India *9 -Reflective traveling with Kori (1)

We began our art pilgrimage with intention over 2 years ago, but it took till now that we could finally meet in person again...what unfolded over the next 5 weeks was for both of us a reawakening where art practice was the transforming vehicle... our journey took us from the Arabian sea on the south west coast, all the way to Madhubani in Bihar in the North East with stops in the middle at two of the most amazing caves Ive been in in my life...many exhausting 30+ hour travel stints, but we had our art supplies and everywhere was our mobile studio...using found photos, ripped street posters, antique photo mounts we found, henna, incense burns, gouache, pens, pencils... There was a special quality to our coming together and collaborating... sharing so much interests and intentions it seemed like the work was just making itself through us in a very seamless way... The Ellora and Ajanta caves blew me away....cut directly into cliff sides of stone...an act of revelation...subtraction as the artistic process instead of addition.... remarkable craftsmanship...exquisite design of form... the stone danced...pushed and pulled into space...cave after cave just humbled by the intention and dedication of man to create these living shrines from inert matter...definitely been reassessing the hype of the renaissance and Michelangelo when India was such a center of artistic fertillity hundreds of years earlier...at Ajanta there were amazing flakes of frescos 15 hundred years before Picasso where buddhas were sitting in cubist landscapes....and mural size scenes that looked like Bosch's garden of earthly delights on steroids....I felt injected for sure, directly into my heart this needle of the psat pumped inspiration into my system...every spare moment we worked on art...hotel rooms, waiting for meals, train stations, beaches, damp bat filled caves, fields, hills.....anywhere and everywhere...Both feeling so gratefull for the journey we were on together, that took us all the was up to the Kathmandu Valley in Nepal....