I am an artist. I currently work in textiles (quilting) and run inclusive art workshops.
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Really love the artwork and the concept 💚 . I’m thinking apocalypse (because that’s what I always think) but it’s mysterious, a well-to-do group without tickets to the space ark and a picnic couple who don’t care 🚀 .From feedback on my own stuff, I know this is nowhere near the mark. 🙂
Thanks for your comment.
I didn’t explain much in my post so thank you for the opportunity to try to explain myself now!
This piece is a compilation of reflections on witnessing the goings on over recent months.
I was initially moved by walking through crowds in the streets of London in the wake of the Grenfell Tower tragedy and by learning days after that today 65 million people in the world have been forcibly displaced from their homes.
Holding an awareness of all this tragedy while continuing with my own comparatively comfortable life is what moved me to depict these differences simultaneously in the same setting.
Do the picnicking family really not care? What kind of world do they think their child will inherit? How do we explain the sufferings of human life to ourselves and to others? As a practicing Buddhist I constantly ponder these kinds of questions.
Nichiren Daishonin who revolutionised Buddhism in 13th century Japan famously said, “If you care anything about your personal security, you should first of all pray for order and tranquility throughout the four quarters of the land, should you not?” (www.nichirenlibrary.org/en/end-1/Content/2#para-114)
How can we achieve peace in the world?
It seems impossible at times.
However Buddhism teaches that our own personal happiness is achieved through our efforts to improve our own lives while simultaneously contributing to the happiness of others. Starting with our immediate environment and ultimately throughout the world.
We call this ‘human revolution’…
“A great human revolution in just a single individual will help achieve a change in the destiny of a nation and, further, can even enable a change in the destiny of all humankind.”
(Daisaku Ikeda, preface to ‘The Human Revolution’)
Hope that helps to put you ‘in the picture’ as it were!
Thanks again,
😊
Eve
Thanks Eve, I very much appreciate your explanation. I also practice Buddhism, and with the Mediterranean refugees, like a lot of others, I was deeply affected and expressed my feelings with poetry.
I hope you are right about happiness, about metta, about giving, about a revolution, and I practice as best I can, aspire to the precepts, but although Buddhism helps me deal with my concerns for the future of our children, I still have those fears when I see where power resides in the world. I attended a talk by an Australian monk, Ajahn Sujato, who asked the question how would we feel if the world’s future was out of our control, and we realized that?
It was a dark message and not well received by the activist audience, given by a monk who had consulted with the Australian government at the highest levels, but I admit that sometimes I feel that darkness. So thank goodness for Buddhism, metta, poetry, and art.
Eve Turner-Lee 
Really love the artwork and the concept 💚 . I’m thinking apocalypse (because that’s what I always think) but it’s mysterious, a well-to-do group without tickets to the space ark and a picnic couple who don’t care 🚀 .From feedback on my own stuff, I know this is nowhere near the mark. 🙂
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thanks for your comment.
I didn’t explain much in my post so thank you for the opportunity to try to explain myself now!
This piece is a compilation of reflections on witnessing the goings on over recent months.
I was initially moved by walking through crowds in the streets of London in the wake of the Grenfell Tower tragedy and by learning days after that today 65 million people in the world have been forcibly displaced from their homes.
Holding an awareness of all this tragedy while continuing with my own comparatively comfortable life is what moved me to depict these differences simultaneously in the same setting.
Do the picnicking family really not care? What kind of world do they think their child will inherit? How do we explain the sufferings of human life to ourselves and to others? As a practicing Buddhist I constantly ponder these kinds of questions.
Nichiren Daishonin who revolutionised Buddhism in 13th century Japan famously said, “If you care anything about your personal security, you should first of all pray for order and tranquility throughout the four quarters of the land, should you not?” (www.nichirenlibrary.org/en/end-1/Content/2#para-114)
How can we achieve peace in the world?
It seems impossible at times.
However Buddhism teaches that our own personal happiness is achieved through our efforts to improve our own lives while simultaneously contributing to the happiness of others. Starting with our immediate environment and ultimately throughout the world.
We call this ‘human revolution’…
“A great human revolution in just a single individual will help achieve a change in the destiny of a nation and, further, can even enable a change in the destiny of all humankind.”
(Daisaku Ikeda, preface to ‘The Human Revolution’)
Hope that helps to put you ‘in the picture’ as it were!
Thanks again,
😊
Eve
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thanks Eve, I very much appreciate your explanation. I also practice Buddhism, and with the Mediterranean refugees, like a lot of others, I was deeply affected and expressed my feelings with poetry.
I hope you are right about happiness, about metta, about giving, about a revolution, and I practice as best I can, aspire to the precepts, but although Buddhism helps me deal with my concerns for the future of our children, I still have those fears when I see where power resides in the world. I attended a talk by an Australian monk, Ajahn Sujato, who asked the question how would we feel if the world’s future was out of our control, and we realized that?
It was a dark message and not well received by the activist audience, given by a monk who had consulted with the Australian government at the highest levels, but I admit that sometimes I feel that darkness. So thank goodness for Buddhism, metta, poetry, and art.
A lotus _/||\_ Steve.
LikeLiked by 1 person