Trish first came along to the Ipswich Buddhist Centre in 2000. She had attended a meditation taster session led by Jnanamitra at a Body, Mind and Spirit event at Northgate School. This awakened her interest in meditation from a younger age and a couple of years later moved her to attend an open day at the newly opened Buddhist Centre on the Cornhill. Before she even left, she signed up for an introductory course with Jnanamaitra, and rediscovered something she had been looking for most of her life. She found what she was learning through the courses made sense to her, and in 2003, along with Buddhasiha, became a mitra.
She has since supported various study groups and currently the Tuesday lunchtime meditation class. Trish has also gone-on to explore her talent for painting, including many Buddhist figures and images displayed around the Sangha Room at the centre. We wanted to chat with her, to find out more about her journey with painting and how she created these images:
How did you first get into painting?
I have always painted. Even as a child, I always used to sketch and do watercolour paintings. But I didn’t keep it up after school, with starting a family and everything, life got in the way. So I stopped until I was well into my 30s, when I bought some acrylic and started dabbling again. So I am self-taught, I haven’t been to college or anything. But as it has gone along, I painted more and more and now I paint all the time.
Trish starts this new series with the first painting she made for the Centre, ‘The Refuge Tree’
The Refuge Tree
I first got involved with painting at the Buddhist Centre through Bodhivamsa, who asked me if I would paint the refuge tree. At first, I thought it was a big ask, but it was a period of time when I was going through chemotherapy. I was off work for 6 months and didn’t have much I could do at home, so this was something that could keep me going and I said I would give it a go.
So first of all I got a big canvas, and laid it out on the floor, worked out how many people are on the tree and cut little windows out of paper to lay out on the canvas so I could make sure everybody could fit. And then I started to paint the background, it first had really dark blue thunderclouds at the top, but I soon changed my mind and changed it to a light blue. I then researched each individual person, finding out their attributes, what they were holding, any hand mudras and what their faces looked like, so I could get a likeness of each figure. The tree kind of just happened, I didn’t consciously think about it too much. And I also originally painted scrolls in the bottom corners, but it didn’t look quite right, so I went over them and painted dharma books instead.
Continues next month with ‘The Buddha Mandala’
