Sangeeta Laishram is an artist who is also a certified yoga and meditation teacher. She is also a certified healing teacher/ practitioner of Paramhansa Yogananda's Healing techniques, and with her knowledge of Reiki and other energy healing techniques, she has been gradually working towards bringing together the creative world of Arts, the therapeutic side of Arts, and the energetic healing techniques. Art itself is meditative, therapeutic and healing. She believes that combining this with the potentially unawakened capacity of each individual to heal themselves can bring forth transformative experiences. She can be found on Xandria_iva@instagram.
What drives and inspires you to pursue your artistic endeavors? What is the source of inspiration for your paintings?
I've never given much thought to these questions before! Let's see…Firstly, it's an innate need to create or recreate something beautiful, something unique. The one thing that drives me in every field, not just arts, is the want to learn, grow and expand. During this journey of learning, I share my thoughts, ideas and feelings,expressing them through art, either with paint or with words.
I feel the best artist in the world is Nature itself. Ever seen those golden sunsets that leave you breathless with their variety of reds, golds, pinks, purples and oranges? Or the burst of light that stream through the trees during a quite morning walk in the woods? The mystique misty blue mountains quickly changing colours as the afternoon sun shines down on it? Or imagine a dark night lit up with hundreds of fireflies, a lotus leaf holding a jeweled dewdrop, a new sapling pushing through the soil looking for the sun. Isn't nature holding the secrets of life itself? I feel so. Life is the most beautiful gift and nature gives the best expressions of it. That is my inspiration, every day, every time. Life and nature, And the wonder of it all leads me to God. When I create, I'm in touch with that core, that spark that is the source of all creations, and that which connects us all. For that moment, I'm deep in meditation of a different kind.
Another great inspiration is the works of other artists. Sometimes when I lose steam, I go through their works and I feel motivated to pick up the brushes again.
Our heritage, scriptures, stories of our gods and goddesses, the sheer variety of our culture and traditions are great sources of inspiration and ideas for me.
Can art be uplifting too? How do you incorporate the uplifting element in your art?
In today's world, there are multiple forms of arts. But by it's very nature, art is meant to be uplifting. Sometimes it can be an expression of oneself, purely abstract and unique. Other times it can reflect the world or the life around us. Sometimes it can even be a copy of what nature is. Whatever be the case, the artwork will always carry an imprint of the artist. Expressive, experimental, ornamental or sometimes emotional (letting off frustrations/strong emotions), there is one thing common in all these: That art helps you connect with yourself first and foremost. Art is a way of life - living is an art, relationship is an art, communication is an art…Art is limited by our own imagination, or lack of it. What uplifts an art, in my opinion, first and foremost, is the soul of the artist. The best art is not necessarily the most expensive, but the one which you resonate most with. Sometimes the best looking, technically perfect artwork might feel bland compared to a scribbly, amateurish-looking one. The difference is the heart of the artist while painting it. If the artist feels the love while painting it, the artwork will always carry that vibration. Now speaking technically, colours, composition, subject matter, the correct use of light and shadows etc all contribute to making a painting uplifting. But like I said earlier, at the end, it's the heart that matters.
Personally, I don't think too much while painting. Many times I allow the painting to evolve on its own. Of course, I decide on the theme, colours and composition etc in advance but in the middle of the process, if I feel the need to remove/ replace an element of the painting I do so. I love playing with light in my paintings. I used mostly soft colours having some vibrant colours scattered about as accents. And music. Music plays such an important part of my painting processes. I love listening to soft instrumental music mostly but sometimes chants, mantras, ghazals, classicals etc work their way in.
Being both an EFL teacher and an artist, you're in a unique position to infuse creativity into your teaching while also nurturing your own artistic pursuits. EFL teachers are celebrated for their innovative approaches, especially in integrating EFL principles into their lessons and engaging with their students' energy and focus. How do you bring these elements together in your classes?
Being an arts teacher in an EFL school is the biggest blessing, I believe! Art can be a bridge to a lot of things. Emotion is a big one. Life skills are another. Communication too. From expressing gratitude to journaling to enhancing creative thinking, art is one of the biggest tools we can use. Just one example:
One of the most enjoyable things we have done in our classes is creating stories and illustrating it ourselves. It allowed children to think outside the box and kick-start their imaginative minds. Sometimes the stories got so many twists in the plot that we had to continue longer. But the change in their ability to communicate and express their thoughts and ideas with clarity, navigate through a stream of clashing ideas without conflict but with fun, helping one another when someone got stuck - all these were signs that art works great in dealing with human emotions/ interactions. It is a great support to all the intellectually heavy subjects like maths and science too. A great companion in fact. Someday perhaps we'll talk more about it. One simple single artwork can be expressed/ implemented in multiple ways by different individuals across different levels of maturity, as we understand in EFL. So yes, art works beautifully well with the principles of EFL, not only with kids but with adults too.
How did you start with art? Are there any particular resources or tools you found instrumental along the way that you'd recommend to budding artists? And finally, what message would you offer to those aspiring artists who are just starting out?
I grew up in an environment of art. My mother, aunty and uncles were all musicians. I started drawing as far back I remember. My mother was a teacher also. I used to do scribbling and drawing in her books, diary, journal and notebooks. So, my mom has that collection. That’s how I know that. Even when I was a baby without knowing how to write, I was still drawing. So, my interest of drawing or painting has always been there since childhood. It grew more and more as I grew up as I have always had affinity to nature. Looking at something, as a kid, I always wanted to recreate it in my own way. If I see a beautiful plant, or a particular leaf, of a particular green shade or hue, then, that I would try to recreate the same look.
In school I took art as a subject. So my basics were taught. After college, I left my field altogether. I came into the legal field and I lost touch with art. Because my love for it was very strong, I kept coming back to it as a hobby. So, I was not really cut off from the whole thing - the way I wanted to pursue it; hundred percent with my heart was not there; you know, how demanding legal profession can be. So I kind of moved away from that. Later on, I slowly came back after I got married. I left law to learn graphic design, website design, again something to do with arts. So, wherever I moved away I always felt the need or the call to come back to arts in one way or the other.
Music has been very close to me. I write poetry. I love dance. Even though I myself have not learned classical dance, I do Manipuri dance and folk dances. All these forms, not only in the form of paintings, kind of very very very close to my heart. The family I was born into shaped me and the environment shaped me. After I got married, I started relearning things on my own because I never went to art college and I felt a void in me that I need to learn more. I have always been the kind who has always wanted to know more and more. So I started on a self-teaching quest.
Regarding resources, my personal favourite has always been the western classical artists. Leonardo da Vinci was a great inspiration. Raja Ravi Verma, from India, among the Indian artists has always been a great love as far as style, subtlety, softness and beauty are concerned. All the classical styles can be found in his work.I studied a lot of classical techniques. That’s how I started. So if you see any of my beginning paintings, they all have a reflection of a certain look of the classical painting style. Then, I started studying modern contemporary, abstract; you name it. I started studying every style of artwork because I want to know everything about what is there in the field of art; what it has to offer me; what my style was. The main thing for any budding artist is not just the technique, but to see what their particular style is. From my personal experience, what I would like to tell budding artists is that you will find your style. There are many schools of thought in this. Should the person paint with only one medium? For example, with water colours only, so that you can be called a water colour artist? Should you work only with oil, to be called an oil artist? Or should you be called something like mixed media artist? Now, that is also a school of thought and one can always go on that line. But personally I feel that it is always good to enhance your skills and all varieties of mediums. Try sculpture, mix media, dry mediums, wet mediums..Do everything that you can and learn because everything that we learn never goes to waste. And one day or the other this enhances the kind of artwork that you create at the end of day. And you always have something to explore and experiment with because you see art is not just painting, colours and all that…It is also a kind of a laboratory where we are learning to seek and find ourselves. In that laboratory, lot of things can happen. So if you limit yourself to just one medium or one style, it is a good thing as you will become a master in that. If you are happy with that, absolutely, great, go for it. But at the same time if you are one of those who want to learn and experiment more and move in different directions and be master of many..because I believe in that thing; not in ‘jack of all trade, master of none’ but in ‘jack of all trade, master of all’.
Whatever you do, I think you can gain mastery, if you do it with your heart. My personal advice would be not to believe that you have to limit yourself but if you are interested in learning something else also, keep learning and expanding your knowledge. Keep practicing. The important thing is that learning a technique is not enough. Finding your own particular style comes with practice. Try different styles, different mediums, different ways of doing things and try something else if one particular way doesn’t work. You find your own way through all of that. Style is always evolving. Even if you look at Picasso’s work or any of the great artists, you will always see from the beginning where they were, how they used to paint and how it evolved after 20-30 years of painting. Even the styles change.
I learned this only when I started teaching. There are various ways of painting like abstract, realism, expressionist, surrealistic etc. You have all these different varieties and you can find exactly what is just right for you by practicing all of them. There are a lot of contemporary artists who are doing all these varieties of work. Do traditional work. If you want to do digital, do it also but try to refrain from using AI. Personally I feel and most artists feel that generating art with words is not art. It is the art of words but not the art of creating with your hands and when we are talking about art, we are talking about creating art with our hands actually. There is a debate that is raging on right now whether AI art is actually art or not. So, us traditionalists would always feel that. What makes art connect to people? That is missing when we create AI-generated art. Trust me when I say this because I have used it to know exactly how it works before I can talk about it. So just a suggestion that use your hands physically as much as possible; use all the movements that are required because ultimately that connects your right brain and your left brain into work together. And generating ideas through words doesn’t work that way. So use the traditional way. If you are doing digital work with a pen and drawing on a pad, it is still the art.
Reflecting on your artistic journey thus far, how do you envision the evolution of your art in the future?
Personally, I believe evolution is a stage that is never constant. I am at a very nascent stage, still an infant in this field. I can evolve lot more. I know I will be painting till the day I leave the body and this place. Till then, it is going to be an evolution. I can not exactly pinpoint where it wants to go, how it will evolve and in what way because I am constantly learning and relearning. I don’t see that stopping anytime soon. However,I do know for sure that everytime I paint, I need to feel the connect with that painting and I go so deep into it in my heart, which I think is the most important part. So as long as I love doing what I am doing, I am sure whatever comes out will always be pleasing to people who look at it. I hope it takes me to a place where I evolve to be a better human being. If the consciousness that is creating it is high, the creation also becomes more finer and purer. That is where I hope to be.
Besides this, I am praying to take forward my painting part to merge with healing because that also is a very strong part of me. I have this feeling since childhood that the main purpose of my life is to help people. Every situation that has come up in my ife has reflected that call to go and help people. I did my healing modalities from Reiki to Paramhansa Yogananda’s methods of healing and Silva life style of healing…Right now, I am doing an art therapy course for art life coach. I am doing this to combine my knowledge of art, healing and yoga therapy to reach out to people who need help. In these times, not just physical but a lot of mental and emotional issues are coming up. Especially, adults, women, men, teens go through it without knowing how to express them. They see the physical manifestation of the emotional and mental issues but are not able to go to the root and clear it out. So, one of my main prayers and what I am working towards right now is to get into this field where I can reach out to people, have workshops, experiential retreats, and interactions with people who need emotional support and healing from traumas. We all carry emotional baggage, mental baggage and not just the physical ones. So my main aim is to touch the lives of such people.
Thank you so much for this lovely tour into your world; an artist's world! I am sure readers will be deeply inspired by your jubilant and compassionate spirit that is expressed in your words, art and life!
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