Editing My Paintings: A Conscious Act of Union

This week, I’ve finally tackled a task I’ve been putting off for ages—editing my paintings. My work on paper embodies what I call conscious action, a practice rooted in the yogic principle of union. In other words, there is no division between being and doing.

This perspective aligns with the idea that the world is an undivided whole, where all parts—including the observer and their tools and actions—merge into a unified totality. The physicist David Bohm described this as “Undivided Wholeness in Flowing Movement.” Here, mind and matter are not separate substances, but different aspects of a single, continuous motion.

Each of my paintings is about 2.5 meters long, but since I neither want to buy oversized frames nor have the space to hang them, I edit them into distinct pieces. It’s much like film editing—where a director must distill four hours of raw footage into a two-hour film. Each uncut piece has its own structure, space, and rhythm. It exists as a whole. The real challenge lies in making cuts—isolating a fragment that stands on its own while retaining a holographic memory of its original form.

The Courage to Cut

This is not an easy process. There is always the fear of losing the essence, of cutting away something vital—like performing surgery on a patient. But fear of making a mistake has no place in this practice. Instead, I slide the framing templates along the piece, searching for a point where the flow both resonates and crystallizes. Once I find that moment, I mark the position and cut.

Some artists prefer working on multiple pieces simultaneously. My process is different—I create a single large piece and then cut it into two, three, or more sections. There’s an economy to this approach, but more importantly, it fosters a deep meditative engagement—a dialogue between creation and transformation, between wholeness and fragmentation.

The Influence of Action Painting

This approach resonates deeply with action painting, a style of abstract painting that emphasizes spontaneous, dynamic movement and gestural brushwork. Associated with Abstract Expressionism, artists like Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, and Franz Kline embraced the idea that the act of painting itself is as important as the final piece.

Rather than carefully planning compositions, action painters focused on the physical act of painting—dripping, splattering, or aggressively brushing paint onto the canvas. The process became an extension of the artist’s body and consciousness, creating an immediate, raw expression of emotion, energy, and movement.

Key Characteristics of Action Painting:

• Emphasis on Process – The act of painting is as significant as the final result.
• Large-Scale Canvases – Many action painters worked on massive surfaces, often laid on the floor (as Pollock famously did).
• Spontaneity & Intuition – Decisions are made in the moment, without premeditated structure combined with presence, spontaneity, and non-attachment.
• Physical Engagement – The entire body is involved, making painting a active act.

Much like Bohm’s “flowing movement”, action painting dissolves the boundary between artist and artwork, process and product. In many ways, my approach—where being and doing merge, and where I cut and shape flowing movement—echoes the spirit of action painting. My work, like theirs, embodies a tension between chaos and control, spontaneity and refinement.

Editing my paintings, then, is more than a practical necessity. It is an extension of the creative process itself—a meditation on wholeness and fragmentation with the courage to transform.

You can see more of my work here...

My latest book A Modern Way to Meditate describes these creative techniques in more details including instructions on how to combine meditation, presence, spontaneity, and non-attachment.