The Art Meditation “puzzle”
Piece together your meditation practice with an artwork and a meditative prompt.
Find below a collection of 11 artworks known and unknown, some cropped to a detail, others full. You’ll also find 11 prompts and mini meditations. To create your practice, you’ll have to pair a prompt with a piece of art. Try as many combinations as you can, and try the same prompts on different artworks. Get curious and playful, add some whimsy and see how every detail changed, makes your art experience different. Don’t be afraid to be repetitive. Practice tend to be.
1- As you look at the piece of art, take a moment (a few seconds or minutes) to listen to yourself breathing.
2 - Take the piece of art outside today. On the balcony, at the beach, in a forest, at a café. See how the space around you changes the way you see the piece. Sit in silence and notice.
3-Look at a painting allowing your gaze to take it in as a whole. You’re not looking a particular part of it, you are aware of the whole picture. When you want to blink, close your eyes and bring the image “between your eyes”. What do you see? How did the piece change?
4- Choose a detail from a piece of art and try to sketch it as a fragment: a torso, a fold, a curve. Do not aim for accuracy—aim to understand the form through your hand. Don’t overcomplicate the materials and techniques. A a pencil or a pen, a piece of printer paper or a lined paper, they all work as fine.
5 - Go to a perfume shop and take 3 perfume samples on small pieces of paper. Put them in your pocket and forget about them. Stand before your chosen piece of art, close your eyes and bring one sample close to your nose. Take a deep breath in, and then open your eyes. Spend as much time looking at the whole artwork, or a tiny detail. Repeat the process with the other samples, and notice how they change your experience. Then move away for the piece of art (close the book, get out of the museum) and let some time pass doing anything. After a while, sitting calmly, smell the samples one by one, and see what images, and feelings they bring back.
6 - Look at a piece of art of as long as you can. When you feel you’re done, rub your palms to generate heat, and touch your navel and chest. Stay there for 10 breaths. visualizing a gold-white light under your hands and in your body.
7 - Look at a piece fo art for a few moments. Pick a “path” in it and follow it slowly with your gaze as you inhale. And back to the beginning as you exhale. Focus on your “path” and forget about the rest of the painting.
8 - Peek today’s artwork and do your own formal analysis. Whether you know anything about it or not, focus on only what you see. Not symbols, not stories, not meaning.
9 - Find a timeless space or place, somewhere where no one will think of finding you for a moment. Take the piece of art with you, be alone with it. Look at it deeply, and feel as if it is “looking back” at you. Give it the energy of your gaze and take the energy it’s giving you. How does it feel?
10 - Practice the tree posture from our yoga sequence, while looking at a single spot on a piece of art. Feel free to choose different poses and different art pieces while you practice.
11 - Take the piece of art outside today. Maybe a piece you know well, in a different location. In the library, at the park, at a museum’s café. See how the space around you changes the way you see the piece. Sit in silence and notice.
Take as much time as you need with your practice, and meet me at the next one.
Love,
Evi