"My art is My life, My life is My art"
Santosha Tantra didn’t do art her whole life. It wasn’t until her Enlightenment in her early 30s when her exploration as an artist took off. Art has given her the means to give and reveal what she has understood -- to bring others into her free state so they can feel and be in it. Santosha currently lives in the Sierra Nevada foothills and continues to make art. A small sampling of her life's work is showcased here.
My art is My life, My life is My art. Why do I say life is art? Because the beauty is evident; you just have to look. Art is aliveness. It generates the feeling of being seen, being able to look and feel. To live a life, to actually have a life, you have to see it, you have to be in it, you have to feel it. I think that the real art is life.
Unlike the chaotic chattering egoic mind, I don't have an internal anything to do with anything. So I don't have an idea, an internal image that somehow I own, it's My idea, I'm bringing it alive. Everything is to Me a circle of life, so everything in life is art. Everything that I express is that, is that relationship. And the relationship I have with everything is recognizing it as My own self. Not as My own 'personal' self - that thus having recognized it, I own it - but that thus having recognized it, I see everything as Consciousness, as God, whatever word you want to use, Bliss.
That's why there's joy in the creative act because it is that being in direct relationship, connection with everything, to the degree of intimacy that you know and recognize that it is all God, including your own form, including everything you see. So my process has never been a thoughtful or intentional one but rather a spontaneous recognition of everything, and I follow the attractions.
I have stood alone, blazing My own trail. I have lived outside of the spiritual tradition. An outsider, not because they outcast Me, but because it was just My own inclination. I don't come from the conventional point of view or mind set. It hasn't been an ordinary life, it isn't ordinary art. I wasn't part of any tradition that I could draw on or be an apprentice to, so there wasn't a place or way for it to be understood.
Over the years, people who don't know Me probably wonder why so much of My art is self portraits or has Me in it. But I never relate personally to it. I don't have any self reference. Since I don't have any self reference, to Me it is just a picture that expresses something, has a transmission of something, which just happens to be me.
There is no conventional way to recognize it. I have a different point of view and I try to express what is Transcendental about life, because I do have understanding, and a relationship to that. The personality of the world didn't and couldn't create a room or place for Me or My work; but I have to allow that My art has a place here, Who I Am has a place here, and what I've written and given to others has a place here. I know the ordinary ego is not going to make a room for that, but for those who need it and are served by it, there has to be a room for it. I have to allow that this is what I've done and given.
"My art is My life, My life is My art"
Interested in supporting Santosha Tantra's Art? Write to info@santoshatantra.com
© SantoshaTantra 2024. Images and writing on this site may not be used without permission of the artist.
Interested in supporting Santosha Tantra's Art? Write to info@santoshatantra.com
© SantoshaTantra 2024. Images and writing on this site may not be used without permission of the artist.
I have stood alone, blazing My own trail. I have lived outside of the spiritual tradition. An outsider, not because they outcast Me, but because it was just My own inclination. I don't come from the conventional point of view or mind set. It hasn't been an ordinary life, it isn't ordinary art. I wasn't part of any tradition that I could draw on or be an apprentice to, so there wasn't a place or way for it to be understood.
Over the years, people who don't know Me probably wonder why so much of My art is self portraits or has Me in it. But I never relate personally to it. I don't have any self reference. Since I don't have any self reference, to Me it is just a picture that expresses something, has a transmission of something, which just happens to be me.
There is no conventional way to recognize it. I have a different point of view and I try to express what is Transcendental about life, because I do have understanding, and a relationship to that. The personality of the world didn't and couldn't create a room or place for Me or My work; but I have to allow that My art has a place here, Who I Am has a place here, and what I've written and given to others has a place here. I know the ordinary ego is not going to make a room for that, but for those who need it and are served by it, there has to be a room for it. I have to allow that this is what I've done and given.