Painter – Shakti Maira

Years ago, I formed an artistic intention that my art must effectively integrate all four levels of experience — sensory, emotional, intellectual and spiritual, and that it should be an engagement that brings pleasure to the senses, generates positive feelings and thoughts, and deepens and uplifts the spirit. It turns out that this is very much the central purpose of classical Indian aesthetics and arts too.

My art has been considered spiritual though it has never been about religious subjects or objects and I maintain a respectful distance from all forms of traditional and new age spirituality. Sam Bercholz, founder of the iconic Buddhist publishing company, Shambhala Publications, once said that my work was the “best dharma art expressing the essence of Buddhist teachings… by any contemporary artist”, and the philosopher Ken Wilber wrote, “To integrate spirit and matter in an aesthetic presentation that opens the viewer to an integral moment is remarkable enough. But what is truly astonishing about Shakti’s work is the depth to which that intention is realised. Shakti is the finest integral artist now working in the fields of painting and sculpture.”

While I have studied Buddhist psychology and philosophy and engaged with contemplation and meditation, my impulse to make art has flowed freely and is not derived from or based on any theory, history, group or movement. I am wary of terms and movements that seem to have taken over the contemporary art world, like Conceptualism and ‘art for art’s sake’. My work is realistic – being about the tangible physical, what I can see with my eyes, and the tangible mental, my feelings, thoughts and ideas.