On journeys to the Himalaya and Tibet, Philip Sugden traveled as an artist but discovered a more fundamental process while drawing landscapes. He recognized that consciousness pursues people, trying to re-establish itself as the center of awareness—the mind literally trying to become aware of i... Read more
On journeys to the Himalaya and Tibet, Philip Sugden traveled as an artist but discovered a more fundamental process while drawing landscapes. He recognized that consciousness pursues people, trying to re-establish itself as the center of awareness—the mind literally trying to become aware of its own nature, as the Buddhists describe the ultimate goal of spiritual practice.
The more Sugden explores the creative process in his studio and as a professor of art, the more he directly experiences some of the most fundamental Buddhist and Hindu concepts. In the Hindu philosophy, the center—the Bindu—is the primal place of emergence and dissolution. There, an order already exists and is able to be achieved simply by being aware of itself within each moment.
On his path as artist, Sugden becomes a pilgrim to the sacred center. Over the years, the studio has become his monastery, and the creative process his practice. While he works, he becomes more and more aware of that which exists beyond the shifting paradigms and playful projections of a conceptual mind. His series of artwork, “Visions from the Fields of Merit,” captures the fragmentary nature of most human realizations.
Conversely, he observed that the creative process as well as the object of creation utilizes a language of connection, linking one’s limited perception of the world to the vast, infinite realm of what is. As an animist, he seeks in the creative process a genuine connection to the sensual world of nature and to an ultimate reality. Although he has a better understanding of this process, he does not take his greater knowledge too seriously when, with each new discovery, there is new territory to explore.
Sugden’s experiences reappear as imagery in the creative process, which he considers similar to processes used by ancient tribal shamans. For him, the artist is shaman, an intermediary between the visible and the invisible.
