Contemplative blog

Is this a blog? I don't know. I would be nice a tool to transform inner contemplations into posts. In this case, you'll have here a wonderful book, plenty of ideas to think about.

But this tool does not exist, and so you can see nothing here.

Some years ago I fell in love with sunsets, splendid sunsets in Aragon. I made mentally poems and poems, wonderful ones, about sunsets, about mountains in crimsons and purples. But this book of prayers, a masterpiece I can say, still lives in the White Mountains.

I could stare for days and days at the mound of creation, Piagordo. When the sun, Amon-Ra, kisses the soul of the mountain (a prayer), the world is created again.

I would like to be an expert in Egyptian art and religion (but I'm not). You know... the mound of creation.

I would like to be an expert in clouds and sunsets and silence, and paintings not painted.

Already two months without painting a thing... If I was not an optimist (am I?) I would say: "This is the End". But I read almost everyday some pages of positive psicology, you know...

If you love sunsets, then you are my friend. If you love Egyptian religion, if you speak some dead language, then you can understand me.

What a marvelous clouds today in Piagordo, what a silence... Another day of contemplation. If you love paintings only in imagination, the most fantastic in the world, then I'm your painter. Paintings without the sadness of the world, paintings painted in Paradise.

My beloved cat Cati used to watch sunsets every day, absolutely respectful. Like an Egyptian cat, a divinity.

Juan Bielsa

 

 

A PAUSE

I've been working hard lately, so I have not posted. Nevertheless, as soon as I can, I'll be working regularly online to make this blog an attractive place.

The most important point: I'm really excited about new projects, my new paintings and goals. I would be happy if you visit this blog now and then. After all, this is your house too.

Juan Bielsa

 

 

MAPPING SUCCESS

I think one of the most difficult things in life is to really know what we want. And to know it sufficiently well, after a profound reflection. It involves, no doubt, a lot of hard work and can take lots of hours and hours, weeks, months.

It is true that, in reality, all of us are in search of “success”, and for each person that word may signify different things. It is a real necessity then to start mapping what we want to attain, clarify our ideals, in order to make possible that “success”, which is the goal (or goals) in concrete form, an experiential stage in our way. When we know what we want and are willing to map our dreams, then all that’s necessary is energy, faith...

If, someday, that what we call reality fits perfectly with our map, that day we have attained... success. That means that we have had integrity and commitment, that we have practiced with our will, that we have been coherent with ourselves.

But to know what we want is so hard (at any age), to map our dreams is not easy, and the many hardships of life sometimes are making difficult to preserve our will and energy.

And, nevertheless, that’s the task of life, I think, to choose our most cherised way and to follow it, no matter what others may be saying or thinking.

There were people in history, for example, who knew perfectly very early in life what they wanted, and were very passionate about it, never hesitating about the way chosen. They had a clear vocation and attained success. They were the privileged ones. Now I think of Mozart.

Juan Bielsa

 

ARMAND BASI'S PERFUME

Ads can be a work of art too

 

 

ON THE WALL II

One of my paintings
on the walls of my house

Robinson Crusoe's Island - Oil on board

70 x 48.8 cm

 

 

Supreme elegance. PROJECTS.

Sometimes we think about our projects, about the direction we intend to give to our actions. Perhaps we can be satisfied with what has been accomplished, but still always is a good thing to reconsider all areas of our work in order to see if we can improve it.

Well, in this case I’m thinking about my projects on the web. I intend to follow a different line of action in some aspects, in relation to what I’ve done so far.

So, in the future I intend to follow these directions :

The most part of my sites and blogs will be about style, fashion, celebrities, elegance and art. These are subjects in which I’m interested. But my approach to them, my “language”, will be plain, accessible and, in some way, poetic. Of course I’ll try to make my sites and blogs somehow different from others. One concept that I especially like is this: supreme elegance, poetic elegance. And that is absolutely compatible with a commercial approach. In fact, I won’t refuse at all ads and sponsors, if adequate to the nature of my project.

I have so many sites and blogs... One could think that I’m heading for complexity, but in reality there is only one project here and some different versions of it. I have sites or blogs in English, Spanish, Italian, Catalan, Aragonese, and finally I’ll have another in French. That’s all... So I’ll translate my own writings to all these languages.

There is here an important problem, though. My English is not as good as I would like it to be. But, what can I do? I can only do my best improving it, learning every day all I can.

So, this is the course of action which I’ll follow in the near future. All project online is a challenge, there is a lot of work involved. But if we just love what we are going, and we think we can offer something useful for others and for ourselves, our work can be also an enjoyable part of our life.

Juan Bielsa

ON THE WALL

One of my paintings
on the walls of my house

Virgin Land - Oil on canvas

60 x 80 cm

W O r K   i N   P R O G r E S S...

Original painting by  Juan Bielsa

Oil on canvas

60 x 80 cm

B r a n c h e s

Original painting by  Juan Bielsa

Oil on card

Mount   PIAGORDO   seen   from   my   studio

Here is the  (sacred)  mountain which I see every day

Andorra ( Aragon - Spain )

 

MY STUDIO IN THE COUNTRY

Stone bench ouside my studio

I have been very happy here for many years...

 

FORMS IV

Original painting by  Juan Bielsa

Oil on card

25 x 50 cm 120 €

 

YOUR THOUGHT CREATES YOU

Create your own thought and you become what you want to become because your thought creates you.

We all know that man is as he thinks. Then we must think only such thoughts as tend to make us what we wish to be.

The secret of right thinking is found in always keeping the mind's eye stayed upon the greater and the better in all things.

Christian D. Larson

Your forces and how to use them (1912)

 

 

Contemporary art : Freedom

It is obvious: In life everything changes, painters as well. My artistic expression is now much less concerned with phenomena than years ago.

I'm in love with music and dance, I love spiritual symbols and concepts, and I consider external reality simply as a tool in my art. In that reality, objects have light and shadows... but I don't care for all this in my practice of painting. I "use" reality, but my art is not a copy of phenomena. I love the art that is just music and rhythm, a spiritual dance. Very few contemporary artists have reached this realm.

I remember now an Italian artist, Modigliani. He is known for his nudes. He deliberately ignored shadows in his paintings, he completely subjected his expression to an inner necessity, although "using" external references. And I love Modigliani for that. I love this freedom. True art is freedom.

Juan Bielsa

CRIMSON DOOR

Original painting by  Juan Bielsa

Oil on card

25 x 50 cm 120 €

HEAVENLAND

Original painting by  Juan Bielsa

Oil on canvas

60 x 80 cm 800 €

My Country

I don’t care too much about “reality” in my creations. Obviously, I live intensely in this “reality” as all of us do, but what I love the most is another world of Beauty.

Although I “use”, sometimes, natural forms, I’m more distant from naturalism than most abstract painters (many of them are looking for “materials”).

Therefore, sometimes I paint fairies, or caves immersed in a dream... and I make continous allusions to inner worlds of Compassion and real, eternal Beauty. These are realms in which I can live.

I can say that I have never truly understood this world of ours, its tremendous sufferings, its absurdity. I can only think of it as a bridge to another universe of Love.

I love silence, books, contemplation, honest people. And, in my soul, I’m not French or Spaniard, Russian or Norwegian.

I love Infinity, I study Infinity, my hope is in Infinity. My brothers are those who suffer. And I love animals as well, I have always loved them, they have always brought to me... happiness. I love mountains, and solitary valleys, and deserts, and distant seas, and a Light that only exists in the land of Infinity.

So, that’s why I paint many times subjects outside of this world. Art can be a way to Infinity, too, a way into our inner, real Self.

Juan Bielsa

FAIRIES' CAVE

Original painting by  Juan Bielsa

Oil on canvas

81 x 100 cm 990 €

SWEET FAIRY

Original painting by Juan Bielsa

Oil on canvas

54 x 65 cm 990 €

Conscious cooperation with the Great Whole

Every time you think you start a train of causation which will create a condition in strict accordance with the quality of the thought which originated it. Thought which is in harmony with the Universal Mind will result in corresponding conditions. Thought wich is destructive or discordant will produce corresponding results. You may use thought constructively or destructively, but the immutable law will not allow you to plant a thought of one kind and reap the fruit of another. You are free to use this marvelous creative power as you will, but you must take the consequences.

This is the danger from what is called Will Power. There are those who seem to think that by force of will they can coerce this law; that they can sow seed of one kind and by "Will Power" make it bear fruit of another, but the fundamental principle of creative power is in the Universal, and therefore the idea of forcing a compliance with our wishes by the power of the individual will is an inverted conception which may appear to succeed for a while but is eventually doomed to failure _because it antagonizes the very power which it is seeking to use.

It is the individual attempting to coerce the Universal, the finite in conflict with de Infinite. Our permanent well being will be best conserved by a conscious cooperation with the continuous forward movement of the Great Whole.

Charles Haanel

"The Master Key System"

PRINCIPLES

We do not reflect. I mean that we do no reflect upon genuinely important things; upon the problem of our happiness, upon the main direction in which we are going, upon what life is giving to us, upon the share which reason has (or has not) in determining our actions, and upon the relation between our principles and our conduct.

And yet you are in search of happiness, are you not? Have you discovered it?

The chances are that you have not. The chances are that you have already come to believe that happiness is unattainable. But men have attained it. And they have attained it by realising that happiness does not spring from the procuring of physical or mental pleasure, but from the development of reason and the adjustment of conduct to principles.

Arnold Bennett

"How to Live on 24 Hours a Day" (1908)

RED FAIRY

Original painting by Juan Bielsa

Oil on board

60.7 x 48.5 cm 990 €

The secret of secrets

The secret of secrets is to let the best within us have full right of way; this, however, most of us have failed to do. In consequence, the majority are undeveloped weaklings of little use to themselves or to the world.

The lily permits that which is to have right of way. It does not interfere, but man does interfere. He usually refuses to accept the gifts which nature wishes to bestow upon him, and he hardly ever accepts assistance from a higher power. He sets out for himself and works himself into old age and death trying to gain what was actually given to him in the beginning. He leaves the real riches of life and enters the world of personal ambition expecting to find something better and create something superior through his own efforts, but he fails because man alone can do nothing.

The average person does not realize that to create something from nothing is impossible, nor has he learned that the necessary something can come only from the life that is within. He may try to accomplish much and become much through personal ambition and hard work, but no one can build without material, and the material that is needed in building greatness can be secured only by giving right of way to the life and the power of the inner world.

The man who expects to build greatness upon personal limitations will pass away in the effort, leaving his unfinished work to be taken up by some one else who will possibly build upon the same useless foundation. Thus one generation after another comes and goes, each expecting to succeed where predecessors failed; in the meantime very little is accomplished by man, and he fails to receive what infinite life is ever waiting to give.

Christian D. Larson

The ideal made real (1912)

We must visualize the whole thing

A man to carry on a successful business must have imagination. He must see things in a vision, a dream of the whole thing.

Charles M. Schwab

 

The way of the stars

Original painting by Juan Bielsa

Oil on board

60.7 x 48.5 cm

800 €

Whas Edison a failure?

Was Thomas Edison a failure? Of course not. The thought is absurd. Yet dozens of failures preceded most of his brilliant creations. Edison learned from his failures and built his successes on them.

Discovery is born in error; there are no creations without unsuccessful experiments.

Maxwell Maltz