I have a gift that I discovered in my twenties. I could read art and know how the people who made it felt when they made their art. This gift has developed a great deal since I started working with people to lessen their suffering, using art-making in the process. Today much more information comes to me through people’s art. And more still comes through my own art-work, done in people’s presence, or when I am aware of them.
I used to be a graphic designer and an illustrator. I wrote for children and a little bit for adults. I came to NYC in 1985, 40 years old, married with three children and started a new career as an illustrator only. A few years later I became involved with Chan Meditation Center and studied meditation and Buddhist knowledge with the late Master Sheng-yen from Taiwan. For twelve years I was in a process of deepening my meditation. I had many more experiences and insights and my life changed. After having illustrated more than 40 children’s books and writing two of them, I left this career too and went to NYU to study art therapy.
ByGiora Carmi
There was a ladder ready to climb There was a golden gate to open Then the inner wind came running Like a wild mythological animal And took everything away with it Come, we’re going Forget about the preparations. I used to be a graphic designer and an illustrator. I became involved with the…
ByGiora Carmi
I am leafing through blocks of mixed-media-paper that hold drawings and readings over a 13 day period. It is amazing to find that all the drawings dealt with the same issue, and that there is a movement there. I was not aware of these as I drew and read every day. They say that if…
ByGiora Carmi
I have not written for the blog for a long time. The reason is that I constantly change. In a strange way I do not know who I am, because every time I look to see, it is someone else. Is this an exaggeration? Yes. The changes are small but enough to bewilder me. I…
ByGiora Carmi
This drawing describes me exactly, as I am now. And it can show me the way to change this way that I am, into another one that I prefer, if I feel like it. It still surprises me to see how well this method works in showing me to myself. You can say that there…
ByGiora Carmi
Everything that I used to see as concrete is turning into states of moving energy. I haven’t written for the blog for quite a long time. The reason is that I am changing and for a while I lost the clear feeling of direction. I would wake up every morning and ask: Where am I? What…
ByGiora Carmi
You are swimming in the universe. You ask: How can I feel better now? You sense how the question changes everything in the universe. You gulp it in and swallow the universe completely. You feel how it becomes you. Now you are those vibes. Lick your lips. It was good. Now, when you start feeling…
ByGiora Carmi
This is about looking up, while meditating or imagining. It is a good idea, and a strange thing too, as in an infinite field, where there cannot be any place that is different from another, there is no middle, no side, no up and no down. So looking up belongs to the relative world. Some…
ByGiora Carmi
I started a face, scrambled of course. It started to have features of a bird and I continued making birds. Not so clear indeed. I did a cloud and a little piece of a plant. Then painted, a long process that lasted till the evening, with breaks of course. I liked the way it looked,…
ByGiora Carmi
What do we see? One complexity is flying up in the sky, above another complexity. Maybe the second one is the ground? Maybe it also floats in space? Maybe the ground is floating in space? If it does, then this goes along with what I started to experience more and more, that our reality is…
ByGiora Carmi
This time I’m not going to write about this painting and the other one down the page. I added them here to decorate. Maybe they are connected? These words came to me: As long as you send out, you do not receive. The elaboration is below. I am doing short meditations during the day, of…
ByGiora Carmi
I do not plan. I make what wants to be made. I listen in and do and do Until I know it’s finished I still do not know what it is I prop it up and look. I realize I like it. I find that it’s a happy painting. Someone is riding the playful waves…
ByGiora Carmi
The pain was strong and unrelenting. I decided to paint it. In the stage in which it was a drawing only, it expressed the craziness and strength of the pain quite effectively. When I added the colors the effect became somewhat weaker. The power of lines to affect the areas that they point at, was…
