Art is the longing of the individual to be bridged with the whole of life; to connect with and give expression to life itself.

Thousands of years ago, in the caves of Altamira in Spain, long before any art schools were born, ancient tribes of hunters depicted bison and other animals with great sensitivity and accuracy.
Their art was not the product of some carefully learned technique. It was a pure prayer of human expression.
In a similar way, while reading this book, you may suddenly remember your own thirst to express, even if you are not a trained artist.
This thirst can be remembered easily, because creative expression is nothing but your own life energy – it’s like invisible blood running through your body.
The intelligence to create is hidden in us and can flow out like a spring bubbling from a snow-covered mountain top. It is endless, abundant and delightful.
In our contemporary society, art is being treated more and more as a separate entity, something reserved for specialists, like any other profession.
This is a pity, because painting not only is everyone’s birthright; it is one of the greatest tools for awakening one’s consciousness and awareness.
In the long tradition of Zen, many different spiritual methods – including art – have been dedicated to a single aim: to recognize the inner space known as “No Mind,” or “Isness.”
Zen masters developed all kinds of strange devices to bring disciples to a place where the normal, thinking mind has nothing to grasp, no foothold on which to stand. In this gap, suddenly the disciple is directly confronted with existence, with life.
This book invites you on a similar kind of journey, on a search to find yourself and the source of your original expression.
Painting can be a mirror to look deeply into yourself. When you paint with awareness, whoever you are, whatever you are feeling in this moment, will find expression on the paper and be captured there, reflecting yourself back to you.
All that you need to do is stay open and watch.
In this way, through awareness of each moment, a revolution in consciousness is possible, because the mind has no space to get into old habits of commenting, judging, criticizing or instructing.
Living each moment means giving space to intuition and spontaneity. Once you learn this secret, painting is sheer joy and playfulness. You are accepting the invitation of life energy to flow through you.
My hope is that, by reading this book, you will get so turned on that you will also want to look inside yourself and discover how painting can open all the doors and windows of your creative intelligence.