Iskra Fine Art

  • Prints
    • The Tarmac Residency: Airport Landscapes
    • Immersions | At The Shore
    • ColorBath: Images of the Harbor
    • The Floating World
    • Industrial Strength | Urban Industrial Landscape
    • The Scaffold
    • Industrial Pastorale: The Rural/Urban Landscape
    • Botanical Prints | The Natural World
    • Construction | Reconstruction : Urban Landscape
    • Infrastructure
  • Drawings
    • Pencil Drawings: Pandemic Pause
    • Drawings in Dust 1
    • Signs & Symbols (Archive)
    • Botanical Drawings (Archive)
  • Photography
    • New Work Inspired by England
    • Seattle Waterfront Park Photography
    • Architectural Photography | Construction Sites
    • American West Landscape Photography
  • Mixed Media
    • Modern Botanical | Mixed Media on Plaster
    • From the Sea | Water Paintings
    • Sleep Studies
  • Wabi Sabi Abstract
    • Minimalist Modern
    • Ink Painting Abstractions
  • Shop
  • About
    • Contact
  • Blog
You are here: Home / Search for "mexico"

Search Results for: mexico

Three Days in Silence: This is Not a Haiku

December 19, 2013 by Iskra 1 Comment

The Road To Cloud Mountain Photocollage
The Road to Cloud Mountain

   “The essence of spiritual practice is remembrance, whether it is remembering to come back  to  the present moment or recalling the truths of impermanence.”
— Andrew Holecek, Tricycle Magazine, Winter 2013

   “Don’t talk, I can’t hear myself see.” –Jerry Saltz

I first visited Cloud Mountain 23 years ago for a seven day silent retreat. At that time a year of insomnia and grief in the wake of my father’s death had taken me to the brink of despair. My view of the world had become dangerously distorted, and if I wanted to come back to my life I needed to take my meditation practice to a different level and rewire my brain. This was before the idea of negativity bias had become commonly accepted in science and spiritual practice, and so in the first days of retreat I spent a lot of time beating myself up for my mind’s inexorable turning towards darkness. By the end of the seven days I had turned enough times to face the other direction that I could now see it existed. The searing images that appear in states of absorption may be only seconds in duration, yet they can powerfully and permanently alter the brain. As well, the steady accrual of mindfulness practice.

I will never forget the feeling of my hands on the steering wheel as I prepared to drive away at the end of the retreat. Did I still know how to drive? I tested the the brake pedal and fiddled with the key. I would start slowly. As I rolled down the hill at three miles per hour I realized that my father was still dead, that a particular sadness was permanent and immutable, and that I was okay. My breathing remained comfortable and calm, and my eyelids didn’t prickle. In that week nothing had changed in the facts of life, but my capacity to carry it had changed. I proceeded to drive directly onto a one-way road into a clear-cut. This is how it is: the world doesn’t stop being itself while I’m being quiet.

Over the several decades since, I have become steadily more happy. Terrible things happen, but without the added burden of taking them personally. When I feel grief I feel myself gathered in a very big net with others. I also increasingly live by this truth:  “Know that joy is rarer, more difficult and beautiful than sadness.” When I saw this quotation from Andre Gide in the description of Cloud Mountain’s December “Discovering Joy” retreat with Lila Kate Wheeler I signed on. Happiness and joy take vigilance, and continual practice. What follows are my notes from memory and a few photographs, taken after the formal retreat had ended.

Devotional Altar
Devotional Altar, Cloud Mountain

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Meditation & Buddhism, The Spiritual in Art Tagged With: buddhist community, cloud mountain, contemplative photography, Lila Kate Wheeler, meditation retreat, negativity bias, silent retreat, the road to cloud mountain

Mixed Media

I approach painting as a printmaker, and I am as likely to use a brayer as a brush. I use watersoluble printing inks, watercolor and  acrylic, working on paper or prepared grounds on panel. My style is driven by content, and it may change as the subject matter dictates. My most recent work brings paint, image transfer and old-world patina together in a modern approach to classical botanical art.

Each series below links to a gallery of paintings for you to explore.

Tulip-Opening-Botancal-Iskra

Modern Botanical | Mixed Media

on Plaster

In this ongoing series I use photography and mixed media to pay homage to nature and the classical origins of botanical art. The series started originally with the title, “The Gardener’s Almanac of Irreproducible Phenomena.” As an avid gardener I am mesmerized by the fleeting miracles of plant forms. You can read more about this series and the process of doing these one-of-kind panels on my blog.

 

Water Paintings by Iskra

From the Sea | Paintings

Paintings on panel inspired by the sea and the architecture of shells

 

Baroque Morning

Sleep Studies | Archive

A series of intimate paintings on the theme of sleep, created under the influence of junkyards, hotel rooms and the folkart architecture of the graveyards of Mexico, the ultimate resting place.

 

The Red House

The House | Archive

The house as icon, refuge, and home of memory.

Winter Journey to the Yucatan

February 26, 2011 by Iskra 2 Comments

Sometimes you go to an unexpected place. Here are some recent images from a visit to QuintanaRoo and the lovely village of Akumal on Mexico’s Caribbean coast.

The-Bright-WIndow

Relic-Shadow

Aloe_AkumalAll Photos © Iskra Johnson

Filed Under: Photography, The Spiritual in Art, Travel Tagged With: aloe, Artist journey to the Yucatan, church of Valladolid, Iskra photography, Photo journal of the Yucatan, Photos of the Yucatan, textures of Mexico

Journal Jamming from LAX: Where is the Village?

January 18, 2010 by Iskra 4 Comments

Mexico-Travel-Journal-With-The-DogMExico-Trave-lJournal-With-Boat

© Iskra Johnson 2010

I am coming from a place where the main street is a river, where every person who passes every other person says Hola, where dinner is caught at dawn and served at night by torchlight, where on Sunday morning they wake you with cannons and the scolding of churchbells until you leap from your bed to say YES! I am coming! I am truly here! Ranchero music announces the weekly arrival of gasoline and when a steer gets loose he is roped to a palm tree, a bridge and a delivery truck, in that order. Every time I see him on the cobblestone path this dog gives me The Look: Unabashed need? Resignation? Desperation? Love? and I offer it back.

I am coming from a place where you go each night to the ocean to celebrate the sunset to a place where you do not see the sun except on television advertising Mexico, neon blue seahorses swimming on plasma screens above the cheese-dripping BurgerKing. I am entering a particularly grim system of transport designed to squeeze you through as quickly as possible to the next destination, accompanied by the barking percussion of bins and belts, jewelry and shoes and the irritated squall of security alarms. Only now do I learn about the man who almost blew himself and everybody else up with his underwear. We shuffle.

I am entering the First World, the Fast World, the world where everyone is talking to someone who is not here, and listening to music only they can hear, although I can feel the bass humming through the man next to me and ask him “could you turn your ipod down?” — so I can remember the ranchero music in my head. I have a shell in my pocket and sand biting my heels. Memory feels already very fragile.

Next to me a man comments to no one in particular, “This place is ugly. The light is bad. It feels lonely.” I want to embrace him, because he is saying aloud what I am feeling, he is saying, Where is the Village? I scribble a resolution on my boarding pass, “look for the village wherever you are. Don’t wait for catastrophe.”

Three days later, Haiti. Now the world has another chance to shrink to human size.

Filed Under: Photography, Travel Tagged With: artist journal, artist travel journal, coming home blues, coming into LAX, First World Fast World, Where is the Village

Journal Entry: Home

January 17, 2010 by Iskra Leave a Comment

Teach_Disappearing_Also_Me

Call-It-Memory

Mexico-Journal-Home

© Iskra Johnson

Filed Under: Travel Tagged With: artist journal, artist travel journal, the journey has just begun

  • « Previous Page
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • Next Page »

Join Iskra’s Mailing List

Don't miss a thing! Subscribe to receive show announcements, first peek at new work and my semi-monthly blog by email. I primarily use the blog for news and updates but by signing up you will also receive the occasional newsletter and special offers for items in my shop.

Iskra Fine Art Blog

the creative process | conversations with artists | the contemplative impulse in art

Instagram

Subtractive painting study and ground experiment: Subtractive painting study and ground experiment: I added baking soda to my gesso. Pretty wild texture here, not sure yet how stable it is. You can see the test of the edges in the second piece— the rugged edge only works if I get a pristine background and unfortunately the tape I used to mask it did not work consistently. Hello tape, my old friend and nemesis. You work differently on every surface. These little barn structures give me great comfort as the bigger structures of our government and nation seem to be crumbling.
Today’s landscape to quiet the mind. Out in the Today’s landscape to quiet the mind. Out in the fields somewhere, on the road to Edison. Acrylic on prepared ground, sketchbook.
MUST SEE! Ai, Rebel: The Art and Activism of Ai We MUST SEE! Ai, Rebel: The Art and Activism of Ai Weiwei at Seattle Art Museum.
I am thinking this morning about the phrase Americ I am thinking this morning about the phrase American Heartland. Learning to paint a barn means studying the neutrals. Our political discourse has pitted the barn people against the city people and there are no neutrals, just shouting. But if you walk out into the horizon lands, all you hear is the wind and a kestrel. Walk in boots, hard-pressed against your toes, walk on stubble barefoot and get acupuncture for a lifetime. Study the intervals: how the clouds can be in the upper one third neatly or one sixth, precarious, the future disappearing with the sun as it falls making the barn your whole world if you’re three years old and looking up; one big triangle with a square in the center, and so many mysteries inside the square. 

There is also the question of what kind of light seeps between the verticals and is the light coming in the evening or at midday when you can finally begin to make out all the other tiny squares within the big square, which would be called hay. Reach for the rope and swing out over the canyon, that great big canyon from bale to bale.

Collage studies: painting neutrals
A hybrid study, mixed process. Reading the New Yor A hybrid study, mixed process. Reading the New Yorker this morning, about the global population crash. This will upend urbanism, for sure, though it will very good for veterinarians and dog groomers:
“Only two communities appear to be maintaining very high fertility: ultra-Orthodox Jews and some Anabaptist sects. The economist Robin Hanson’s back-of-the-envelope calculations suggest that twenty-third-century America will be dominated by three hundred million Amish people. The likeliest version of the Great Replacement will see a countryside dotted everywhere with handsome barns.”
First Thursday. Such a beautiful night. First Thursday. Such a beautiful night.

Featured Posts

  • How to Purchase Artwork from Iskra Fine Art
  • About This Blog
  • New Directions in Contemplative Art: Conversations with Artists
  • What is a Transfer Print? (Artist Statement)

Categories

  • Abstract Calligraphy
  • Architecture & Sense of Place
    • Construction/Reconstruction
    • The Alaska Way Viaduct
    • The Water Tower Project
  • Art Reviews
  • Artist Studio Visits
    • The Mystic Muse: Artists Working in the Contemplative Traditions
  • Botanical Art
    • Botanical Art Cards
  • Collage
    • Digital Collage
  • Commissioned Art
  • Drawing
  • Essays
    • Object Lessons: Essays and images inspired by "A History of the World in 100 Objects."
  • Iskra Shows, Upcoming and Past
  • Iskra Sketchbooks & Journals
  • Living With Art
  • Meditation & Buddhism
  • Mixed Media
  • Painting
  • Photocollage
  • Photography
    • American West Landscape Photography
  • Print Sale
  • Prints
    • Transfer Prints
  • Seattle Iconic Landscape Prints
  • Social Media for Artists
    • The 100 Day Projects
  • The Garden
    • The Gardener's Almanac of Irreproducible Phenomena
  • The Spiritual in Art
  • Travel
    • Road Trips
  • Uncategorized

Archives

Search

Connect on Facebook

Iskra Fine Art Facebook Page

Creative Inspiration

  • Alternative Photography
  • An Artist's Retreat
  • Anonymous Chinese Textile Genius: Moo Won
  • Chocolate Is A Verb
  • Contemplative Art Process: Danila Rumold
  • Eva Isaksen
  • Old Industrial Japan
  • The Altered Page
  • The Heart Sutra Loop
  • The Patra Passage

Galleries for Contemplative Art

  • ArtXchange Gallery
  • Seattle Asian Art Museum

Links

  • CollageArt.org
  • Iskra at SAM Gallery
  • Iskra Fine Art on Houzz
  • Seattle Art Museum Blog
  • Seattle Artist League
  • Seattle Print Arts
  • Seeing Fresh: Contemplative Photography
  • The Painter's Keys

What I'm Reading: Online Magazines and Books I Love

  • 16 mi.
  • Essays by David Whyte
  • Evening Will Come: Poetry
  • Hyperallergic
  • Painter's Table
  • Shu: Reinventing Books in Contemporary Chinese Art
  • Streetsy
  • The Original Van Gogh's Ear Anthology
  • Tricycle Magazine
  • Unincorporated Persons in the Late Honda Dynasty
  • Vanguard

Let’s Connect

  • Contact Iskra
  • How to purchase artwork
  • Iskra Fine Art Blog : The creative process, conversations with artists, the contemplative impulse in art

Join Iskra’s Mailing List

Don't miss a thing! Subscribe to receive show announcements, first peek at new work and my semi-monthly blog by email. I primarily use the blog for news and updates but by signing up you will also receive the occasional newsletter and special offers for items in my shop.

  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Pinterest
  • Twitter

All Images Copyright © 2025  Iskra Johnson · Site by LND · WordPress