About Spritual in Art

Female Buddha.
Mixed media (aquarell, ink, pencil), 2014.  42x29cm.

Spiritual motives in art are tricky. On the other hand, all art is spiritual. Making art is the work of the soul. It is more mental than physical work and art does not have functional value. That is why all the paintings or all the pieces of music are in fact 'spiritual'. 

While Malevich was considering his abstract expressions as purely spiritual, the way I approach to spiritual in art is perhaps more concrete. Motives in these paintings rise from different religions and meditation techniques. 

At some point of my life I have made a search in eastern philosophy; buddhism and hinduism. I have practiced Ashtanga and Hatha yoga, Tibetan Buddhist meditation, Falun Gong, Taiji, Hare Krishna mantra meditation and Bhakti Yoga, but I can't talk about eastern philosophies like an expert. It's an enormous amount of information and probably I have hardly scratched the surface.

During my stay in Estonia which is referred as the most atheistic country,  I naturally began to avoid spiritual topics in painting. I got my inspiration back in spiritual pantings, when I was invited to make a special exhibition for a fair of esoteric lifestyle and knowledge.

Sleeping Shiva. 2014, digitally retouched painting.
Original size: 42x29cm

After completing the the small paintings in very tight schedule, I started to prepare my solo-exhibition in Hirvitalo, which was soon to come. (See more on the exhibitions tab! )  As the schedule was still extremely tight due to many alterable factors… I had to realize the first ideas, that came to my mind. That is how "Three buddhas, three moons" was born. I depicted three buddhas by picking facial features and expressions from a picture of human and combining the features of a buddha statue.

I came to wonder, how the image of god never really has any facial expression. Their look is serene like nothing never happened and like such things as distress or worry have never existed. The image of any human is different. They have traits of tears and laughter on their face. They have done wrong and they have rejoiced, that is what makes us humans human.

Random Buddha. Oil on canvas 2014, 55x47cm. 

See more paintings on the Spiritual tab!