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Vishnu Das Art Collections

Shop for artwork from Vishnu Das based on themed collections. Each image may be purchased as a canvas print, framed print, metal print, and more! Every purchase comes with a 30-day money-back guarantee.

Artwork by Vishnu Das

Each image may be purchased as a canvas print, framed print, metal print, and more! Every purchase comes with a 30-day money-back guarantee.

About Vishnu Das

Vishnu Das I base my work on the descriptions found in Vedic and Vaishnava scripture. I study and the visions come, I meditate, I draw, then paint. It is nothing mystical to me, but more of a mystery how the composition sometimes develops into something better than upon the vision's inception.

Many artists try to find solutions to complex questions by employing the creative process. By becoming a small creator themselves, maybe they could break the code of some of the wonderful mysteries of the big Creator. I found out early that the code was already available to me. I only had to listen and study under teachers who carried the answers with them, knowledge handed down from the experiential wisdom of masters past.

I studied fine art for a short time at Reed college in Oregon a few years before Steve Jobs (Apple founder) came on the scene. Like him I also came and went from Reed for many of the same reasons. You outgrow the system when you have a higher calling. I just needed the techie know-how of painting, the knowledge that would get the right tools in my hands to create windows to that other world. Like Jobs I also went on pilgrimage to India. Unlike him I had no interest in computers (until much later) and didn't become abundantly wealthy.

My first art guru was a Navaho lady in California when I was 10. She drew the most beautiful horses with perfect anatomy. She emphasized the importance of the 'line' in art and stressed that "the line is sacred, and when all lines finally come together, your art becomes perfection and is pleasing to the Creator". I gradually searched beyond worldly forms to find expression of what wasn't conventionally expressed. All my old art heroes shared technique, inspiration, the drive to excel, the tools of the trade, but not the sense of purpose or a mission. That's what I was seeking the most.
You will know if you are meant to paint, it's not a question you have to deliberate on for long. It's spontaneous.
Good Art is never stagnant but it continues to inspire, expand and stimulate realizations and to see things differently through different eyes.
As my best teacher A.C. Bhaktivedanta swami has taught, "Art means arranging things for the best utility. Beauty may satisfy but may not have any higher utility. A picture, a poem, anything is art when it serves the very best utility."

Some may think this statement limits the definition of 'Art', but if you think a bit deeper about these words you may get the realization through your art some day that there is a way of achieving a more satisfying outcome - the "best utility" of our human experience is how we use it for best results, which are the results that you really desire, not what society, family or friends pressure you into.

According to the Vedas the beginning of painting descended from the higher planetary systems called 'swargas', an unimaginably long time ago. This genre of Transcendent art aims to express pictures with a message, a story or 'leela' as it is called in Sanskrit.

The descriptions that influence my art are found in the ancient wisdom of the Brahma Samhita, Mahabharata, Ramayana, Bhagavad Gita, Srimad Bhagavatam, the Puranas, and more recently the Chaitanya Charitamrita, Govinda Lilamrita, and the many books by the Six Goswamis of Vrindavana, Visvanatha Chakravarti, Bhaktivinoda Thakur, and my gurudeva A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami.

I hope my art resonates on that transcendental level with you, and touches that higher consciousness where 'sat' (eternity), 'chit' (unlimited knowledge), 'ananda' (unlimited bliss) and the ultimate divine Beauty is manifest.