i am usha

The Dark. A natural and essential part of our existence.  Not evil.  Not inferior.  Deep.  Forceful.

Darkness is intense,  and so widely misunderstood.  Who has not used the word "darkness" to describe something ominous and threatening; when in truth it is simply the unknown.  It takes a brave deconstruction, followed by an honest reconstruction, of language, culture and history to fully understand what darkness truly is.  It takes conquering the fear of the unknown.

One thing I have had to admit to myself, in these times, is my own reluctance to go deep and wide.  To be honest with myself and to keep Looking.  Especially when it is hard to look, when what I see before me is greed and unimaginable cruelty.  The Horror.  Looking at the world with my eyes wide open and my heart wide open feels like a punch in the chest, leaving me breathless.  I begin the year 2017 with the humble realization that I, too, have been hiding from my own intense darkness. 

What I learned as a child:

What one sees in the dark will not be believed.  

Turn on a light and it disappears.  

What I learned as an adult:

Leave the seeds of your own imagination and intuition in the light of the bright sun. 

They will shrivel and die.  

For they need the cool damp soil, the long dark nights and rain.

Finally, I not only understand darkness; I thrive in it. I am learning to see in it.  I need to go into darkness to fully understand myself and the world.  There I have found a deep connection with my ancestors.  My ancestors are my connection with the unwritten past that I carry within, making them the seeds of compassion for myself and all life.  

In the light of day we learn we are all one in the world, and we reach out to the sun.  In the darkness we learn we are all one in the universe, and we germinate.  

Darkness is where seeds germinate.

My journey into this acceptance takes me into the mythology of my patrilineal ancestry and my Sanskrit name, Usha.  Let me be clear - India is more than the land of chai tea and asanas, colorful goddess memes about enlightenment and little brown men in tree poses.   That is the surface of India, the travel brochure ad, the guru's full page ad.  I love my yoga classes and I appreciate the West's need for something to ease the imbalance in its own culture.  I struggle at how often that leads to a narrow vision, the appropriation of only a slice of a monumentally complex culture, existing now in a country devastated and transformed by Neocolonialism.  There are certainly many Westerners who consciously address this problem.  And I respect the complexity of American life, being a part of it while I sometimes bristle at it.  I have driven home frustrated from at least a few yoga classes, when, chatting after class, I have tried to explain my own experience of India.  I lack the words as much as the culture I live in lacks the understanding.  It is an impasse that has led me to create a world of art surrounding this name, Usha, and all it represents.  You cannot embrace the shiny surface of India without swallowing the darkness that is as much hers.  And this goes for all of spirituality, all of nature, all of this existence.

Usha is also a character I have worked on in several stories.  Often intensely personal work,  I seldom felt comfortable having my stories be public.  They are stories that reflect my most personal struggles, my relationship with my Indian father, my outsider status, my stubborn pride over an identity I fail to fully understand.  Usha has been a protagonist in a private monologue.  She journeys into darkness, giving me the courage to reveal these stories and the imagination to create new ones.  In the dimming light of the Empire's Lies I feel the time has come.

 I am one of many.

Sometime in the 70's:  a day in the life of Usha.  

"I am Usha" is not about history and a retelling of ancient myths.  There are piles of books for that.  It is my personal discovery of an unknown lineage through the journey of visionary art making.  It is my own solitary conversation with my ancestors when I wear my Sanskrit name.  It is a change that occurs when you see your present self through the eyes of your cellular memory.   It is more than a name, and more than an exploration of culture; in the end it is a search for meaning in the abyss.  Implicit in the search is the release of old norms of thinking, a rejection of dogma, opinions and assumptions.  What replaces these untruths does not reveal itself immediately and an uncomfortable darkness descends.  Uncomfortable because it is the unknown, the one thing feared so deeply.  But Darkness and Unknowing have become my closest confidants in this language of art I have developed in a lifetime.

"I am Usha" is a journey into the mysterious understanding of the necessities of darkness that ultimately leads to the light of communicating and connecting with the world.  Each of these cannot exist without the other, making me realize "I am Usha" is my way of joining the divided parts of myself as a mirror to the divided world I live in.  It is my hope that this creative vision quest will unite past and present, illustrating the illuminating potential of darkness.  In the end this is all I ask of my art.  

Note: all paintings are my own, painted between 1994-1997.

Sentient Beings among the Humans

The world of the Sentient Beings has always been here. 

It's just that we don't always see.

The Sentient Beings were in danger of becoming invisible to all.  Jackal turned himself into a man, and tried to convince the people that these beings exist, are all around us.

Jackal can still be recognized by the hole where the moon jumped through him.

When Jackal vanished from the Sentient Scape, the introvert traveled to earth to find him.

It was all quite a mess for awhile.  Most humans mocked Jackal for his outlandish stories, and they could not see the world he pointed out to them.

The Introvert landed in a dark alley far from her intended destination and found herself alone in a hostile world.

And Masquerade knew this was his moment, his one chance to accomplish plans, plans that were born out of greed and fear.

From Dreaming to Dancing

More Jackal... she is Dancing Jackal, after a long journey via magic arrow.   
During the long and reckless journey she is pierced by the arrow
 and has to land in a canyon where there is no escape. 
Dancing Jackal does not have the patience and reserve that Dreaming Jackal has, 
but she shines like the moon.

       

          While trapped in the canyon, with only a few hours of sunlight, 
           Dreaming Jackal noticed the light of the moon during the dark night, 
and became greedy for more.
This makes Dreaming Jackal a servant of the moon.

      

She tried to jump through the moon, but the moon jumped through her.

After the moon jumped through Jackal she glowed all night and hid in a cave all day.
Now she is  trapped in darkness all day long.

Having suffered many days in darkness Jackal became frustrated with the the silence,
and learned to play the rhythms of the moon.

I hope you are enjoying the story of the Sentient Beings.  This story has no beginning and no end, so you can join in at anytime.

These are drawings from my sketchbook; some will be made available as prints on Society6 

at Dawn Patel Art: http://society6.com/dawnpatel

You can also follow the story of Jackal on facebook or Instagram, where I post as I go along.

The Story... no beginning and no end

The story I am telling with the Sentient Beings has no beginning and no end.  

It started sometime... perhaps when I was sleeping.  

It will end sometime... in a future that doesn't exist yet.  

So, like I said, it has no beginning and no end.  Jump in whenever you like.

The Seer.  In his youth he is a runner and a reacher.

The Seer is a Visionary with a third eye in his forehead, which makes him embarrassed and confused.  After all he is not living in a mythical land of Eastern Gods, but rather South Dakota.  At least for now.  He is not sure how he got there and he is certain he doesn't belong.  He has visions, but he doesn't take the time to see them clearly, he just reaches for relief and runs away from his fears.  So... in his youth he is always running and reaching.  I guess you can say at least he's moving forward... but at this rate who knows where to?  He could really end up going in circles if he doesn't slow down.

The Seer, in her old Age.  A cloud covers her third eye.

The funny thing about Sentient Beings, they exist in different realms, times and forms all at once.  While the Young Seer is busy sprinting to who knows where, the Old Seer is unable to use her wings and fly, and she is unable to use that third eye, because it's covered with a cloud.  Her life was hard, and her vision was clouded by pain, loss and disappointment.  She stopped seeing the visions when she started to only see the hardship in her life.

Eagle Eye see through the layers of existence.  

Just when you started to lose hope... in comes Eagle Eye.  She is a shapeshifting spirit who comes and goes from our lonely Seer's life to reveal a deeper truth.  Hopefully to shed some vision on the visionary so he can start using that extra eyeball and not become a hopeless old lady.  Eagle Eye flies above all the realms and sees through the many layers of existence.  Most of use see one, or maybe two layers, but Eagle Eye has seen so many he has lost count.  For awhile she thought there were 13, but she's realized it just keeps going and going and going....

What has Eagle Eye learned that can help poor Seer?  At the moment that's a mystery, because although Eagle Eye can see, he can't speak.  So... I guess they will all have to find another way to communicate.

Stay tuned... some more characters are on the way to help explain all this.  Infinity and Tree are not far behind.

The Magical Mystery Stones

The Mystery Stone project will launch at the end of June.  Hundreds of little painted stones will be released into the world.

It’s time to write about the mystery stones.  It all began when I woke up one day and decided I needed to paint a thousand stones and get them out into the world.  This made sense to me, as the natural evolution of "Brilliant Stranger."  Brilliant Stranger is a name that came to me in a dream, was once a curious traveling character in my sketchbooks, then for seven years a busy retail shop, and now... a mystery.

I’ve been increasingly absorbed in this project, sharing my progress and ideas on Facebook and Instagram and Twitter.  (Well… I’m a pretty terrible Tweeter, but I do share photos of the stones there. )  All this social media is what you make it, right?  After all, a computer and its' many functions are meant to be a tool, but like any creation, it can control you, or be controlled by you.  I have often reflected on the question: what am I doing with the technology I have at my fingertips?  (And what is it doing to me?)

www.brilliantstranger.com

Two summers ago I had a dream.  In the dream I was led around a room by a man who placed his hand on my shoulder and calmly spoke to me.  This being led me through what would best be described as a computer lab, with many people working at their screens.  Suddenly the screens went blank.  Everyone reacted differently, some pounded on their keyboards, some shook the screens, some sat back and stared.  A few screens began to come back into focus, but not all.  My “guide” told me this: “Those who know why they are doing what they doing will control the technology.”  Then I woke up.  What I took from that dream was the realization that mastering the tools may be a doorway,  but mastering the art of self knowledge is the key.  

So now I am using new technology and a raw material as old as they come to create the Mystery Stone project.  My "why" is this: to share what to me is the most magical thing about being an artist - The MYSTERY.  In the process of making art, things "become" what to me feels like what they are meant to become.  We (artists) facilitate, we nuture, we work very hard and we may apply a great deal of effort.  The way I see it, we don't determine the outcome, but we can control the technology that leads to an art experience.   And then it goes out into the world, and like our children, has a life of it's own.  It flows through us and we flow through it, and everyone who engages with it has their own experience.  Those experiences are what I understand to be the path to self knowledge, an acceptance of what IS, rather than a need to keep or control what we WANT TO BE.  So this project is my way of sharing that experience with hundreds, perhaps thousands of strangers and friends,  friends and strangers.  We can all watch the Stones "become" as the project unfolds over time.

"We should never turn away from what nature has to show us. "  Jana Levin

Back to the Stones.  In a time when our tools change everyday, when there’s a new app, program, operating system and gadget born every hour I like thinking about the tools of antiquity.  How stable and seemingly unchanging, a tool pounded from hard stone.  A tool for communication, a slate tablet.  A Rune.  A Beti Stone.  All these ignite my imagination, especially because they do change.  Over time, in new and different settings, even a stone changes. There is nothing in life that doesn’t change.  Permanence does not exist.  So perhaps our fast changing world of phones and screens is no less “real” than a world of stone and steel? 

"There is not a single true work of art that has not in the end added to the inner freedom
 of each person who has known and loved it."  Albert Camus

Rather than debate WHAT IS REAL and WHICH IS BETTER, I feel better equipped and much happier to wonder, marvel and witness this changing world we live in.  So I chose something so seemingly concrete, old, and stable to be the primary subject of a project based on the concept of impermanence and change.  The main suggestion (I am not calling it a rule, because it is a choice) in the Mystery Stone Project is to release the stones back into the world.  Anyone who is given or discovers a stone is asked to return it back into the world, into the flow where it can be found again and again and again.  And we can all just see where it goes.  And what it does, sees, and tells us, through all of our actions, our eyes, and our words.

Please join us on Brilliant Stranger on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/brilliantstranger and/or Mystery Stones on Instagram http://instagram.com/mysterystones to take part in the project.  If you find a stone you are invited to share a photo, thoughts or feelings on Facebook, instagram or via email.  Instructions/Guidelines are posted on www.brilliantstranger.com