Childhood

Growing up in Hove, UK in a non-observant, dysfunctional, Jewish family, attending a Christian school and trying to make sense of traumatic childhood experiences raised questions of self and identity, stimulating a spiritual search from the age of 11.  Trauma was a wonderful, although not pleasant, teacher: when 9, nearly losing my mother to tuberculosis, parental divorce and the suicides of my brother as a child and later when I was 29 the suicide of my alcoholic husband opened my mind to impermanence, the transience of all things and that life definitely didn't seem to be how I was conditioned to believe it was. This led to questioning the meaning of life, undergoing an awful lot of psychotherapy and embarking on a spiritual quest.

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Discovering the Power of Art

Wanting to learn more about the mind, as a young adult in the 1980's I worked as a nursing assistant in a psychiatric hospital where I was invited to participate in an inspiring six-month staff art therapy group. This experience was a spingboard opening my mind to the vast potential of self discovery through art, leading to practising as a committed artist exploring the mind and inner experience as subject matter.

 

Contemplating Mark Rothko's paintings at the Tate Modern and listening to Mahler's Resurrection Symphony conducted by Simon Rattle further opened my mind to how the arts can reach beyond purely visual and aesthetic dimensions to be powerful transforming, healing, revealing, and spiritually awakening experiences. I began to understand that I wanted to investigate and make visible both the suffering human condition and also our timeless universal essence. A new journey began exploring art, psychology and spirituality. 

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Art and Spirituality

My husband’s suicide in 1981 catapulted me into a search for meaning and healing. I studied Christian Essene spiritual healing with the College of Spiritual Psychotherapy and Kabbalah with a rabbi’s wife. With an increasing desire to integrate art, psychology and spirituality, I embarked on a BA Hons degree in Painting (1987-1991) at the then Brighton College of Art where I began studying Hindu and Tibetan mandala painting, the work of Agnes Martin, Jackson Pollock and Richard Pousette-Dart, Paul Klee and Kandinsky and travelled to India to research Indian women artists and miniature painting. I recall asking a tutor on my degree course, ‘How do I paint pure consciousness?’ to which he replied, ‘Become pure consciousness, then paint’. I would also add, ‘By painting you can discover pure consciousness’. Discovering how to do this became my creative koan.

 

My art work became increasingly abstract as I searched for ways to make visible a sense of how things seemed to me beyond their superficial physical appearance. In 1991 I wrote a dissertation, ‘The Symbolism of the Center in Religion and Sacred Art’, in which I  investigated the relationship between sacred art and the perennial spiritual teachings. Interest in the perennial philosophy led me to look east before arriving in 1991 at Tibetan Buddhism, my spiritual home. In the midst of all this I discovered the joys and challenges of parenthood with the birth of my son Jacob in 1990, following fervent prayers for something that would help me destroy my ego. 

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Discovering Mindfulness Meditation

In addition to exhibiting and practising as an artist, in 1995 I began studying Tibetan Buddhism, which was significantly transformative. I was so grateful to receive teachings from authentic spiritual masters including Ato Rinpoche and Khenpo Tsultrim Gyamtso Rinpoche. In 2005 I discovered my main teacher, Mingyur Rinpoche, a Tibetan Buddhist teacher holding lineages for Mahamudra and Dzogchen which offer progressive training in the path to enlightenment that particularly suited my mind and turned out to be life changing.

 

Meditation and Creativity

I also began studying traditional Tibetan thangka painting for two years with two nuns. Although a beautiful art form, I increasingly wanted to investigate how I could integrate meditation with contemporary, rather than traditional, fine art practices. This led me to study for a Masters Degree in Fine Art (2005-2007). For my degree exhibition in 2007 I created a short video, 'Letter to My Mum' in response to my mother asking why I wanted to ordain as a Buddhist nun. A week after my show closed, I was ordained as a Buddhist nun in Oxford UK by His Eminence Thrangu Rinpoche.  

 

I remained a nun for seven years, living in semi-retreat in my home in Suffolk UK. In 2014 I returned to lay life as I felt that while being a nun had been extremely beneficial, I needed to be freer to explore integrating mindfulness meditation with my own creative practice, as well as developing mindful creativity coaching and teaching art practices for helping others.​ 

 

Since 2007 I have been developing projects integrating art and the meditation practices given to me by Mingyur Rinpoche, along with teaching art and mindful creativity coaching. Contemplation and meditation define the subject matter of my art, informing and underpinning activity before, during and after creative activity. I am discovering that the process of integrating art, meditation and everyday life is both healing and transformative.

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Interest in my work led to being invited as a speaker by the Institute of Oriental Philosophy for their conference, Buddha Mind - Creative Mind? and Channel 4 TV 4Thought programme. Dr Mick Collins also discussed my work in his book, The Unselfish Spirit, following seeing The Stripper, a one hour play about my life and work devised in collaboration with director Dr. Pema Clark, and performed at the University of East Anglia, UK.

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Deepening  explorations of mindfulness, meditation and art have led to receiving a MOFSA travel grant to the USA and two scholarships from Barre Center for Buddhist Studies in Massachusetts, USA to participate in their in-depth Dharma and Art courses and residencies.

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Current Interests

With the kind generosity of a further grant from MOFSA and Arts Council England,  I am currently developing a project with the working title Awakening Through Creativity. In addition to exhibiting, the documentation from this project will form the basis for a course and a resource book on the practice of creativity as a support for meditation.