Cindy J Sullivan

Sometimes books find us. I recently went to the bookstore and scoured the art section for a book, something on illuminated manuscripts but didn’t find anything, so I thought I’d go to the religious section, hoping there might be one, but again nothing. As I left something caught my eye on a different shelf. There was a book nestled in with the other books with the handwritten words Illuminations of Hildegard of Bingen written on the spine. I picked up the book.

Hildegard of Bingen lived from 1098-1179 and was a German mystic, a Benedictine abbess, author, philosopher, poet, activist, composer and artist to name a few of her accomplishments for a woman in the dark ages. When she was 42 she began to have visions and had her visions painted as a series of illuminated manuscripts.

I can’t say Thirst is a vision but more of an illumination, a meditation to bring a bit of light into the mind and think about what something is we may thirst for, whether it be love, truth, joy, playfulness, wonder, wisdom, compassion, knowledge or creativity.

Thirst - painting by Cindy Sullivan (oil paint, sumi ink and book pages 6×9 in)

The Tientai Mountains are my home
mist-shrouded cloud paths keep guests away
thousand-meter cliffs make hiding easy
above a rocky ledge among ten thousand streams
with bark hat and wooden clogs I walk along the banks
with hemp robe and a pigweed staff I circumambulate the peaks
once you see through transience and illusion
the joys of roaming free are wonderful indeed

— Han Shan (Cold Mountain)
from The Collected Songs of Cold Mountain

Cold Mountain 1 - by Cindy J. Sullivan oil paint, book pages, and sumi ink (9×22 in)

This is a collage/mixed media painting I did a few months ago. Cold Mountain was a poet who lived in a cave in the Teintai Mountains in China about twelve hundred years ago.

After reading his poems I sat at my table and started putting together this piece, thinking about Alaska (where I grew up) and hiking off into the mountains. When reaching the tops, in front of me were views so magnificent that all I could feel is this vastness, the transience of our existence and how we only pass through each moment of time once.

Whoever has Cold Mountain’s poems
is better off than those with sutras
write them up on your screen
and read them from time to time
- Han Shan (Cold Mountain)

On a recent trip to visit family, I came across a book in my grandma’s library (a tiny bedroom stacked full of books) about Montserrat http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montserrat_(mountain) where part of our group visited during the trip to Barcelona.

In the book was a picture of a monk’s cell. It was small, simply furnished with a bed and desk, terra cotta tiles on the floor and white walls with nothing on them but the words Ora et Labora. Wondering what this meant, I googled it, and found Ora et Labora means Pray and Work (or attentive work).

So, that is what I’ve been practicing and painted/collaged these. I’m not sure what I’ll do with them next, but that’s the beauty of art, not knowing the answer or the end result.