| to be in the leila (flow) of mystical presence touched my eyes to see, and my heart to feel, my colours to dance and my sleeping spirit to arouse from mundane preoccupations. The melding of art and Spirit affords my art a community of kindred artists (www.fusionartinternational.com). My recent work, here represented, speaks to that awakened, unblinking vision, commingled with the wisdom of walking in Iwa rere: a path guided by one's internalized divinity.
Fusionart International: http://fusionartinternational.com
Manhattan Arts International: http://manhattanarts.com
Heaven to Earth Art Project: http://heaventoearthart.com/artist/yasmin_sayyed.htm
Iwa Rere Arts: http://iwarerearts.com
Tahoe Arts and Mountain Culture: http://tahoeculture.com
On Art and Healing:
A journey towards oneness through the splendor and elegance of painting in partnership with Spirit
We live in troubling and promising times, where concurrent to much global suffering is a blooming quest for unity and love, and where the human spirit craves interconnections of authenticity to one another, to beauty and tenderness, to justice and peace, and to sustainable hope.
What does it mean to paint with brushes dipped in the love and force of Spirit, or to manifest art to connect Heaven and Earth into the oneness of being? I think it may mean different things to different people with differing cosmological realities; all fusing a single goal of having their art speak to the unification of humanity. Like the many facets of a crystal with differing angles and energies that together create a spectacular gem, each artist and groups of artists, may have differing lens of perception and differing points of entry into a global call for art as healing, yet speak a common and spectacular gem of a mother tongue of deep affection and hope in the possibility of journeying together in devotion to our highest inner character.
Recently, I had cause to ponder my points of entry into the world of art-making for the oneness of being, from which blessed and appreciated remembrances --some sweet and tender, some tart and challenging-- arose to kiss my consciousness, and remind me of facets of why I am called to paint with Spirit.
Remembrance:
When I was a youngster too young for school, I used to lie on my back, sometimes in moist grass, holding a leaf in the hand of an arm outstretched to the sky. On brightly lit days, light there passed through the leaf to capture my attention for hours. I would stare, and gently position and reposition the leaf in order to facilitate differing angles of observation.
The veins of the leaf, its interweaving patterns, and the uniqueness and simultaneous sameness of forms and lines intrigued my imagination, as did the textures and designs, the range of this and that and this-or-that possibilities, and how light or degrees of dryness and moisture played with colour. I would become lost in endless opportunities to observe.
One day as I slowly moved the leaf closer to my face, I stepped outside of myself and inside of the leaf, and it into me. There was no separation of form and being, no observer and observed. We were one. The feeling is what, in states of grace; I feel when I am painting with my heart wide open. This force of energy that connects and connects deeper is what I felt when I held my small hands to the brightly lit summer’s light and could see translucent red, could see veins and would step into the hands. I knew without words of explanation that I had messages to bring, and that I had stepped into the hands borrowed by Spirit to bring messages from within.
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One day when I was a wee kid, there was much commotion about my home where many community members had gathered to watch a coloured man play baseball. I remember running outside hoping the puddle with oil drops therein was still available, hoping the sun still made the iridescent colours of the rainbow glittered in the puddle, and wondering if this coloured man would look at all like the oil’s reflections, or like the many patterns and lines in dry/moist differentiated leaf forms. I wondered just how magnificent this coloured man must look, and with anticipatory delight I rejoined the community in our sitting room, eating treats and staring at the black and white television, waiting for all to come to see the potential richness of the special man’s colour.
He stepped to the baseball plate; cheers filled the room.My heart fell; utter disappointment was mine to know, for he was no more, no less distinguished than the men who cheered for him. I looked about, and then again at the television, wondering what was so exciting about his colour, form or texture?A neighbour, just back from some military campaign said after I queried their excitement that it was such a big deal for Jackie Robinson, a coloured man, to play in the National Baseball League. “Why”, I asked. “Because America doesn’t like coloured people and Mr.Robinson was breaking a colour line that divided us from other Americans”. “Us?” were they coloured, was I, did America not like me? I had not known, until that day that I was coloured, different, and despised. I cried with near inconsolability and went to lie in the grass holding a leaf in the hand of an outstretched arm, looking to step into the oneness of being where the universality of the specific and the specificity of the universal meld into a divine unity of being. My paintings today seek to illumine that place of eloquent humanity.
I held my hands to the light. I stepped into the veins, traveled its form and wanted these borrowed hands to bring a message of peace, of justice, of the deconstruction of violence, and of a unity of the Creator’s creations.
What drew me to the messages of unity in the Fusionart Movement, was a community of borrowed hands, and a community of artists in co-partnership with the Divine, in service of that which is beatific and that which requires highlighting to move from divine absence towards divinity. Here, the light passes through the leaf to enrich and invite me into the flow of being, where it evokes creative expression, indivisibility of being, and a dancing with Spirit.
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I recently sat with colleagues, when in the course of a conversation; someone made a comment that rang in my heart as disparaging of a particular religion. My psyche paused like the day that I had learned I was coloured, and coloured meant something negative in the land of my birth. I paused, saying nothing, but looking about to see if others felt a ‘coloured’ pause, if anyone felt a discontinuity of oneness. I could read no one’s face. I sat in silence, fork suspended mid-air, and then quietly stated my discomfort at the remark.
Another said there’s over sensitivity to religion and race that sometimes stops us from telling the truth. I do not remember much else from that afternoon, other than saying critique the men’s offending behaviour but not their religion. I felt my heart weep, my psyche paused, and pondered what had changed in the fifty plus years since that day around the television, and cried this day too,
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Tahoe is warm and I found myself lying on my deck, with leaf in hand, and prayer on lips for borrowed hands and the authenticity of behaviour to express a love undivided. I got up and started painting: ‘Connecting Heaven and Earth’, for there is a call to meet in the field that is far greater than any of us as distinct beings.
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