PROCESS & PHILOSOPHY

Consciousness does not imply thought but receptivity.

Ajahn Sumedo

I make my watercolours from earth, mineral, and plant pigments. All of them have a story to tell. Some are as old as human existence; transformed by fire, crumbled from a cliff, or washed up on a shore. Some are found in wild, atmospheric places; others are collected from the side of the road. Many are gifted to me and acquired from around the world. I also collect and mill my own.

I have a deliberate process by which I gather and use these pigments. I’m always looking for their story, even if much of it remains unknown.

Who are these rocks and what has been their journey? What lands were they born from? What histories have they witnessed? What immense geologic forces willed them into formation? Who have been their custodians?

My work is always in relationship with that mystery. It’s not about making sense of things, rather it’s about honoring and respecting what I don’t know, and finding ways to acknowledge what has been changed, devastated, and lost.

When I’m harvesting or making paints from natural pigments, I’m therefore always listening. To me, listening is a process involving my whole body. It’s how I’m sitting in my seat, how I’m moving my hands, how I'm responding to the landscape and contemplating whether it’s ok to take, or respectfully leave as is. It’s a dynamic, reverential relationship based in ongoing inquiry.

It’s easy to treat the earth as mere material, even as someone who thinks she knows better! No matter how slow, attentive and gentle I think I’m being, I’ve realized there’s always a slower, more attentive, and even gentler way of being. This is something these pigments are always teaching me. And in the slowness and the tenderness a different type of relationship is forged. I become part of a different type of story.

I may only be a tiny footnote in that vast, primordial landscape, but that acknowledgement changes me.

A story is a way of thinking. It prescribes our relationship to the world. The heart of my story is always a question. And a question is my favourite type of muse.

Whose stories are we listening to? How do we make them our own? Is there a story which contains all the stories? One which includes multiple causal systems and intelligences? One which is timeless, borderless and mysterious, whose questions are eternally unanswerable?

My drawings pay tribute to this searching and asking. They aim to be contemplations with question marks: fingers pointing at the earth and moon.

~Elaine Su-Hui

All living beings are my family.

The universe is my body.

All of space is my university.

My nature is empty and formless.

Kindness, compassion, joy and equanimity are my function.

Master Hsuan Hua