Denise Susanne Townsend

Painting

The paintings in this series, “O”, have been ambidextrously drawn with wood ash of willow and painted layer upon layer with mineral pigments, casein, ash and oil. They were inspired by an artist residency at the Lucid Art Foundation following wise council left by Gordon Onslow Ford to explore the confluence of creative and contemplative practice while immersed in the heart of nature and to paint and draw from spontaneous movements originating from within the depths of mind. These compositions of visual narratives were birthed from that exploration and are offered as poetry, as prayer, as medicine and muse.

Cave of Abacus, oil, charcoal, mineral, casein, and ash on canvas, 28 x 50 inches, 2021

In a Hummingbird's Nest, oil, charcoal, mineral, casein, and ash on canvas, 36 x 36 inches, 2021

Refuge, oil, charcoal, mineral, casein, and ash on canvas, 48 x 30 inches, 2021

When I was little I was a flower child wanna be. Barefoot dancing through rain puddles and lying on fresh cut green earth were favorite pastimes of my youth. Born too late to arrive in Haight Ashbury, I hung out in a little grass yard on Hamlin Avenue in the south side of Chicago. Wearing a yellow enamel painted metal smiley face medallion with love and childhood pride, I coveted bell-bottom jeans with tall, leg-length trees bleached white on indigo fabric. During the summer heat I pinched and poked at hot tar bubbles blistering in the lines that fixed the cracks in the black asphalt drive and roller-skated up and down the sidewalk path in a tiny orange polka dot bikini. Come fall, I loved to walk the woods, hold hands with my dad and marvel at all the trees he knew the names of, the tiny pulpits where Jack lived and the sweet earthy smell of sun-drenched leaves in the damp, cool autumn air.

Mostly, I remember, I liked to make things.

Hour after hour I’d plop myself in the alleyway, alone or with my neighbor Carol, and crush old brick into fine orange-red powder. Piles of pigment pound from clumps of baked earthen clay appeared as I disappeared completely mesmerized through the act of making . . . simply for the pleasure of making itself. This performative act of self-forgetting would transfix me for hours unending and would later become the fuel for the passions and practices I felt pulled to pursue.

These days creativity and contemplative practice sustain me, arriving within the ever-flowing ebb of life . . . its challenges, its ecstasies, and moments of pure enjoyment all emerging with the invitation to let go and be. Even the grittiness serves . . . to clear what is in the way, to point back to the ocean of silence inside, and to invite an opening out into the swiftly moving currents of the ever-shifting tides of our times. Practice offers more rest in not knowing, more trust and openness towards what is, and simultaneously recollects and encourages those performative acts of self-forgetting, from within which I find myself both spaciously full and gratefully empty.

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Denise Susanne Townsend is an interdisciplinary artist and Zen priest ordained as Joshin Kyodo in the Rinzai Zen Buddhist lineage. She began her formal education in the arts at Studio Arts College International in Florence, Italy and completed her MFA at the San Francisco Art Institute in San Francisco, California. Joshin Kyodo Denise Susanne Townsend is the founder of Alchemy of Art and Nature offering international artist residencies, retreats, and creative explorations of transformation and healing in the heart of nature.

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