Whether you're seeking creative inspiration or technical guidance, our collection of books on the arts offers eye-opening perspectives on creative practice. Explore the practices of making and appreciating art and music, while gaining insight into creating more evocative artwork.
Visionary artist Alex Grey began his career as a medical illustrator at Harvard Medical School, but is best known for paintings that present the physical and subtle anatomy of an individual in the context of cosmic, biological and technological evolution. His work has been featured in Time and Newsweek, on the Discovery Channel, and as album art for TOOL, the Beastie Boys and Nirvana.
In contrast to the religious artist who repeats a previously established and prescribed iconic tradition, the contemporary artist must find a way to plunge into the transpersonal state in order to experience and then convincingly convey transcendental reality. The revelations of mystical experience constitute the initiation of the spiritually inclined artist. An initiate is one who is introduced to new knowledge, admitted into seership, sometimes with secret rites. There are many ways by which the aspirant may access the mystical dimension: meditation, prayer, yoga, breathwork, tantric practice, dream, vision quest, working with a qualified spiritual master, visualization, fasting, sleep deprivation, sensory isolation, shamanic drumming, chanting, near-death experiences, and psychedelic or entheogenic drugs. These or other related methods may trigger experiences that take the aspirant from a mundane perception of reality, wherein objects seem separate and composed of only material properties, to a view of divine unity with boundless depth of dimension and meaning.
Enjoy this free full-size page and see for yourself how fun, relaxing, and enlightening coloring can be:
The whole philosophy of art is that you don’t try to be artistic but you just approach the objects as they are, and then the message comes automatically. When you look at a painting by a great artist, it doesn’t look like someone actually painted it, but it just seemed to happen by itself. There’s no gap, no cracks at all; it’s one unit, complete.
From The Collected Works of Chögyam Trungpa, Volume Seven, page 102
Heart of the Brush
Kazuaki Tanahashi is a renowned calligraphic artist and teacher who works with hundreds of students throughout the world each year. In this online workshop, you can study with him up close, as he guides you in exploring the wondrous world of brush calligraphy.
Remembering Stephen Addiss: 1935-2022
It is with deep sadness, mixed with appreciation for such a fruitful life, that we share the news that prolific author and a great scholar of East Asian art, Stephen Addiss, passed away on May 11th, 2...
Stepping into the Unknown | An Excerpt from Trust the Process
Stepping into the Unknown  An Excerpt from...
Exercises to Spark Your Creative Spirit
Grounded in Jungian psychology, ...
The Way of Art | Breathing In, Breathing Out
The Ekphrastic Response An Excerpt from Deep Creativity Excerpt by Jennifer Leigh Selig EKPHRASIS When I was preparing to teach a class to my Engaged Humanities and the Creative Life masterâ...
