Susan Watson
My Meeting Awareness series includes seven large, close-up oil paintings of faces. They are portraits in one sense, but in another sense these paintings aren't meant to merely be likenesses of anyone. Rather, my intention was to dive deeply into what it means to meet someone directly, to meet their awareness, reality and being.
Each painting is meant to be an offering of a meditative experience of a direct meeting with an “other”. There is often a deep power in meeting someone's gaze with your own. For a moment, there can be a sense of timelessness, with no separation created by the mind. This is my intention with these paintings – to evoke deep recognition of stillness and oneness.
In my Windows and Mirrors series, I wanted to capture awareness in a slightly different way by focusing more directly on eyes. I found that in gazing into each eye, there is the recognition of unity, yet at the same time a different energy or transmission comes through. It seems ineffable and I'm not able to define it in words, but have come as close as I can with the titles of the paintings.
With the symmetrical eyes with flowers, I wanted to take the paintings fully out of the realm of portraiture and become windows into more transcendent realms. At the same time, as painting has helped me discover more and more, these transcendent realms are also a reflection of our own being.