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empty canvas :
wondering mind
an art curriculum designed to foster inquiry and
creativity - a series of nine
free e-books
The purpose of 'looking' is to survive, to cope, to manipulate … this we are trained
to do from our first day. When, on the other hand, I
see,
suddenly I am all eyes, I forget this me, am liberated from it and dive into the reality that
confronts me.
Frederick Franck
 
The Zen of Seeing
Frederick Franck
 
The Awakened Eye
Frederick Franck
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wildsight - the innocent eye
empty canvas :
wondering mind
book three
Many years ago when I was living another story in America, I was enrolled in classes
in painting, drawing and sculpture at the University of Cincinnati. The professor of art was a twinkly-eyed
chap with a mop of chestnut curls, an old pick-up truck, and a soft
southern drawl. I'll never forget the day he gave me a copy of
Frederick Franck's The Zen of Seeing: Seeing/Drawing as Meditation.
"This is the only book on drawing you'll ever need,"
he said.
That precious gift was my 'bible' for years, not because it told me how
to draw or how to see or how to meditate, but because it allowed me
inside the secret senses of the artist himself. Very few artists have
been able to, or have chosen to, share their creative insights so openly
and so exquisitely as Franck did. He touched the often trembling and
terrified artist in thousands who participated in his wonder-full
workshops.
Years later I was privileged to spend an English Easter in
the Devon countryside finding out for myself some of the secrets of this
great teacher. Franck's emphasis was on creating a sacred atmosphere
where the perceptual intelligence of the entire body was free to express
itself.
We worked in silence for three very demanding days;
it was like a retreat into a silent inner sanctum. Stopping our
external verbalizing seemed to slow down the inner mental chatter.
Franck's input was unobtrusive, gentle, and perceptively accurate. He
would quietly observe our working (we were seated well apart so that we
couldn't see each other's work), and simply point with his pencil to a
spot on the drawing. "You weren't present here, were you?" or "This,
where the leaf joins the stem, this is a point of meditation. Have you
really been there?"
Franck taught me that the human body – and even this version I call
'mine' – knows
how to draw exquisitely. That there is an invisible direct line from
eyeball to the tip of the pencil – a line that doesn't seem to go
anywhere near the neo-cortex. I learned that the key to what
Krishnamurti called "seeing without shadows" was a kind of ruthless relaxed
attention. On the final day of the workshop, I chose to draw a clump of
mosses – or rather, it chose me. Never, never would I have contemplated
choosing such a complex fragment of the universe, but we were instructed
to select from the table the object that reached out to us. The clump
of fresh, dew-dropped, springtime moss with a tiny primrose cradled in
its softness was all I could see on the crowded table.
Where to begin? [...]
miriam louisa simons
Excerpt from wildsight - the innocent eye
book three in the series of e-books empty canvas : wondering mind.
You can download this free e-book
here
(pdf 573 KB)
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WILDSIGHT -
THE INNOCENT EYE
contents
1 the innocent eye
2 relaxing the Buddha-body
3 attending to now ...
4 observer, observed, ...
5 enigmatic emptiness,
magical marks
6 references
artisans
creating from wonder
e-books
meditation
nondual perspectives
quotes about creativity
retreats
seeing
without shadows
slow art
the haiku moment
the wonder of wonder
more scribblings |
