Surrender. Empty completely. No personality. No perfection. No shows of skill. Fully engage the senses, they are your channels for discernment. Smile. Don't be afraid. Let your abilities and training have their way with you.
I spend half my time painting in monastic solitude using traditional materials (in a non-traditional manner, yes). The other half the year I advance the images in the digital studio, producing origianl, archival, digital prints, available for sale online in limited editions.
From the vanishing point, two lines go their separate ways: Make the journey to the point, carrying with you whatever visual/ art historical/ linear/ mathematical /philosophical associations you might have for "vanishing point" and then, perhaps thinking you know everything there is to know about it, find yourself there AT the point, most likely for the first time ever. Where, if you look in every direction from it, you see that from there all lines must depart each other. Leap from the Big Picture-- where we come from, why we are here, and where we are going--to finding yourself inside the work of art itself looking back at the maker or looking in the opposite direction towards post-vanishment, or sideways at the edges, to the questions of love and coupling and our ultimate aloneness.
"The Fragile Vial" (Excerpt)
...Now I remember the story.
A True Man stares at his old shoes
and sheepskin jacket. Every day he goes up
to his attic to look at his work-shoes and worn-out coat.
This is his wisdom, to remember the original clay
and not get drunk with ego and arrogance.
To visit those shoes and jacket
is praise.
The Absolute works with nothing.
The workshop, the materials
are what does not exist.
Try and be a sheet of paper with nothing on it.
Be a spot of ground where nothing is growing,
where something might be planted,
a seed, possibly, from the absolute. -Rumi (translated by Coleman Barks)