Buddha Gallery — Peaceful Vajrapani

One day, sitting, visualising an assembly of historical and archetypal Bodhisattvas, a rainbow of jewel like figures filling the sky, one figure shone out like a blue sapphire, brighter than the rest.

A friend lent me a print of one the few known images of Peaceful Vajrapani. I based my sketchbook study on this ancient Indian painting. It showed a figure sitting in the posture of royal ease holding a vajra to his heart. I felt moved by the image of embodiment of peaceful energy, still and at ease, yet full of power.

The following midsummer, in St Ives, Cornwall, I continued the exploration and painted a life size version from my earlier sketch. Painters love St Ives for the bright white quality of light. The light there doubles in intensity as it reflects off the vast mirror of the sea and refracts into rainbow mist. The bright light and the June heat found their way into the painting and the aura of red and gold around the figure became brighter and brighter as the painting took form.

Whilst in Cornwall we visited Patrick Heron. Always generous with his time and keen to share his Eagle’s Nest and his many paintings displayed there, Pat took us on the customary tour, and told us, as usual, of his love of French painters and their influence on his work. He particularly admired Matisse. I trace Pat’s influence in my Vajrapani painting and regret that my awe of him at the time meant that I was too shy to show it to him. I see how he helped my use of colour, and influenced the formal spatial structure and relationship of forms to the edges of the paper.

The painting of Looe Bar (see also the Landscapes page) emerged at the same time: another large studio painting based on a smaller study made “in the field”. It is filled with the extraordinary Cornish light.

I see the 2 paintings, one a figure, one a landscape, as 2 versions of the same theme, a particular quality of energy.

In the later painting shown here (2001) I am exploring the spatial paradox of painting a dark blue figure as subject: the dark blue melts back into deep space and the viewer may not at first see the figure. This painting explores pictorial space, and by extension the inner space of the mind.