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
I prepared many colors that were to go into many shapes. But when the painting got to this point, I knew it was finished. There is an area where most of the colors are concentrated. From there, spreading to all directions, this pattern of things-added-to-things, where there are no filled-in colors, goes on beyond the…
ByGiora Carmi
One day before, according to the Gregorian calendar, I am 70. A good friend asked me how does it feel, and I did not have anything special to say. It feels like something lived in this body, that is never the same body, and this body is almost transparent, it is not real. It floats…
ByGiora Carmi
I called it “The Family.” This is what I thought when I made it. I started with the figure in black, which is the man. Then the child in brown, leaning at the man and I felt then that I wanted to add the woman in pink. The man is frightening. He wears a gown,…
ByGiora Carmi
The drawing was done at 10pm, the painting – in the morning after. It is like a very big puppet. The head is too big and heavy in the composition. The mechanism is old. It stood outside in the rain and plants started growing on it in some places. You can almost hear the clunking…
ByGiora Carmi
For a few days I did not make many paintings in my daily working on myself, as I used to do. It felt that I was doing a lot with each one and needed some space between them. This is a painting I started very late at night, finished in the morning and wrote about…
ByGiora Carmi
I have been doing a series of drawings about desire. It just came up and I let it be. Here is one more painting about desire. But desire is becoming more and more beautiful. And here I am starting to know about the way of coming out of addictions, if this is what you want…
ByGiora Carmi
I am moved Because it is beautiful for me Meaning, Something from home Love coming through There is an external story Of shapes doing Like, maybe, a tree grows on a rock Maybe it is turning into a monster Doing strange things But inside In a one two three rhythm We go from total darkness…
ByGiora Carmi
Sometime during the night and early in the morning I painted the pain. Here it is. Then, in the morning, I heard a program on the radio in which a social psychologist (Ellen Langer) talked about her finding that it is our beliefs that determine the outcome that we experience. For example, if I do…
ByGiora Carmi
Night. I draw in the darkness with one lamp over the table. I Collect words from the drawing and scramble them. There is a person there, tense all over. There is rain and blood and dirty green. I make a poem out of these, trusting the funny and loving energy of this strange universe to…
ByGiora Carmi
It is a key drawing in the process of my relief from major programs in the subconscious. It describes fear. There is a body there and it is full of small waves of fear. The fear goes everywhere, the head, the chest, the hands, the muscular stomach and the pelvis. There are three places where,…
ByGiora Carmi
I did so many paintings from the time I wrote about one. I’ll do a summary of two, as I look at them now. Here is a painting that I called: Birds and Water. It was done in a daydreaming state, imagining a place I’d like to experience. There are parts of birds in light…
ByGiora Carmi
Two good friends in the tree house This is a painting from two days ago. I did not write about all of the art that I made. Many times there is a painting to write about but I want to paint more, so a gap forms. I wanted to clear everything or actually to accept…
