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Painting from the Source
Sri Chinmoy calls his artwork “Jharna-Kala”, which is Bengali for “fountain-art.” The name reflects the spontaneous fountain of creativity he experiences through meditation, expressed and revealed through an extraordinary output of paintings in a wide array of media and forms.
Sri Chinmoy paints and draws rapidly and spontaneously in a meditative way. His mystical, often abstract works of art, varying from miniatures to murals, include a multiplicity of styles and techniques. To date he has completed many thousands of paintings and millions of drawings, and exhibited in galleries around the world.
He describes the creative process:
"The whole picture does not come to me at once. As I start painting, I see a streak of light right ahead of me and devotedly I try to follow that streak of light. But on some rare occasions the light is so powerful that I envision the painting long before I have actually touched the paper, I don’t bring it forth; it comes to the fore from within, In the light the colour is there. Each time I see the streak of light, I see the colour.”
In December 1991, Sri Chinmoy began drawing birds, representing the soul's freedom. Since then he has drawn millions of an ongoing series entitled “Dream-Freedom Peace-Birds."
