Faces of India

Painting is the bst, most in depth way for me to study what it is to be human.  A prolonged look at the human form, the human face, affords me the opportunity to connect with the source, the force that gives all of us life, equally.  I am not always able to create full oil paintings as I travel, although I work in my sketchbook daily, and on this particular trip around India, I have decided to film some of the people I meet so that I may present them to you in another way, to give you short intimate glimpses at the Faces of India.

Along our remote stretch of beach, just south of Arambol in northern Goa, I have been priveledged to make the aquaintence of  a number of beautiful people.  If one can get past the sales pitch of the women selling sarongs along the beach, or the tourist treatment that some of the waiters give their restaraunts clientel, and get to know these people one finds that they are real, sincere human beings, doing the best that they can. 

When I first met this woman's husband in his shop, we were just another customer.  "Where do you come from" was asked, not out of curiosity but rather as a way to keep us in the shop.  "Just look, looking is free", " You are my first customer, I give you a special price" and "Very good quality my friend", are phrases tossed out like treats to lure us into a purchase and I see many tourists so bothered by them that they completely ignore the sales people.  In this particular shop I took the time to get to know the man a little, ask his name and yes, buy some shirts from him.  The next time I remembered his name and I could see on his face that his idea of us wasa changing.  I met his wife, his daughter and wanted to buy a hat from him but he did not have the right one. He was disappointed when I said no thank you but by looking him in the eye, by expressing honesty, there came a mutual respect between us.  I was not just a customer, and he was not just a salesman.  We were human beings, different yet the same.

The next day his wife was no the beach, selling sarongs.  She sat and spoke with me and I asked her questions about her life and she asked me about mine.  Her beautiful white Sari blew in the wind as we spoke, as she showed me what she was selling and I asked her if I could take a short film to share with you and she agreed.

Faces of India , Mandrem Beach, Arambol

Afterwards, I bought two beautiful sarongs from her and now when we meet on the beach, or on the street there is no sales pitch but rather sincere greetings and friendly exchange.

I have decided to continue to make these short fils, to make a series of them as I travel so that you can meet these people too, in a way that is unique to our time.  We live in a time that human beings have dreamed of for thousands of years, to have the ability to travel the globe, to record and share information across great distances and to maintain contact with friends and family in what not long ago seemed like futuristic ways.

Along the same stretch of beach is a restraunt called Oasis, near the Dolphin Beach resort where I stayed for a week or so and this man was our waiter there.  We also spent time getting to know eachother, to some degree and he gladly agreed to model for a film in this series. 

Faces of India 2


Feel free to subscribe to my video channel to see these and other videos from the wonderfully colorful country that is India.
http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCGil61xbPu1nZTkwavfOgfw

Remember to press like and to share with your friends these beautiful faces!  Thank you and enjoy.

-Brandon 

Good Morning Istanbul!

Good Morning Istanbul!

Coming from the west, from the United States, I have an idea of how things should be, what is beautiful, what is art.  It isn't set, only an interpretation, my upbringing, my training, or waht I like to call my programming, but, being human a creature of habit, I tend to gravitate to the familiar, as most humans do.

In order to come to a larger understanding of truth it becomes necessary to challenge one's own perceptions, one's beliefs, so as to not fall into the sort of myopic viewpoints of the world of which we are so critical of others for having.  This is the purpose of the Socratic question, isn't it?  To analyze one's programming, to make sure that our belief structures still apply to us and to disertain whether or not they still apply to us and whether or not they are suitable to live one's life by.  If we are to arrive at a higher understanding, a more complete truth it is important to look into the ways in which we interpret the world and decide whether this is something we have thought through for oursleves or whether this is something that has been handed down to us, that we have simply accepted and made part of our routine way of thinking, our habit.

Having recieved the vast majority of my programming from Western thought I feel that the best way for me to expand is to go east.  This, therefore is a record of that journey.  A search for the source that goes back farther than American history, back farther than the invention of Art, to truths older than Socrates and Jesus.

This is my exploration into Primary Form.

The Blue Mosque at sunrise, Istanbul, Turkey

Inside the Blue Mosque, Istanbul.