Compassion & Positive Energy with No Ego – An Exploration Through Painting

My project proposal is an exploration into the profound meaning behind creating a thing with positive energy and no attached ego, and how that affects the outcome, and others that view it. Compassion is used here to have an appreciation and understanding of everything and everyone’s differences and imperfections. Positive Energy here emphasizes even the smallest potential for good and listening instead of anger. Obviously the world is in desperate need of more Positive Energy. No Ego in this case means if the focus is to make something great, it will be full of Ego. If the focus is Instead to make something great, it might be free from ego. My project could have just as easily been titled Buddhism, Tibetan Buddhism and Zen, but that is mountainous and hard to grasp.

If you were to hang a huge banner of a painting by Van Gogh over the front of a spiritual building, it would make sense. But why? It’s not because of the subject matter. It’s because of the Artist’s love and sincerity for that thing painted. That tree, that person, that chair are painted with a care as if to say, that chair could be a Buddha and everything exists on an equal level. Or that chair is, or it was, or it could be you on some timeline. The ridiculous and awesome aim of my proposal is to tap into the positive energy of life, the chi that is flowing around everything. This will influence the style of this project’s painting and the subject matter. Could the outcome be like Hilma af Klint, or a Rauschenberg White painting, or a Jackson Pollock, or Paul Klee, or “Abiding nowhere, the awakened mind arises” by Musō Soseki, or… ? My guess is all, or none of the above. I can see the art containing shapes, text in several languages, lines, scratches, thin paint, thick paint, recognizable elements and not. In the end, how can the visual result actually be anything when everything is one thing and less is more. 

I feel very lucky to have come across two thoughtful, inspiring teachers in my lifetime, even though about 30 years separates the two experiences. Cliff Edwards, author of Van Gogh and God, taught Zen Buddhism at VCU. Cliff Edwards indirectly helped me refocus on the creating process that will stay with me forever. And Robert A.F. Thurman, translated The Tibetan Book of the Dead: Liberation Through Understanding in the Between, taught Indian & Tibetan River of Buddhism at Columbia. Robert Thurman opened my mind to Tibetan Buddhism. Experiences like these and the decades of life in-between will be the reason for this project’s success.

With the help of tools like Buddhism, Tibetan Buddhism, Zen, Van Gogh, Art and Philosophy, this project has the goal of stepping out into the world, separating from the Ego, and letting the wind blow it away into particles repurposed as something useful.

Thank You
Christopher James Kull
September 7th 2026