Art Presentation by Jef Gunn

Join us after morning shamatha for a presentation of Jef Gunn’s artwork in the KCC community space, where several of his pieces are currently on display. Below you’ll find Jef’s reflection on this collection along with a short bio for those who haven’t yet had the chance to meet him!

I’ve been told that the Buddha once said: Nothing is as it appears. Nor is it otherwise.

What makes form significant? We experience the world through our five senses. We make things. We find meaning in things, in forms. How this happens is in some ways mysterious. It’s in the mind and in our five senses, which are not separate. It’s also physical, existent, made of materials and time. And mind. Experience of life flows.

Earth, Wind, Water, Sky, Mind. Patterns of meaning.

The paintings and prints presented here at KCC have been made over a couple of decades. We’ve selected artworks from my studio that attempt to represent aspects of the Buddha Dharma, or the legends and practices of the Dharma, in a modern idiom. Some of the patterns here I learned from our beloved Sanje Elliot, who passed a few years ago. Others are inspired by other teachers, like Lama Michael, and my Sufi teacher, Zeinob, who directed me to Kagyu Buddhist practice and to KCC. And, by our own meditation practices, and by examples in existing artworks that have awakened a spirit of quiet knowing.

One example from which I’ve taken inspiration is the statue of Radiating Lokeshvara at the Honolulu Art Museum. The Boddhisatva Avalokiteshvara. From the front it appears male with patterns of chain-mail armor ; from the back, it appears female with patterns of sitting buddhas. From that stone carving, without head, or arms, or legs, but repeating seated buddhas and ovals, I’ve produced several artworks. Some are here. The practice of repetition of the six syllables and the spaciousness that flows from that practice, is shown in the repetitions of marks in some of the paintings. With each ink imprint, or gold leaf flame, the six syllables are whispered. Some include the thigse, a geometric pattern for laying out the form of a standing or sitting Buddha, or Bodhisattva, that I learned from Sanje.

The Silent Bell series were prints from a large broken piece of steel that we found under the boiler here at KCC during the remodel: the three bells at the beginning and ending of meditation. This piece of steel now supports a statue of Kuan Yin (Avalokiteshvara) under the maple tree at my home.

About Jef Gunn

Jef Gunn was born in Seattle in 1955 and grew up along the West Coast from Puget Sound to southern California and Hawaii. He is for the most part self-taught, having begun his training in drawing and painting within the California Junior College system in the early and mid 1970s. He has held two residencies in Europe, which were deeply influential: fifteen months in Barcelona (1986-87) where he discovered the mediaeval religious icons in the Museo de Arte Catalán, and Spanish abstract surrealists like Antoni Tàpies and Joan Miró; and seven months at the Cité Internationale des Arts, (Paris), in 1988. His 2005 completion of a formal BFA program at Marylhurst University in Oregon provided a rigorous opportunity for Gunn to continue exploring the ideas and practices that inform his painting. He lives and works in Portland, Oregon.

“Painting is nothing less than an inquiry into the relationship between consciousness and the phenomenal world. Looking outside: painting the landscape en plein air is a spontaneous response that occurs somewhere between the sensation on the eye and perception of an object. As such, it is a way of contemplation of light, of mind, of time and the passing moment. In this way, according to Cézanne, Claude Monet was “Only an eye, but my God what an eye!”

The activity of mind is different when working in the studio, where I am managing the means of abstracting and sublimating the original inspiration. Looking inside: the studio processes tend to be more calculated, poeticized and layered. Sympathetic resonances develop between the spatial shapes and the textures of accident, between the materials and the patterns of language, and the possibility to suggest meaning.

Both processes are a delight to me. There is insight as well as humor and heartache in each. Both are mind revealing mind.”

Jef Gunn hosts annual painting retreats out at KCC’s Retreat Land, Ser Chö Ösel Ling.The next one is currently scheduled for early October, with more information to be shared soon.