Well it is my last day in India. I have had a great time and can’t believe that it has gone by so fast. Today we went to the Bahai Lotus Temple in Delhi. I have been really looking forward to visiting this place for some time now. The beauty of the temple comes from its simplicity in material and form. The building unfolds through a series of concrete and marble lotus petals. From the outside these monolithic petals reach heavenward. It is only on the inside that I began to understand the structure. Many concrete ribs follow the forms of the petals and tie the structure together. Light softly enters the main worship hall from above as it seeps downward in-between the petals. No photos were allowed in the interior of the hall so as to not distract from the prayers, meditations and contemplations of the visitors. So I decided to sketch part of the interior and couldn’t help but think of sketching as a form of meditation. There is something cleansing and peaceful about sketching. It allows one to focus at a high level, but also let loose of the restrictions of the mind and allow you to simply create. Never has a sketch turned out exactly the way that I have planned in my mind but I am alright with that. The joy of sketching is purely in the doing of it. I have often thought that we may spend too much time thinking about design instead of doing and allowing ourselves to enjoy what we do. Perhaps over-thinking gets in our way of designing and we miss out on the simple beauty of creation. Maybe it is not so much the act or acts of thinking but our tendency to fixate on ideas and not allow ourselves to see or reach beyond our own thinking. It is only by extending beyond our own thoughts that we become capable of obtaining something that it truly greater than ourselves.
nicely done sir. i enjoyed reading about your adventures and i look forward to seeing the rest of your sketches.
ReplyDeletejc