Bill Viola

interview
with Mary Jane Jacob (ed Jacquelynn Baas and Mary Jane Jacob, Buddha Mind in Contemporary Art, Uni of California Press 2004)

Encountered Buddhism at uni in 60s, then Zen when he went to live in Japan - had a Zen teacher.

'In Japan it was beginning to sink in that perhaps art resides in life itself, that as a practice it derives from the quality of experience, depth of thought, and devotion of the maker, not the virtuosity of the object or the success of its presentation.  Everything else follows from that.  With those words, my life changed.'

Struck by a statement by Ananda K Coomaraswamy: 'all art represents invisible things'

Makes art in awareness of his imperfection: 'The ideal of perfection, shining out there just beyond reach, is the reason why I make art.'

Struck by Zen being about practice, not theory; saw that what he did was an artistic practice - opposed this to the academic language of art as investigation. 'The idea of practice was the key connecting thread that joined my new experience with Buddhism to my life's work as an artist.'

With his father's dying he became more interested in conveying strong emotion, 'the spiritual undercurrents and invisible root systems present under all our everyday actions.' Exploring what was fleeting, what was deep emotion - like an underground river. 'The true reality is situated beyond appearances and material forms.' Led to his videos on Christ's Passion.  Began to realise the spiritual dimension to electronic and digital media:
'Sound and light have one foot in this world and one foot somewhere else. they're not completely "real" in the sense of hard material things.  There's some intangible essence there - a spark, a flicker of living energy, both physical and metaphysical - and this has always fascinated me.'

Explores compressing and expanding time - mirrors what can happen in meditation. Wants to reclaim spacious time from 'time as money' attitude - 'We must take time back into ourselves, to let our consciousness breathe and our cluttered minds be still and silent' 

Catherine's Room 2001

He sees art as having the power to release people from suffering, that it can communicate invisible forces: 'This is . . . the responsibility of those with artistic talent: to bring images into the world that can benefit all sentient beings.'

The Crossing (detail) 1996

Artist like everybody else projects his/her consciousness out into the world.  Works in a deeply unconscious way but the eventual bringing of the work into the world is a conscious one - moving between these two realms, visible and invisible; this is one definition of spiritual.  Draws on language of myth, of poetry and the human heart, core human experiences - we need to connect on this level if we are to survive.