Art and the Creative Spirit
- What is the “creative spirit?” How does sacred art evoke transcendent states?
- A Tibetan Lama painter and a Pueblo Indian sculptress discover some surprising connections.
Since the time of the Neolithic European cave drawings and aboriginal rock paintings, the Arts have been an integral part of spiritual expression, evoking the deepest human passions and emotions, as well as our connection to other dimensions. What makes art sacred? What kinds of transcendent states and spiritual realms have artists tried to invoke and evoke? Does the creative spirit lie within the artist, or is it channeled through the artist from a higher power?
This episode of Global Spirit seeks answers to these questions by looking at various sacred art forms, and by engaging with artists keenly aware of the spiritual aspect of the creative process. We follow the work and teachings of Buddhist Lama Lhanang Rinpoche and Pueblo Indian sculptor Estella Loretto. Lama Lhanang, who leads a circle of Buddhist practitioners in Los Angeles, creates paintings that depict Buddhist figures and teachings, while Estella sculpts according to the dictates of her Native American spirit and sensibility. Visually engaging and emotionally uplifting, this episode imparts new insights and discoveries about sacred art and the creative spirit from spiritual traditions hailing from parts of the world as seemingly disconnected as Tibet and the American Southwest.
Program Guests
Estella Loretto is a gifted and accomplished artist, the only Native American woman sculpting monumental work in bronze. She is a painter, a sculptress, a creator of extraordinary art and a designer of finesse and style, and her work has always reflected her highly internalized spiritual vision of the world, an intimate legacy of her Pueblo background. Allan Houser’s last student before his death in 1994, she now works from her own studio-gallery in Santa Fe, where she is recognized as an internationally renowned artist is her own right. Her creative representations are instinctive and inherent symbols of peacefulness and serenity.
Estella Loretto’s website
Lama Lhanang Rinpoche is a spiritual teacher of the Nyingma Longchen Nying-Thig order of Tibetan Buddhism. He has studied with many great masters from different lineages of Tibetan Buddhism. The Sang Long Monastery in Eastern Tibet has recognized him as the reincarnation of Ken Rinpoche Damcho, an emanation of Nubchen Namke Nyingpo (one of the 25 disciples of Padmasambhava). He shares teachings from an unbroken lineage in a way that is fresh, cross-cultural, and current for these times. He is an accomplished instructor of meditation, Anu-yoga, art, feng-shui, cultural and historical studies as well as a skilled practitioner of Tibetan medicine.
Lama Lhanang Rinpoche’s website
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