10,000 Buddhas
Photo Courtesy of Amanda Giacomini, 10,000 Buddhas
A bright light in the yoga community, Amanda Giacomini is an artist who creates paintings infused with a sense of sacredness.
An artist before she was a yogi, Amanda was working at an art gallery after college when she was suddenly and unexpectedly diagnosed with a rare auto-immune disorder. While trying to deal with the symptoms, she tried her first yoga class at the encouragement of her sister. Not only did Amanda fall in love with yoga but her symptoms over time, began to disappear.
The more she fell in love with yoga, the more the art gallery world began to appear shallow. Eventually, Amanda began to teach yoga full-time and after meeting her husband MC Yogi at a yoga teacher training, they opened up Yoga Toes studio in Point Reyes, California.
It was on a Pilgrimage to India with her husband that Amanda found her inspiration both as a yogi and an artist.
Immersed in India’s beauty and devotion to spirituality, Amanda would watch as the mother of a local family they were staying with woke up every morning and prayed in front of a beautiful piece of art in order to greet the day. The home where they stayed had altars everywhere and Amanda noticed how irrevocably intertwined art and spirituality are in India. From paintings and statues to clothing, art integrates with spirituality and is seen as a celebration of the divine in everything.
As she puts it “In India they take every opportunity to connect to the divine. And when I experienced this way of living and being in India, I found that I could use my art in a more profound and spiritual way. I was so inspired to create spiritual art but through my own Western sensibility. Artists in India and the East have a long tradition of using art to uplift the spirit. I finally found a way where I could weave these two parts of myself back together - the yoga and the art.”
When the couple later traveled to Asia, Amanda was newly inspired. Buddhist chants, stories and myths made their way into her spirit and vision, culminating in her 10,000 Buddhas series. The collection mixes the tradition found all over Asia of depicting thousands of Buddhas. Amanda’s use of stencils and spray paint blend ancient expression with modern, street art.
Amanda says, “I wanted it to feel and give that effect as if the Buddha was dissolving into light and vision in some areas then coming back in others .... much like how our spiritual experience and connection is sometimes so fully present and strong and then can fade away and recede and then come back ...”
Excerpt from Happiness + Well-being Magazine's "Creative Sages" article.