ART IS LIFE - life is art (about my way of teaching)

Instead of sharpening our pencils, we need to sharpen our minds.
My teaching starts at the beginning.
The beginning is presence.
Open awareness, curiosity, and the acceptance of everything that is.
ART IS BEAUTY. What emerges and might become form is not to be judged, rated, compared. What emerges must be treated with gratefulness and awe. Everything is. Nothing should be excluded at the beginning. NO exclusion, only inclusion. Free from conventions, prejudice and without preconceptions.
ART IS WITHOUT PRETENSE. Creativity can only appear and flourish in a place of (inner) stillness. Which needs to be activated, cultivated, and protected.
That is the beginning.
ART IS MEDITATION. We practice mindfulness with curiosity, humbleness and kindness. Which will be the foundation for our art making and for our art appreciating.
ART IS VULNERABILITY. Being one with what is. Moment by moment. As we fully surrender to the work.
ART IS HONESTY. Only what is meaningful to us might become meaningful to others. If the art is contaminated in any way then it cannot be meaningful.
ART IS EXCHANGE. Action and interaction, changing, evolving, doing and not doing. An open dialogue with our inner world and the outer world, an integral part of our existence. unique, but not separate, not special, not elitist, not exclusive.
ART IS. Just like life is: the interconnectedness of everything with everything. When we learn to accept what is, then art can become a powerful vehicle for insight, growth, and wisdom.
ART IS NO-THING. If mediation can be my anchor, then art can be my grounding. Without solid grounding, the anchor cannot hold. ART IS NOT A VANITY. It's not about fame and not a way of buying love.
ART IS A VIRTUE. Not a commodity. Its quality cannot be measured in monetary values or by conventional reactive standards.
ART IS THE APPLICATION OF MINDFULNESS. It is a testing ground for the quality of our presence. Thinking and not thinking, a measuring device for our state of mind. A playground for the expansion of our consciousness.
ART IS A TOOL. A tool to improve the quality of our sensory system, our thinking, experiencing.
ART IS RESPONSIBILITY. To ourselves and to others. A connector, a friend, a guide, a teacher.
ART IS WORK. If we take art serious in that way, then art can be everything we want it to be. Being what we really are, in open exchange with the universe, transcending into presence with each new work, with every new beginning.