IZABELA
JAROSZEWSKA /
Ph.D. Visual Artist/Fine Art Photographer
PROJECTS /
"Fundamentally, art is the expression of Unconditional Beauty, which transcends the ordinary beauty of good and bad".
Chögyam Trungpa
Genuine art has the power to awaken and liberate. Chögyam Trungpa called this type of art “dharma art”—any creative work that springs from an awakened state of mind, characterized by directness, unselfconsciousness, and nonaggression. Dharma art provides a vehicle to appreciate the nature of things as they are and express it without any struggle or desire to achieve. A work of dharma art brings out the goodness and dignity of the situation it reflects—dignity that comes from the artist’s interest in the details of life and sense of appreciation for experience.
Dharma means “norm” or “truth.” It is also defined as peace and coolness, because it reduces the heat of neurosis, the heat of aggression, passion, and ignorance. So dharma is very ordinary, very simple. It is the stage before you lay your hand on your brush, your clay, your canvas. It is very basic, peaceful, and cool. It is free from the neurosis that creates obstacles to perceiving the phenomenal world properly and fully, as a true artist should.
When relaxation develops in us, through letting go of neurosis and experiencing some sense of space around us, we begin to feel good about ourselves. We feel that our existence is worthwhile. We begin to feel that we are fully genuine. From that point of view, one of the basic principles of a work of art is the absence of lying. Genuine art tells the truth.
The purpose of a work of art is bodhisattva action. This means that your production, manifestation, demonstration, and performance should be geared toward waking people up from their neurosis.
Dharma art means not creating further pollution in society; dharma art means creating greater vision and greater sanity. Art has to be done with genuineness, as it actually is, in the name of basic beauty and basic goodness.
When sense objects and sense perceptions and sense organs meet, and they begin to be synchronized, you let yourself go a little further. You open yourself. It is like a camera aperture: your lens is open at that point. Then you see things, and they reflect into your state of mind. That seems to be the basic idea of how a perceiver looks at a work of art.
Being an artist is not an occupation: it is your life, your whole being. From the time you wake up in the morning, when the buzzer in your clock rings, until you go to bed.