Painting, "Think Neither Good Nor Evil" by R. Althouse

In our culture we don't like boredom. We might even associate it with depression. Boredom is how we allow ourselves to slow down, to be embodied and to just be in the moment. But for some reason this is not valued much in our culture. 

I am a Zen teacher and have practiced meditation most of my life. When I teach meditation to new student I tell them about this study that was done at the University of Virginia. 

They did an experiment  in which they found people prefer some kind of passive activity like reading or listening to music over spending a few minutes with themselves. Being alone without any diversions was so uncomfortable for many participants that two-thirds of the men and a quarter of the women elected to give themselves a mild electric shock instead. 

Why do I tell beginning meditators this story? Because people find it hard to meditate. In other words, they find it hard to be with themselves. Because to meditate is to allow yourself to be bored and in our culture this is considered to be the kiss of death. 

Painting: "Beauty in Unexpected Places" by R. Althouse

Beauty is important. It speaks to something in us that is whole, eternal and timeless. It is the way we reveal all that is good and dignified in ourselves and our world. In a world that is often mean and brutal, we need beauty just like we need food and water. 

Beauty is not a luxury but is something essential to living a meaningful life. Beauty ennobles and enriches the heart. 

Painting, "Lighting the Way" from Turtle Island Mandala series

I am pleased to introduce this new "Turtle Island Mandala" series. In this series I have tried to represent the turtle as a spiritual symbol, embodying many of the core values I share with Native Americans.

The term "Turtle Island" is used among Indigenous Peoples to represent the continent of North America. I have framed most of these as mandalas which is another way of representing the sacred. 

Painting, "Still Standing" from Don't Look Away series

Difficult times are an opportunity to deepen our spiritual path and practice, to dig down and ground ourselves in meditation or prayer. Take time to be still, to be quiet and listen. 

Then get up and go outside. Take a walk. There are seasons for everything. The rhythms of change may be large or small, slow or fast. Appreciate the cycles of light and dark, gain and loss. Our world is sacred, timeless and vast. It can be a source of solace for us during times of rapid change if we know how and where to look. We are all intrinsically whole and awake. 

Painting, "Tiger of Meekness" from the "Four Dignities of a Spiritual Warrior" series. 

I live at the cross roads of Zen and art. One thing they both have in common is a quality of whole-hearted attention that is brought to bear on the task at hand. It might be chopping wood and carrying water. Or it might be creating a work of art and happily losing track of time in the process. I think in our culture, we underestimate how important this quality of enriched attention is because it's become a rare and endanger species. Attention is the new currency. Without it you are at the mercy of other peoples' agendas. Madison avenue is only too happy to turn you into a good and obedient consumer. 

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I have worked on paintings in this series for four or five years. They reflect my love of Australian aboriginal art and many of the values I share with indigenous cultural traditions. I believe dreamtime was originally used to reference the religion of Australian aboriginal culture. I do not use it in this way, because I have no direct experience of that religion. For me the term simply implies a liminal experience that is not fully conscious nor unconscious. It something in the middle. I experience this as a place of active imagination and many possibilities not necessarily accessible to me through conventional reality. 

Earlier in my life when I was painting in oils I used to go outside and do plein air paintings. It was the best way to capture the quality of light in a particular landscape. And of course it could change depending on what time of day it was as well. Now that I'm doing digital paintings, I do not do this, but I do usually try and paint landscapes from places where I've been shortly after being there. In doing so, I hope to still capture something unique about the light of that particular landscape. 

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All proceeds from the sale of the paintings in this series will be donated to support the Ukrainian people. This series of paintings began as the war was breaking out in Ukraine during the spring of this year, 2022. And what a strange moment this has been. As new life pushes up from the earth, children are being murdered in the streets of Ukraine. The stories and the voices from Ukraine are unbearable and heart-breaking. I don't really understand why this war is taking place. It is madness. It is utterly futile and pointless. I am helpless in the face of this mass murder. So as an artist and a Zen practitioner my first practice is let go of whatever I think I know about this situation. It is really completely beyond my ability to comprehend or understand. And when I do this then what follows is stillness and meditation. 

Many years ago I began my artistic journey as an oil painter but left that to start the Zen Center of Hawaii around 1994. I gave up painting for the next twenty years in order to teach Zen and grow and develop non-profit Zen Centers. 

So it was with much excitement and joy when I discovered about ten years ago while on a Zen retreat in Wisconsin, that I could still paint but now I had an iPad instead of a canvas. I began to explore digital painting using a Wacom tablet connected to my iMac computer. I used Corel Painter which has gotten better and better with each passing year. 

On the occasion of opening my art business, Robert Althouse Fine Art and the launching of this new web site at althouseart.com