Jim Potterton

Painting

“See Something . . . Say Something” is a public service slogan that began to appear after 9/11 in the United States. I take this phrase deeply to heart in my Dharma and art practice, especially since 2016. My art bears witness to societal suffering in the form of the climate emergency, anti-immigrant hatred, gun violence, and police brutality. Some of the images have appeared as poster-size picket signs held in marches for social justice. Others (especially the painting Selfie 2020-2021) have emerged as objects of contemplation causing me to more deeply experience the binding forces of egoic attachments—particularly attachments to views and opinions. The first piece entitled “All is Aflame” references the Ādittapariyāya Sutta: The Fire Sermon, SN 35.28, which inspires contemplation of both earthly beauty and the forces of destruction that both alarm and console us.

Jim Potterton is originally from New York, born in Brooklyn and raised on the South Shore of Long Island. He attended schools that offered no formal art classes, so he just drew what he wanted for fun. He recaptured that spirit fifteen years ago and has been immersed in making art ever since.

Over thirty years ago he began his current Dharma practice in the Theravada tradition chiefly inspired by his first teacher Larry Rosenberg. He has worked as a labor and community organizer and for many years taught labor studies and social psychology at San Jose City College. He recently was one of the online group facilitators in a Dharma-Art program sponsored by the Barre Center for Buddhist Studies.

From his downtown Santa Cruz studio, Jim produces work that has won awards in major painting competitions in the San Francisco Bay Area and in New York City. In 2016 the Pacific Grove Museum of Natural History purchased one of his works as part of an exhibit celebrating the geology of the Big Sur Coast. A recent piece of his public art features the endangered Santa Cruz Tarplant that grows in a meadow near his home in Santa Cruz.

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