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
Night is coming to the desert In the fading light Animals show up In a hurry As if their working day Begins Legs and tails Sharp little teeth Soon it is hard to tell If they aren’t really Thorny bushes Folds of earth Or empty rivulets Waiting for the floods That may or may not…
ByGiora Carmi
What happens here? It looks there is wind, coming from the right and everything that we see is effected. It is a strong wind. Little things are being blown away to the left.If the wind goes on like this for a longer time, what are we going to be left with? Maybe some branches will…
ByGiora Carmi
In this painting you can see the pain. It is in the lines, it is in the intensity of the colors, it is in the way the colored areas run away from each other, concentrating in themselves, as if the whole picture is falling apart. And you also see some environment: A horizon with two…
ByGiora Carmi
So you still have those monsters… she says.But I meant this to be a flower. It has some strange dark side to it. It’s true. It gives you a bad look. And this, I meant it to be a branch, a tree, and a piece of the sky is caught up in it.And this is…
ByGiora Carmi
I have been going through hard times with the pain, with meds that had terrible side effects, with a disappointment at the inability of medical Marijuana to help and with it own side effects too. I moved from having the pain relieved somewhat but starting to have heart problems, unpleasant changes in the digestive system,…
ByGiora Carmi
I came off the bed where I did not sleep and sat down to do a drawing. The colors will come in the day, I thought. This is indeed what happened. I had a feeling about how I wanted the language of the painting to be. It was a pleasant feeling, like a feeling that…
ByGiora Carmi
My mood improved this morning when I gave a name to the painting of yesterday. The name is Encumbered Flow (I wrote this a week ago). I had a not-so-good feeling about this painting and I thought about different ways to change it by adding more things. I didn’t. Maybe I could change the contrast…
ByGiora Carmi
I painted it mostly with my face very close to the paper. This is how I love to make art. From close up I feel that I am in the space of the painting. This is where I’d like to always be. Every area of color is like a place, a version of mood that…
ByGiora Carmi
The house was at the end When you started to climb you needed to be very daring You didn’t know that if you fell you’d float And then you saw that every adventure came from a belief that you had The big view the open view the view of eternity was the only view that…
ByGiora Carmi
4:40, early morning. I don’t know when it started. From that point on, I had the same dream all through the night, till now. The White House exploded and burned down. All the people who worked there came to work in my living room. There was place for all of them but it was crowded….
ByGiora Carmi
In the moment I finish it I know I want to use some colored pencil on it. I know where and how. I wait for the drawing to dry. I listen to the radio. The music is beautiful. Then I look again and the drawing is dry. And it is beautiful as it is. It…
ByGiora Carmi
Fear This is the subject of this painting. You can see that it is dark. The lines quiver and are afraid to move. Trying to come together and collaborate, they can’t. Fear is like a cloud that covers the open sky of possibilities and free choice. No, you can’t do this, fear says, and you…
