​I recall asking an art tutor on my Fine Art degree course,

"How do I paint pure consciousness?" to which he replied,

"Become pure consciousness, then paint".

I'd also like to add that all activity is creative,

which with awareness,  compassion and wisdom

can support realising one's deepest nature.

Discovering how to do this became my creative koan. 

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A Life Discovering Art and Meditation

I grew up in Hove, a pleasant south coast seaside town close to the creative hub of Brighton. Childhood was full of poverty, illness and parental divorce which from an early age led me to question social conditioning and the meaning of life.

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The Power of Art

I managed to alleviate some poverty by working in Europe as a well-paid burlesque stripper, which enabled me to buy a large, run-down house, renovate it and become a seaside landlady. When the trauma of my alcoholic first husband's suicide led me to resume questioning my assumptions about life, I ended my burlesque career and started exploring psychotherapy and spirituality.

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Curious about what drives the mind, I began working as a nursing assistant in a psychiatric hospital, where I was invited to participate in a mind-expanding six-month staff art therapy group. There, I became inspired by the huge potential of expressing and exploring my mind through art.​ I visited art exhibitions and concerts and became excited about the power of art. Contemplating Mark Rothko's paintings at the Tate Modern and listening to Mahler's Resurrection Symphony conducted by Simon Rattle further opened my heart and mind to how the arts can reach beyond purely visual and aesthetic dimensions to be powerful, transforming, healing, revealing, and spiritually awakening experiences. This insight has been the basis of all my art and meditation practice.

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Through art I began to explore my inner experience - both the pain and suffering and also within that discovering who I was in essence, the real, timeless me. A friend commented that whenever I used art materials I had a big smile, and this deep joy when playing with art materials and looking at art as a way of knowing myself and the world has never left me. I also began offering Art for Self Discovery Groups for adults.

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Art and the Timeless

My husband’s suicide had catapulted me into searching once more for meaning and purpose in life. While therapy had been helpful in shining light on my anxiety, depression and fear, I wanted to look into the essence of things. 

 

I began searching for teachers with real spiritual realisation practising in a tradition that I also felt at home with. I learned a lot studying Christian Essene spiritual healing with the College of Spiritual Psychotherapy and Kabbalah with a rabbi’s wife. Interest in the perennial philosophy led me to look east, studying Hindu and Vedic teachings and traveling to India, before arriving at Tibetan Buddhism, where I discovered extraordinary spiritual masters with whom I could connect.

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Around the same time, I embarked on a BA Hons degree in Painting (1987-1991) at the then Brighton College of Art where several tutors were supportive of my interest in spirituality. I began studying Hindu and Tibetan mandala painting, the work of Agnes Martin, Rothko, Jackson Pollock, Richard Pousette-Dart, Paul Klee and Kandinsky and travelled to India to research Indian women artists and miniature painting.

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My representational art work became increasingly abstract and expressionist as I searched for ways to make visible experience of life beyond only superficial physical appearances. I wrote a dissertation, ‘The Symbolism of the Center in Religion and Sacred Art’, investigating the relationship between sacred art and the perennial spiritual teachings.

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In the midst of all this I remarried and discovered the joys and challenges of parenthood with the birth of my son Jacob, following fervent prayers for something that would help me destroy my ego - letting go of ego is a crucial part of the spiritual path.

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Awareness Meditation and Art

Alongside exhibiting and practising as an artist, I began a more committed meditation and mindfulness practice. I am so grateful to have met and received teachings from authentic, realized, Tibetan spiritual masters including Ato Rinpoche, Akong Rinpoche and Khenpo Tsultrim Gyamtso Rinpoche.

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In 2005 I discovered my main teachers, Mingyur Rinpoche and Tsoknyi Rinpoche, Tibetan Buddhist teachers holding lineages for Mahamudra and Dzogchen offering awareness meditations training in the path to enlightenment that particularly suited my personality. Learning meditation with them completely changed my life, including my art practice. ​This became a lifelong journey exploring how meditation offers tools for discovering who we really are from which we can live with awareness more wisely, creatively and compassionately. 

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Integrating Art and Meditation

Following studying traditional Tibetan Thangkha Painting, I increasingly felt drawn to investigate how modern fine art practice could enhance and enrich awareness meditation. I wasn't interested in how meditation could enhance creativity, unless it was with the intention to benefit others. This led me to study for a Masters Degree in Fine Art (2005-2007). For my examination exhibition in 2007 I created a short video, 'Letter to My Mum' in response to my mother asking why I wanted to ordain as a Buddhist nun.

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A week after my MA show closed, I was ordained as a Buddhist nun in Oxford UK by His Eminence Thrangu Rinpoche.  I remained a nun for seven years, living in semi-retreat in my house in Suffolk UK. In 2014 I was increasingly feeling that while being a nun had been extremely beneficial for myself and hopefully others, I needed to be more naked and integrate ongoing meditation practice with creative practice, teaching art and everyday life as a lay person, for both my own and other people’s benefit.

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Since 2007 I have been evolving a series of art projects - shown on this website - integrating art with the meditation practices given to me by Mingyur Rinpoche. I have also been teaching art, meditation, and mindful creativity mentoring. 

 

While all my own art projects are informed by meditation, any creative exercises and contemplations offered are secular for people on any spiritual path or none.

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I have received awards for my Mindful Creativity project from Arts Council England and the Marianne Oberg Foundation for Spiritual Art, been an invited speaker on art and spirituality on Channel 4 TV and at conferences and been awarded scholarships for studying meditation and art in the US. My work is in private and public collections in Europe and the US.

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Contact me