Painting as Spiritual Practice

When as a young man I was faced with something profoundly beautiful, I noticed that my feelings of exhilaration were mixed with sadness. It was a longing for something it seemed I had lost and could barely remember any more--a longing to merge back with that immense and mysterious beauty of the world, and not just observe it from a point of separateness.

At its root, the word “religion” means “reconnection.” I came to understand early in my life that painting was a religious act. It is a connection back to that place where I am part of the beauty, not just an observer. If I can capture in paint even a small measure of the immense and mysterious beauty, the sadness of separation transforms. I come to feel that the beauty is now in me, not just outside of me. I have taken it in like a holy communion, and my soul is peaceful again.

Painting is a form of active meditation. It is an act of surrender and obedience. It is a way to break out of my habitual patterns of thinking so that I can become a channel for something deeper. To begin a painting, I first need to experience a clear and honest inner pull towards a subject. When that pull is strong enough, I know there will be enough energy to carry the project through to completion. It is like falling in love with something that I cannot yet see. From beginning to end, I absolutely have to be in love with what I am doing. Otherwise, the necessary hours of concentration and effort would be torturous.

I never know in advance exactly where I am going or how I will get there. Painting is a thousand small acts of obedience. Each stroke of paint should have an honest impulse behind it. Over and over, I try to quiet my mind and my heart and listen carefully to the next impulse as it arises. After all these years of painting, I have an unshakable conviction that without this sense of obedience, the painting will fail. Step by small step, if I act from a sense of inner calling, using the energy of love, there is an undeniable inner intelligence, seemingly beyond me, that manifests itself. I make the small steps; it pulls the big picture together. And usually in the big picture there are things revealed that I never could have anticipated or done by conscious design. In the end, I am as surprised and delighted as anyone else might be. It is as if the more I step out of the way, the better the painting is.

Sometimes these acts of obedience come easy and fast. Other times, there is a lot of mental clutter blocking the flow, and I think many artists develop their own form of inner yoga to calm and focus their minds. As in most spiritual paths, a marriage develops between discipline and surrender. It can take a great deal of energy, but the tiredness at the end of a good painting day is the tiredness of being very alive.

It occurred to me many years ago that I could try to live my life in the same way that I paint: find the love within, surrender through a thousand small acts of obedience, and trust the big picture would take care of itself. It was good direction for someone who too often looks for love outside, who struggles too long to control things, and who fears too much about how things will turn out.

Steven Fick , 2002