Having graduated as a teacher before undertaking an art degree has made me think that art is not just the kind of stuff we encounter in galleries, but it is about creativity in a much broader sense. Two decades in art education and galleries across London have taught me that as creatives and teachers, we do not only teach others, but we all teach each other on our journeys through life. Creativity is intricately woven into the fabric of our lives and the list of books here are some of my favourite books on the subject.
The first time I came across this book was in the late '90s in the National Gallery bookshop in London. I worked part-time at the gallery while studying for my art degree and had watched Bill Viola set up work for an exhibition there. The bookshop had dedicated a table with Viola's book recommendations, and Hazrat Inayat Khan's The Mysticism of Sound and Music was one of the titles put on display. My memory of the book is tied to the excitement of being an art student watching an inspiring artist at work. Yet, it is probably one of the most important books I have read that beautifully interweaves creativity, the web of life, music, and the spiritual, which are all themes close to my heart.
The first teacher to bring Islamic mysticism to the West presents music’s divine nature and its connection to our daily lives in this poetic classic of Sufi literature
Music, according to Sufi teaching, is really a small expression of the overwhelming and perfect harmony of the whole universe—and that is the secret of its amazing power to move us. The Indian Sufi master Hazrat Inayat Khan (1882–1927), the first teacher to bring the Islamic mystical tradition to the West, was an accomplished musician himself. His lucid exposition of music's divine nature has become a modern classic, beloved not only by…
Wilber's book contains the essay, "Integral Art and Literary Theory" which was the inspiration for my own book. The essay first appeared in Andrew Wyeth: America's Painter and is sometimes characterised as a formal exercise in art analysis, although it is much more than that. With an integral approach, it seeks to look beyond the trenches of changing academic 'discourse' and aims to integrate fundamentally different vantage points in art. It was a real leap forward when published in 1996.
One of the most influential American philosophers of our time presents his vision for a fully integrated world—a world that includes body, mind, soul, and spirit
In this groundbreaking book, Ken Wilber uses his widely acknowledged “spectrum of consciousness” model to completely rewrite our approach to such important fields as psychology, spirituality, anthropology, cultural studies, art and literary theory, ecology, feminism, and planetary transformation. What would each of those fields look like if we wholeheartedly accepted the existence of not just body and mind but also soul and spirit?
In a stunning display of integrative embrace, Wilber weaves these various…
The Parent's Guide to Birdnesting
by
Dr. Ann Gold Buscho,
Based on research about how divorce can affect children, you will learn how to best support your children's resilience, as well as your own. For parents who are separating and want to put their children first, birdnesting could be the interim or long-term shared parenting solution you’ve been looking for.…
An inspiring book about how three artists explore the creative process at the intersection of drawing, consciousness, and healing. Hilma Af-Klint's approach to drawing I can best describe as transpersonal, Agnes Martin's drawings to me appear as visual representations of stillness and Emma Kunz's use of drawing to make healing mandalas are all incredibly inspiring.
3x an Abstraction presents the extraordinary work of three important women artists whose innovative ideas and approaches to drawing had a significant impact on the history of modern abstraction. Hilma af Klint (Sweden, 1862-1944), Emma Kunz (Switzerland, 1892-1963) and Agnes Martin (Canada, b. 1912; U.S. citizenship 1950) approached geometric abstraction not as formalism, but as a means of structuring philosophical, scientific, and spiritual ideas. Using line, geometry and the grid, each of these artists created diagrammatic drawings of their exploration of complex belief systems and restorative practices. Noteworthy among the 150 illustrations in the volume are a large number of…
History has had mixed perceptions of Chogyam Trungpa, yet as is implicit in this book, one should not mistake great art for the artist. It is often said that to make it commercially as an artist, you need to be very assertive, yet Trungpa argues that as we insist on asserting our expectations to what we want from ourselves and others in the creative process we become blind to inspiration. He calls such a mindset one of aggression and instead advocates the creative process as being one of non-aggression.
"Dharma art" refers to creative works that spring from the awakened meditative state, characterized by directness, unselfconsciousness, and nonaggression. Trungpa Rinpoche shows that dharma art provides a vehicle to appreciate the nature of things as they are and express it without any struggle or desire to achieve.
A ground-breaking book with a highly original theme; helping women achieve self-love and thereby overcome the toxic consequences of male dominance, patriarchy, and traditional gender values. Within these pages, we meet twelve ordinary women and hear of their hopes, loves, despair, pain and triumphs. Through these stories, we learn about…
Lynch describes how meditation and the creative process can go hand in hand and offers an interesting insight into his art.
Lynch's contribution to creativity lies not only in his own artistic output but also notably in the establishment of the David Lynch Foundation that can arguably be said to equal the towering importance of his films and paintings.
Musical verse accompanies a milkman and his cranky kitty as they make their morning rounds. The milkman knows his hometown; he knows who needs ice cream for a birthday party, who just broke a leg, and who has a new baby. He even helps return a lost dog that's hiding along his route. This pitch-perfect, retro read-aloud's gentle sensibility is ideally matched with beautiful art that powerfully evokes an era of classic illustration.
When The First Book I Wish I'd Had at Art College was published, it was written for my younger self when I started my BA at Camberwell College of Arts in 1997.
The book aimed to help participants in contextual studies and group crits to better understand each other's often different values and vantage points. Yet after writing it, the book turned out to be helpful in establishing good communication with anyone I discussed art with. It helped map out a starting point for talking, which I found enormously helpful.
In This Together explores how we can harness our social networks to make a real impact fighting the climate crisis. Against notions of the lone environmental crusader, Marianne E. Krasny shows us the power of "network climate action"—the idea that our own ordinary acts can influence and inspire those close…
The Animal in the Mirror is a wake-up call to your higher self. Why do we keep reacting, fearing, and repeating the same patterns—no matter how much we know better? Because beneath our thoughts and emotions still lives the animal within: the ancient survival instinct that once kept us alive…
