SuttaCentral
Thanks for sharing!
Art can expand your vision and open your mind: a mind which is flexible, malleable, wieldy, light is able to perceive truth.
Transformation: there are lots of things in ourselves that we deny, are blind to, or repress! Art lets us express without censure or judgment.
A friend pointed out this artist’s work to me:
I find it absolutely amazing! 
With his work the artist both practises and expresses qualities like mindfulness, being focused in the present moment, relating closely to nature, and much much patience… He is also a practising meditator and Zen Buddhist.
And, guess what? Similar to Venerable @yodha he also takes some inspiration from a certain wise extraterrestrial being! 
I happenend to find this quote on his website:
“Try not. Do, or do not. There is no try.”
—Yoda
wow, thanks so much for the link @sabbamitta. His work is truly remarkable and very inspiring in many ways… I’m in awe!
I was thinking today about a very moving piece of Buddhist art by Thai artist Montien Boonma. He made this alms-bowl sculpture when he found out he had a brain tumour in 1999 – he died shortly after, in 2000.
This work made a very strong impression on me, and keeps coming back to my mind. For me, it’s such a beautiful, deeply personal expression of the themes in Buddhism: suffering, impermance, generosity, transformation, not-self.
The bowl is lined with impressions of his own teeth. The handles that look like bones, or vertebrae, are made from the imprints of his hands gripping clay.
When he first exhibited this work, he invited friends and family to drink from the bowl (it was filled with whiskey and herbs – medicines for pain) with a ladle made in the mold of his own mouth.
The bowl is a symbol of giving and receiving, of humility and human dependency. Boonma makes himself into the bowl itself. His pain is expressed without hiding or prettifying - the first noble truth. And then that pain is transformed through offering. Giving from within his own body, down to the lasting remains – the bones and teeth. Though the image is grotesque, the act of sharing – nourishing and healing self and others – through generosity is sublime.
The bowl embodies the fragile, real dimension of human mortality, alongside the transcendent quality of love and giving. And while he is exploring the theme of mortality and impermanence, the bowl itself is heavy brass, and the generosity, truth, and devotion it represents will endure.
Boonma became fascinated with alms bowls and began to draw one every day as a meditation practice. He said of the alms bowl
When I think about the space in the bowl, I prefer to be inside this space which is separated from the outside world. I would like to place my mind inside the bowl.
In this piece, Boonma embodies the container/boundary of the bowl, on the edge of life and death, or world and emptiness
This work was on exhibition at the art gallery of NSW in 2016.
Slightly macabre -Anatomy of an angel by Damien Hurst
with metta,
Ayya Yeshe uses her warm and rich voice in order to convey messages of peace and compassion, as for example during the Sakyadhita Buddhist Women’s Conference in Hongkong 2017 where she spontaneously sang “Ella’s song”, a song on social justice and compassion from African American Acapella group “Sweet honey and the Rock”:
Edit: See also this thread:
I have to confess that while it might be seen as an “entertainment,” I have an interest in calligraphy and some forms of Japanese art such as ceramics, and am planning to visit a Rinzai zendo in the Driftless area of southwestern Wisconsin next year to observe their Japanese calligraphy and ceramics practice. I’d even welcome the chance to fire an almsbowl in the new kiln that they installed recently. As long as they don’t force me to do koans as the price of admission… 
A clear full moon night
On that occasion—the Uposatha day of the fifteenth, the full-moon night of the Komudī full moon of the fourth month—the Blessed One was seated in the open surrounded by the Sangha of bhikkhus. Then, surveying the silent Sangha of bhikkhus, he addressed them thus:
“Bhikkhus, this assembly is free from prattle, this assembly is free from chatter. It consists purely of heartwood. Such is this Sangha of bhikkhus, such is this assembly. Such an assembly as is worthy of gifts, worthy of hospitality, worthy of offerings, worthy of reverential salutation, an incomparable field of merit for the world—such is this Sangha of bhikkhus, such is this assembly. Such an assembly that a small gift given to it becomes great and a great gift greater—such is this Sangha of bhikkhus, such is this assembly. Such an assembly as is rare for the world to see—such is this Sangha of bhikkhus, such is this assembly. Such an assembly as would be worth journeying many leagues with a travel-bag to see—such is this Sangha of bhikkhus, such is this assembly.
or
“Dhamma really protects you if you practice Dhamma;
Dhamma well-practiced brings happiness.
If you practice Dhamma, this is the benefit—
You won’t go to a bad destination.
Dhamma and what is not Dhamma
Don’t both lead to the same results.
What is not Dhamma leads to hell,
While Dhamma takes you to a good destination.
So you should be enthusiastic to perform acts of Dhamma,
Rejoicing in the Fortunate One, the poised.
Disciples of the best of Fortunate Ones are firm in Dhamma;
Those wise ones are led on, going to the very best of refuges.”
“The boil has been burst from its root,
The net of craving is undone.
He has ended transmigration, he has nothing,
Just like the full moon in a clear night sky.”
“As many garlands can be made
from a heap of flowers,
so too, much that is wholesome can be done
during this human existence.”
—Dhp 53 (translation by Ajahn Munindo)
The adventure of painting 10.000 Buddhas—Amanda Giacomini’s huge artistic endeavor:
I have been making dhamma art for the past few years. Sharing a link to my site, where you can see how I incorporate it into my practice.https://www.jliaoart.com
Thanks for sharing, I like the hands on the tree. Best wishes for your practice.
I too make Dhamma art … and that’s a great name for it. 
@mandala, your work is really lovely. The installations of the paired hands really affected me, and I do like your statement:
For me, the practice of art is as much developing as it is letting go.
I think a lot would learnt about balance of abstract elements (like form and space) doing this work, which is equal to meditation on those subjects.
Nice to see your work again @Gillian. If You Have a Mind You Must Clean It III is my current favorite.
I suggest the "Sky " series is more successful than the “Rock” because it contains explicit contrast of two elements, earth and sky (air). They also signify “above” (sky), and “below” (earth). The “Rock” series is somewhat oppressive due to lack of this elemental contrast.
I too have a secret shameful past as an artist. 
I used to make art inspired by my interest in Buddhism and to help me understand aspects of meditation practice, including, change, form and emptiness. Some of my work was quite devotional; writing the word Buddha, or copying suttas. Others were about meditation experiences of bliss and dissolution of self. I frequently used images of flowers and insects as metaphors for creativity, trying to capture that sense of the blossoming of knowledge in meditation, and to explore the theme of interconnectivity and interdependence.
Would you like to see a few? Oh well. If you insist. 
The images are coloured pencil on black paper. On a screen they are best viewed in a dark room.
Here’s some art babble I wrote about these types of works:
These drawings grew out of an earlier interest in the intersection of writing and drawing, examining historical writing systems which evolved from pictures. I am especially interested in the role of calligraphy in Buddhist cultures and, specifically, the practice of copying Buddhist religious texts (suttas).
My work investigates the limitations of written language; especially its inability to describe the realms of thought that lie ‘beyond words’ and to determine whether the drawn gesture could convey these realms instead. My aim is to reclaim the role of drawing in creating meaning; to create work that moves beyond words whilst still being invested with significance. My calligraphic works locate a point where the specificity of meaning collapses and dissolves into ambiguity; where text becomes drawing and drawing becomes text.
The English alphabet is a script not ideally suited to a flowing calligraphic gesture, lacking the inherent pictorial qualities of Chinese characters or Japanese cursive writing; so, I invented a rather idiosyncratic swirling script, still somewhat legible, but inconsequentially so. The text is presented vertically rather than horizontally, relating to Eastern writing systems, and disrupting the familiarity of the letters and words, emphasising the visual nature and formal qualities of the work over the words themselves.
I have taken considerable liberty with the letters, transforming them into figurative elements; the letter O becomes the flapping wings of butterflies, I’s become sticky stamens, F’s appear as dragonflies or bees, while M’s and W’s are transfigured into burgeoning blossoms.
These figurative elements act as a kind of ornamentation to the sutra text and are reminiscent of the marginalia of western mediaeval manuscripts. They have a life of their own, beyond the meaning of the text and enrich the meaning of the work. The butterflies and flowers which populate the work participate in some sort of drama or story unfolding on the page; lotus flowers grow from tangled roots to bud and blossom, visited by the zooming butterflies and bees; feeding and pollinating.
These figurative elements are both illustrative and symbolic. In Buddhist art and literature, butterflies have long been used as a symbol of change and impermanence, as have lotus flowers– which carry the addition symbolic value of an offering to Buddha, as well as being a symbol of purity and a metaphor for the attainment of Enlightenment.
For me, these small narratives also represent the process of creation, the cycle of life and the interconnectivity of all things.
Sigh.
A lifetime ago!
Would be great to see your art, if you’re open to sharing 
