Painting
When I want to study the structure of a sufferer’s face, for this determines so much of his vitality, I have him lie down and I sit above the vertex of his head.
Dr. Diamond discusses the development of his unique approach to making paintings for healing.
An excerpt from opening lecture of Dr. Diamond's exhibit at the Katonah Village Library in Katonah, NY, July 2011.
The Japanese word kensho is used in Zen in the sense of “seeing one’s own true nature,” the Buddha-Nature. Coming to the realization that one is a Buddha, and that all are Buddhas: Buddhas, Buddhas – everywhere!
It is always my hope that a sufferer looking at my painting or photograph will suddenly have this
Of course, I can be spontaneous, un-thinking, un-editing, when I paint. After all, I spent more than six years in daily psychoanalysis saying whatever came into my head: free association.
And I learned from this experience to trust my inner self, to give it its freedom. I came to Know that there was a Power that
I don’t write books, but essays which are sometimes later collected into book form. The Japanese call essays zuihitsu, literally, “following the brush.” And it often seems to me that this is the way I write – the words just coming out of my pen, as if automatic. Or at least how I would freely
Artists often declare that their work comes from their unconscious. That’s an ego-proclamation, of which they are proud.
But, unlike them, there are painters – never artists – who are led to believe that the work seemingly by them is really merely through them. And they bow before it in
I do some drippings and flingings which vaguely – very vaguely – resemble Jackson Pollock’s.
One of our many differences is that I leave considerable space, whereas he fills every inch of his canvas. Too much, I think. No plains, all mountains. Nowhere to relax and breathe.
Every inch is filled – is wondrously full, but there
Of all the paintings and poetry I have ever examined, Blake’s have by far the highest Life Energy, because of his devotion to the realm of the Spirit. As Catherine, his wife, said of him: “I have very little of Mr. Blake’s company; for he is always in Paradise.”
He was an emissary of the