José Castelao Cámara was born on September 8th, 1957, in Mexico City. Between 1977 and 1985 he studied art at ENAP, Mexico’s National University School of Arts. From 1985 until 1994 he lived in the Zen Buddhist Temple of Toronto, Canada, under the direction of Zen Master, Venerable Samu Sunim. José currently heads the Mexico City Zen Buddhist Temple.
To write or speak about art is something I rather avoid. "Art is life itself"... is a phrase that resumes the compass that guides me through my journey.
By continuosly drawing that which surrounded me, weather it was landscape, human figure, animals, or things, one day I found Zen, more than 25 years ago.
Both activities have been to me fundamental practices to deepen my experience with life, with reality.
Zen is meditation, concentration, oneness.
It is through these two practices, that I try to discover, day by day, more and more, that which cannot be said in words; that which is authentic experience, and which is described as "essential nature".
Reality is infinite. Anywhere we look, if we are willing to see deeply, we can see the infinite nature of reality.
Reality, understood as that which surrounds us in everyday life, with its infinite diversity of forms and colors, can be –as it has been for centuries– endless source of motivation for the artist. What remains for us is the task of interpretation; the long journey of understanding, simplifying, and synthetizing that which conforms our reality, so that, through artwork, one day, we can arrive to something essential.
