Contemplation and Immersion: Exploring the Five Elements and Australian Landscape

Abstract

This practice-led research project investigates how Tibetan Buddhist concepts of the Five Elements - Earth, Water, Fire, Air and Space - as the substance of all things and processes, can be integrated into a contemporary painting practice. I develop my studio practice as an effective and original integration of Buddhist philosophical insights with immersion in the Australian landscape and an active engagement with the contemporary culture of painting. Contemporary Tibetan and Australian artists, both indigenous and non-indigenous, along with my Dzogchen Tibetan Buddhist practice and time spent in elemental landscapes with Australian indigenous elders and artists, serve as context for my studio research. Drawing on various cultural experiences and integrating them opens up the potential of painting as a field within which different philosophical, cultural, formal and material influences can be brought together into a fluid exchange. I explore the interface of Eastern philosophy and Western art through a contemplative art practice that draws on the philosophical theories and iconography of the Five Elements represented in the Tibetan and Indian Vajrayana tradition of Buddhism. Engaging with the natural philosophy of the Five Elements in relation to the genius loci, I develop codes corresponding to aspects of landscape using organic form, rhythms of energy and underlying geometry to symbolize each element. Exploring the intersection of figuration and abstraction, I employ the Five Elements to abstract the Australian landscape and apply the intrinsic qualities of each element to transform landscape in terms of colour, shape, light, luminosity and meaning. Activating the Five Elements in response to the Australian landscape I completed five bodies of work responding to the genius loci from landscapes as diverse as Lake Mungo, the Glasshouse Mountains, Kakadu, Central Western Desert and Mystery Bay. This series of paintings provided an extended sense of space and timelessness; a sense of interconnectedness where internal and external worlds are in harmony and contemplative states naturally arise.