intuition and flow. This recording invites you into a space for cultivating a relationship with your creativity or maybe it’s simply to rest and come into slower brain waves for relaxation and meditation.
As a way of entering into this particular practice that I delivered in the gallery setting, you may wish to spend some time taking in the images of my paintings below in an upright position before lying down. You might even soften your gaze, come to the back of the eyes, maybe even close them. Whatever feels right for you. And as you turn your gaze inward, might you become aware of the parts of your body that are giving weight to the surface that you are sitting or standing upon. The weight of you yielding to the ground allowing your breath to return to it’s natural rhythm.
And taking a few moments to feel into the aliveness of simply being with your eyes closed.
Settling to to stillness, ground and back body.
Then opening the eyes and being with your peripheral gaze, allowing images and objects, shapes and colours to come to you as you scroll through the images below and taking in with soft eyes any marks, gestures or colours that are arriving with and to your curiosity… you don’t need to know anything here, like or dislike or be able to interpret anything… just receiving what arrives at your eyes.
Symbiosis. Charcoal, housepaint, gouache, acrylic and oil on canvas 160cm x 90cm, 2024
Sometimes things that come apart can be glued together
Charcoal, gouache, acrylic, acrylic glue, oil and oil stick on rabbit size soaked canvas,135cm x 170cm, 2024
Physis. Charcoal, housepaint, gouache, acrylic spray paint, acrylic and oil on canvas, 90cm x 160cm, 2024
(Physis… which comes from the greek etymology meaning to be in a state of becoming or growth…..)
Tender Inheritance. Acrylic and oil on linen 54cm x 63.5cm framed, 2024
(‘Tender Inheritance’ speaks to an empathy with the softer more vulnerable and feminine qualities that we inherit from our past or our ancestors… and in this case from the history of art.)
Mothercake Study #1 and #2 . Charcoal, gouache and acrylic on linen 34cm x 44cm (framed), 2024
Rupture and Repair. Charcoal, housepaint, gouache, acrylic, acrylic glue on primed canvas, 91cm x 61cm, 2024
Here’s the practice, recorded live, and so there are some background sounds but that I feel they can be welcomed in as part of the practice.
The Practice: Mothercake – Resting in Liminal and intuitive Space