Exploring the unconscious
Interview
with Eva Skaar
Acem International
Newsletter no 2 1999
- Art and meditation enable one to become more open towards
the unconscious. Both give expression to voices that are not easily heard
in our habitual everyday routine. Many artists receive inspiration from
meditation, says Eva Skaar, Norwegian painter and instructor in Acem Meditation.
Eva Skaar's exhibition in a well known Oslo gallery this
autumn was a great success. People agree that her paintings have become
brighter, more open, using a wider range of colours. She herself attributes
some of the changes to her meditative process. After 14 years she still
practices Acem Meditation twice a day, half an hour each time.
No striving
- Both art and meditation are related to intuition, she says. ‑
They are not something that you produce or understand with your head.
You have to throw yourself into the process. Striving to achieve specific
results will get you nowhere. You have to let go of your conventional
conceptions of what is good and bad and create a space for your own spontaneity.
In painting as well as meditation, Eva Skaar is inspired
by the concept of a "free mental attitude", taken from the
psychology of meditation developed in Acem. A free mental attitude involves
openness, mental presence and acceptance ‑ the opposite of discipline
and cleverness. ‑ The challenge, she says, is to establish a contact
inwards, a sort of mental connection. From time to time you achieve such
a connection. You feel inspired. Your sense of time changes. Ideas start
to flow more easily. Creative blocks loosen.
Struggling and fumbling
‑ But there are also periods when you feel you
do not succeed. Anything that is really new needs time to reach the surface.
In the meantime you feel blocked. It's difficult to accept, but it's
part of the process.
Eva Skaar smiles when she describes such periods. ‑
I work intensely for a whole day, manage to paint a few strokes, but
then cover them up again with new strokes the following day. It is easy
to feel that this is a waste of time. But that's not true. You cannot
measure unconscious processes along usual dimensions of efficiency. Periods
of struggling, fumbling and feeling confused are a prerequisite for renewal.
Without them art easily becomes slick artiness without a genuine inner
foundation.
‑ Resistance is a part of the meditation process
as well. The daily half‑hours sometimes feel difficult. We become
restless. Something from the unconscious is approaching the surface, and
we do not know what it is. If we skip our meditations during such periods,
we are letting our counterforces win ‑the forces that want everything
to remain as it is. If we persevere with our regular meditation habits
despite the resistance, however, we will gain a valuable opportunity to
work through something that might gradually give us new insight into our
own lives.
Source of inspiration
Eva Skaar emphasises the importance of creativity: ‑ If you
stand in front of a canvas wondering how you can repeat the successes
of the past, then you are no longer creating, just copying. The same applies
to Acem Meditation. The challenge is to create as much freedom as possible
for all the various thoughts and feelings that pass through the mind.
If you think you have really been successful one day, this is of little
help the next day. The free mental attitude has to be created anew all
the time.
‑ Many artists feel that meditation is a profound
source of inspiration. The simple technique provides instructive models
for creative work. By giving an unusual degree of freedom to spontaneous
thoughts, feelings and fantasies, it lays a solid foundation for a more
creative imagination. It also makes it easier to let go of your hang‑ups
during periods of resistance. For me it has become an indispensable tool
‑ in my life as well as in my art, says Eva Skaar.
