These watercolours on paper are now all in private collections, including that of the London Buddhist Vihara, Chiswick, London . For a diagram of the most used mudra in Buddhism please turn to the last page.
HANDS When I was a child my father told me that hands are one of the most difficult things to draw. So of course I could not resist the challenge and have ever since been fascinated with hands and their ability to convey ideas and moods. Eventually, inspired by the hand gestures of traditional Eastern statues - mudra - I dropped watercolours on wet paper and drew over it with the back of the brush. These pictures are the result. In the originals the symbols that are added to reinforce the meaning of the image are covered in gold leaf. In the digitised images the gold leaf looks dull so I enhanced it with a painting program. Martha Aitchison 2012
Reassuring the troubled mind
The Teaching
Compassion
Healing
Looking within
Bad deeds follow the doer as the cart follows the ox
The perfection of the lotus
Beware of the monkey mind
Paying homage
Offering
The Earth as witness
I have used some of these images to illustrate greeting cards which are included in my eBook
issuu.com/nottwobooks
I was using oils, pastels, watercolours and all the usual media when I discovered the computer as another painting tool so I began to offset digital painting against traditional methods and techniques, creating mixed media pieces. In some of them I translated the digital images into handmade silkscreen prints or included them as inkjet prints in mixed artwork. Even my oils and water-colours often derive from digital images because I frequently use the computer as a convenient sketchbook and image laboratory. Between 1988 and 1996 I participated in more than forty art shows and competitions both in England and abroad and my work is in the print collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, because of my pioneering use of the computer as an art medium. In 1997, after two and a half years of work, I finished painting the Life of the Buddha in oils on six wooden panels for the Thames Buddhist Vihara, Seldsdon, Surrey.
One of six oils on wood with attendant lions printed on hand made paper
From then onwards I have continued to work mainly on Buddhist themes with the computer and also in oils and water-colours, the latter medium being particularly well suited to reflect Buddhist thought. Some of my images are inspired by religious themes and others illustrate observations from my own experience as a Buddhist. I also do illustrations for Buddhist publishers and educational institutions. Since 1995, as MailArtMartha, I have also been very much involved with the Mail Art community, a continuously evolving worldwide network of artists who send their artwork to each other by post and find alternative venues to the commercial art gallery for their non-profit making shows. The Mail Art movement has been around since the sixties and seems to attract only the nicest people. With its liberation of the artist from the art market and from many other constraints, Mail Art is a creative activity in which anybody can join.
for the Lotus in Flower Art Festival 2005 coordinated by the Network of Buddhist Organizations. I sent postcards with footsteps drawn on them for people to work on. These are two of the many that came back in the post.