sylvain's Profile

From: Shannon, MS
Joined: June 02, 2008
http://artsylvain.com

About sylvain:

Portraiture

As a Buddhist, I understand that the enlightened core of our true self exists in every human as well as every speck or particle in the universe. I understand that all of "us" is Buddha. I know that "we" are all amazing and capable of everything, not just anything. Yet as an artist, I belong to the samsaric world of identity. This mundane world of imperfections and attachment to "thing-ness". This is the place where the "ego" roams free.

And as an artist I have a unique opportunity. As an artist I have a "talent" for using my eyes to "see" thing-ness with my mind and abstract what "I" the "artist" "sees" into what "I" the human experiences. And as I do this, I am able to get glimpses of another "I" and another "thing". Nowhere is this more evident than in portraiture.

Portraiture is an odd word. At one time it meant the ability to capture the "likeness" of a person or even a pet, in another medium, usually paint. After cameras, portraiture became the search for deeper representation beyond the ability of the camera's established domain of "thing-ness" to an inner "truth". Of course photographers were quick to chase that aesthetic down and eventually produced emotional and moving "portraits" with film. So what is left for the painter? Surely the medium of paint has its "domain" of strokes and hues and forms to elicit human connections different from those attributes of film. It is here that I believe the power and strength of painting still provide unparalleled experiences.

When painting a portrait, or when viewing a portrait, to be especially aware of the "secret" held within the marks while at the same time allowing them to dissolve is a special function of human abstraction. It is the ambiguity of this function that allows our "mind" to transcend the "ego". Ambiguity is our minds transcendent feature that opens a window into our basic "truths", undisguised, unmitigated, and pure. It is in the vibrations of these marks and colors ambiguity where insight, beauty, and true excitement and joy reside.

I don't know if this is portraiture then. For me this process seems more akin to excavation. To manipulate an illusory "surface" enough to "render" it transparent in its own visceral-ness in order to discover what has been there all along, eternally, and without judgment. Sometimes this is exceptionally fluid, as with the portraits of the child, whose innocence and inexperience of this mundane world of attachments is only beginning and raw and easily visible. At other times, the veils and fortresses of years of self-destructive and loathing attachments of the ego can create such near impenetrable surfaces as to make it almost impossible to transcend and reach the pure beauty and quiescence inside. And still there is the question of the artist's life condition as the portrait is created, and the artist's own "barriers". This process is indeed cathartic. And this catharsis has its similarities to the Buddhist canon of deep thought and consideration through specialized chants or meditations. These are vehicles, modes of transport to new truths.

As human beings we need vehicles to experience truth. For this we all owe a debt to "Art" and one another, as artists and as viewers.

Namumyohorengekyo

Sifu, Sylvain Chamberland-Nyudo