Power; Meets Art

For many creators, the art of making, whether it be a painting, a piece of music, a building or a handbag, is a spiritual process. A sense of going to a place of almost connection between you and the greater knowledge, you as the creator, as the conduit to a higher level. A place the ego is removed and pure creativity is drilled down. Another way to put it is the idea of say, supreme athletes who talk of going ‘into the zone’. The intense feeling of being aware there is a world going on around you, but it’s almost as if the world is in ‘soft focus’ and appears only at the very edges of your vision, so absorbed in what you are doing at that very moment.

Maybe this sounds a little hippy for some but for many who are creators, there is a place of utter concentration and connection that is too hard to explain. It is something felt and it’s utterly powerful and all-consuming whilst ‘in the moment’. In our present-day many an artist’s interest is in a more spiritual approach towards working, a yearning for some higher power or intelligence is becoming more not just relevant, but far more common with many openly discussing this within discussions of their works.

This sits alongside that fact that many who engage with these works, these creations if you like, are far more accepting of another dimension towards creativity. Now more than ever the transcendental movement in the creative industries is on the rise. Art galleries across the globe, for example, are responding to this movement. It’s as though we have now got to the point of worrying a lot less about concepts and are thinking a lot more of our own greater self, within the context of our lives and how they connect with some greater energy, the world and people around us.

We are also far more aware that art also has the power to heal us. More and more hospitals, for example, are ensuring artworks are placed around not just front or corridors of hospitals but also within the wards. Offices are responding too. Giant calming artworks appear around the building to ensure staff work within an optimum environment and the office is a safe space conducive, of course to working optimally.

This can be viewed via shamanic art, crafts, anamalic works, witchcraft, Shinto rituals and Kabbalistic inspired works to name but a few of the many spiritually approached works of creativity. It can be seen in paintings, sculpture, and dance and obviously has been discussed within music for many years. Art, after all, on a subconscious level informs the spirt, the mind and the body, even in a temporal moment it takes us to a different level or even elevates us. At its best, it goes beyond logical thinking and is absorbed into our very being. This then makes it quite obvious why many see the healing spiritual properties of creativity.

One world-famous and highly regarded artist Joseph Beuys was very much at the forefront of this thinking. Firstly, he believed that anyone can be an artist, and he had a sort of democratic feeling that art must have a purpose of engaging in a political and social comment yet must never be about the ego of the artist. So here we see from the past an artist looking at the job with a singular position; one who often spoken of having direct communication with higher knowledge. He even saw himself as a shaman, a type of healer. And it is this philosophy that is gaining momentum right now.

Artist Ofira Sagy talks of her painting as an ‘alchemy art.’ These giants swirling abstract images can be digitally printed on giant canvases. When she talks of alchemy she is referring to the idea of human transformation. This very idea that by sitting and being with a word of art it will affect your own personality (for the better of course).

Colours, as we know, have an energy (just like everything else within our universe) and as colours vibrate they influence producing a change in an individual. Colour has a powerful effect which is immediate. Did you ever have the opportunity to sit with Rothko’s giant red painting? Immense aren’t they yet they draw you in, that is if you can sit with them; if you do you will be deeply rewarded. All marketers use colours in shops, restaurants, cinema etc. to create a certain mood the retailer wishes us to feel. So why not use colour in a more positive way, to help us direct us and even heal us. If it was good enough for the great Joseph Beuys and the work of Ofira Sagy then it works for me.

Ofiras work is a mass of whirling passionate abstract movements. She uses colour and spheres at the very epicenter. To heal and change us, because specific colours have a specific effect. She talks about the power of each colour like this.

Red, for example, is the element of fire which connects to our very life force (think of this in chakra terms). Our life force includes everything from our creativity to our will, determination even goes as far as our absolute, our happiness. No wonder we are affected when we see it. Red has a power no doubt! Ofira takes this one stage further,

she says of the colour red:- “purifies the observer from murky fire expressed in the form of anger, control, recklessness, arrogance and even criticism’.

Green is she mentions and as we know is, of course, the emotion of water which means love unity compassion faith and water, after all, take up 70% of our body, so the effect Ofria says is that it “purifies us of dependency fear lacking, depression, doubt, victimization and excessive giving. We can all appreciate the feeling of calm serenity when we sit by a calm lake of green water. In chakra terms green is after all our heart”.

Beyond, copyright Ofira Sagy

Blue beautiful blue from baby to deepest navy is the colour that connects us to positivity, understanding, planning, focus, awareness, intuition and self-expression so the colures “an get rid of negativity, obsessive thought negative logic, as well as overthinking”.

Then comes those divine earth tones from yellow to orange to brown which connect to our digestion, therefore, the colours will “aid with resilience, execution stability grounding (of course) patience and abundance and stops stiffness limitations lack of abundance poor digestion and inability towards”. implementation.

The final colours she expounds are the soft and delicate rosy tones. Purple the majestic colour balances and connect us but give us protection, and is very much seen as a spiritual hue. Whilst pink is all about the heart and self-love of course so the colour will correct feeling of hurt and threat that damaging inner voice that beats oneself up with.

Travelling white, copyright Ofira Sagy

So how does this unique artwork? Well she talks of the connection and light and says

‘It is not my art it is only my hand; I do not know the painter, but I know his energy. When I feel his guidance I just open the computer and let him do the rest’.

Ofira is a born healer, to be fair every human has this ability, but most are not aware or even in touch with this power. She is and works not just with her alchemy paintings but directly with students to balance and cleanse them, and ultimately help them move forward from negative patterns.

Taking her physical works a step further to explore the fact that they are based around fractals. This is a curve or geometrical figure, each part of which has the same statistical character as the whole. Think of things in nature like as snowflakes where similar patterns recur at progressively smaller scales, and in describing partly random or chaotic.

Continuous, repetitive and seen in nature as a perfect formation like a Romanesco broccoli, or cauliflowers, crystals, shells trees leaves and much more. Scientists and mathematicians found that fractal geometry provides some explanation for natures complexities. Mathematical patterns have been broken down from these and used, even by architects From Franck Lloyd Wright and Peter Eisenman to modern-day exponents like Zaha Hadid and Daniel Libeskind via Hindi temples and African art.

For an artist and healer like Ofira, she channels this ‘energy’ into her work because for her, like other healing artists, this is where the patterns come from. They come from sacred geometry (Sacred geometry ascribes symbolic and sacred meanings to certain geometric shapes and certain geometric proportions. It is associated with the belief that a god is the geometer of the world). So think of it like this, the geometric shapes draw the viewer to towards a higher dimension if you like, ‘raises you up’ could be another way of explaining this. Or on the most basic level, think when people say I saw a painting today and it ‘lifted my spirits’.

So these works of art connect via this secret geometry helping those that engage with them to onnect to their own essence and even soul purpose. Via the frequency they omit comes the power to cleanse the viewers very elements i.e their fire, earth, water and air

One painting can work on different people in a different way, that’s about how we engage with the art not just in a physical level but we often hear of people talking about how a piece of art moved them beyond a physical level to what we can only assume is a spiritual level.

Ofira talks of the origin of the patterns coming from the greater energy which os the same way she talks of her images, but there is a caveat. She mentions that this a new healing frequency different from what has become before. Taking shaman artists like Joseph Beuys’ work not a whole new level of shamanism.

Ultimately her artworks allow for a greater connection because anyone that comes into the field of the vision of her artwork cannot be affected. As the paintings reach more people than a one to one lesson, we can feel the growing importance of art as a pathway to healing and growing and in the end making the world a better, happier, safer and more loving place to be.

http://ofirasagy.com/Catalog.asp