Denise Susanne Townsend

Painting

I lived in Florence in my forty-seventh year to attend graduate school in the arts, and I remember the day I walked inside the Galleria dell’Accademia and saw Michelangelo’s David for the first time and it seemed to me to be living Dharma stamped in stone. It is said that he worked to uncover the man that was already there waiting buried inside this massive marble block, chiseling away day after day, then sanding and polishing the beautiful stone to reveal the essence of what lay within. When you stand before it, you can’t help but be awestruck, by the beauty and craftsmanship, by its sheer size and weight as well as by its immensely exquisite artistry. An art that pulses with vitality, with a life force which causes some to pause and stand for hours marveling at its magnificence while others simply weep, touched by its beauty and an overwhelming sense of wonder and awe.

A dear friend of mine who came to visit me there that year proclaimed that art practice is life practice . . . and to that I would add, life practice, Dharma practice, is also my art.

Why does one wash their canvas, tumble it in the dryer and stretch it by hand before creating? What is it that inspires one to marry the chasm between modernity and ancient artistic crafts and traditions to incorporate plant medicines in handcrafted paints made of earth minerals, alchemized milk quark, ash and stone? Who guides the images unfolding that leap toward an impulse deciding unabashedly to carry forth and follow through?

No one. No where. Really. Yet the heart comes forth. Lovingly curious. Surrendered and held by grace.

That same unknowing and accompanying grace led me to meditative practice many years ago and, in the spring just past, to receive Tokudo in the Rinzai Zen Buddhist lineage, ever grateful that the Mystery continues to inspire so deeply and that this ancient practice of awakening continues to inform and enliven the ever-evolving practice of my life and my art.

I was asked last spring what brings me to Ordination?
Love of truth
Love of beauty
Love of goodness
A sincere devotion to practice
A dire need to become fully congruent
A wish for true healing
A longing to serve all of life
Life that I appreciate and love so deeply
A longing to do “my” part in the fullest capacity I am able
To affect change
To uplift and inspire
To relieve the immensity of the existence of suffering
To make medicine
To share medicine
To be medicine in the world
What else could it be that so inspires one to make art?

I am in awe these days of the interdependent complexity of the matrix of our “one wild and precious life” that spurs us forward to heal, to serve, to mature, to awaken, to forgive, to let go, to surrender, to endure, to find voice, to create, to dream, to come Home . . . and to breathe deeply when we can’t quite figure it out or don’t quite yet know how to change all that needs changing, and trust, looking back to see that in each moment everything that is needed is actually here and then again, that everything that arises also passes away.

This ever shifting, changing, inherently impermanent kaleidoscope of experience is the fuel of our agency.

Each human being, I believe, in their own way is an artist. Through practice the realization dawns that each one of us together is also an inexplicable work of art.

Like Michelangelo, we’re carving ourselves from stone.

Prelude: Milk quark, hydrated lime, acrylic, paper, mica, mineral and ash on canvas, 36 x 60 inches

Antidote to Kryptonite: Milk quark, hydrated lime, mineral and ash on canvas, 54 x 48 inches

The Decision to Disambiguate: Milk quark, hydrated lime, mineral and ash on canvas, 24 x 48 inches

White Tiger: Casein, Withonia somnifera, mineral and ash on canvas, 48 x 48 inches

Denise Susanne Townsend is an interdisciplinary artist who began her formal education in the arts in Florence, Italy, while immersed in the power of the region’s presence: the river Arno, Tuscan hillsides, and a language that carried itself like song. Inspired by mezzo-frescos of the Italian Renaissance both in their beauty and magnitude, Denise apprenticed to the craft during her graduate studies there and later began exploring some of the world’s most enigmatic painting materials mimicking the texture and ethos of those ancient frescoed walls.

After completing her graduate studies at the San Francisco Art Institute, Denise resumed her international travels, inquisitively venturing to live and work in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia where she received much inspiration from her encounters with exquisite places and people from around the globe. She returned to the Bay Area after her foray into the Middle East, immersing herself in the landscape of Lucid Art Foundation’s Bishop Pine Preserve. Surrounded by forest creatures, silence and song, Denise continued to refine and synthesize her artistic vision incorporating plant medicines in handcrafted paints made of earth minerals, casein, ash, and stone.

Townsend’s work has been exhibited in solo and group shows in the United States, Europe, and South America, and resides in private collections at home and abroad. The agency of her art is deeply influenced by the multitude of reverberations of our collective clarion call, carrying us swiftly into a world where art is not only poetry but also metaphor, medicine and muse.

More on Denise Susanne Townsend’s work can be found on our Links page.