words by Chati Coronel
MANILA, PHILIPPINES – “Inner Constellations” was borne out of a longing for change. The process of creating layers within a painting has always been a way for me to let go of precious ideas, but I wanted to do this in a bigger way. I needed a whole change of thinking. It wasn’t just about creating transitions within a painting. Each painting marks a stage, a point of departure to the next. The motion of change happens in the space between the paintings. Just like music happens in the space between the notes.
One of the best lessons I have learned from studying Buddhism is that suffering exists in our mind/consciousness and that freedom from suffering lies in the malleability of the mind/ consciousness. Nothing is still. Everything is in flux. Since we are constantly changing anyway, I have dedicated my spiritual practice as well as my art practice towards directing that change.
There is an art therapy exercise I do when I have to go through a big transition in my life. The process involves creating 9 watercolour paintings that depict 9 scenes from sunset to sunrise. I start with one painting showing a 5:30pm scene and then a 7:30pm scene, and so forth until I get to the 9:30am painting. It is meant to guide one’s consciousness through incremental change from darkness to light.
“I had to shift the notion of time from a series of numbers on a clock and place it in the bigger context of planetary movement— a movement of bodies in space. I wanted to celebrate the way we move from one harmony to the next— never skipping a beat, never wasting a moment.”
I decided to do my own version of this exercise through 9 layered, large scale acrylic paintings. The work of creating these 9 Inner Constellation paintings was my process of becoming. It was a way to guide my consciousness forward, appreciating each stage of evolution I was in while distilling the gifts of each stage of change into a painting. I designed my process of painting the 9 Inner Constellation paintings to coincide with Christmas time. This time of the year is about going toward the darkness and into the light as the Earth makes its way farther and farther from the Sun toward the winter solstice—the point when the Earth is farthest from the Sun— through to December 24th when the Earth starts its journey back toward the light.
Although going from sunset to sunrise might seem like a journey from darkness to light, the most important insight I got from Inner Constellations is that darkness and light are not opposites. They are degrees of the same thing. I was amazed (but not surprised) to find some beautiful light in the process of creating the darkest parts of night. At the same time, it was a great relief to get to a new kind of light by the 7th , 8th and 9th painting— in the same way that the inhale must become an exhale at some point. I knew that it wasn’t so much about arriving at a resolution. It was just about enjoying each aspect of evolution.
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