I first began painting chairs back in 1986 or so, but like my figurative pieces, my early chairs were dismantled and abstracted in the picture plane. It took me a very long time to work through some deep psychic dismantling, born of a primary wounding that was my initiation onto a profound spiritual path of healing.
This "red chair" chair first appeared in one of my paintings in 2018, but the image did not remain in the final painting, and I largely forgot about it. I wasn't conscious of the chair imagery until it reappeared two years later (in 2020 during the Covid isolation) in the exact same canvas where it had first appeared. I was shocked when I realized that the image had the power to reassert itself in awareness and experience, sometimes without our conscious choice. After working with the red chair image in several paintings, I researched it and was more certain than ever that the image had arrived through me as conduit.
The single empty chair in my work points to the isolation that Covid has forced us to endure, and for me, it symbolizes a concept found in insight meditation called "taking the one seat." This concept refers to what Adyashanti calls the idea of "spiritual autonomy along with the soul's discovery of meaning," a process of translating an experience of awakening into something we can work with in everyday life. "Taking the one seat" means sitting with our own inner experience and not allowing that experience to become dissipated by externals.
In addition, the red chair symbolizes deep connections across invisible boundaries (essential to experience during isolation) as well as a seat and voice at the table of collective exchange. These meanings, of belonging, of connection, and of deep personal introspection, (all important themes during the Covid pandemic), are expressed through the imagery of the red chair.
This "red chair" chair first appeared in one of my paintings in 2018, but the image did not remain in the final painting, and I largely forgot about it. I wasn't conscious of the chair imagery until it reappeared two years later (in 2020 during the Covid isolation) in the exact same canvas where it had first appeared. I was shocked when I realized that the image had the power to reassert itself in awareness and experience, sometimes without our conscious choice. After working with the red chair image in several paintings, I researched it and was more certain than ever that the image had arrived through me as conduit.
The single empty chair in my work points to the isolation that Covid has forced us to endure, and for me, it symbolizes a concept found in insight meditation called "taking the one seat." This concept refers to what Adyashanti calls the idea of "spiritual autonomy along with the soul's discovery of meaning," a process of translating an experience of awakening into something we can work with in everyday life. "Taking the one seat" means sitting with our own inner experience and not allowing that experience to become dissipated by externals.
In addition, the red chair symbolizes deep connections across invisible boundaries (essential to experience during isolation) as well as a seat and voice at the table of collective exchange. These meanings, of belonging, of connection, and of deep personal introspection, (all important themes during the Covid pandemic), are expressed through the imagery of the red chair.
Taking the One Seat, 2020
Acrylic, Oil Stick, Charcoal, and Pencil on Canvas
48" x 36"
Acrylic, Oil Stick, Charcoal, and Pencil on Canvas
48" x 36"
Connection in Isolation, 2020
Acrylic, Oil Stick, Charcoal, and Pencil on Canvas
36" x 24"
Acrylic, Oil Stick, Charcoal, and Pencil on Canvas
36" x 24"
Across the Universe, 2020
Acrylic, Oil Stick, Charcoal, and Pencil on Canvas
24" x 36"
Acrylic, Oil Stick, Charcoal, and Pencil on Canvas
24" x 36"