Artists Biography
“Sahaja’s art functions as the best of art does, not as decoration but as a guide to ourselves“
– BRIAN MAGUIRE, INTERNATIONAL ARTIST
Sahaja grew up in an Irish family in Manchester. In his teens he found both art and Buddhism and later did a Fine Art Degree and was ordained as a Buddhist and given the name Sahaja.
He discovered his natural medium in metal sculpture. After college he got a studio at Dean Clough in Yorkshire and had a prolific ten-year period of working in metal. He lost his studio space, and this led to a long period of struggle and re-evaluation culminating in reinventing himself as a painter using a mix of paint and collage.
The name Sahaja means ‘natural, innate, spontaneous, born with……’ His art is about exploring what it means to be human. He lives in West Limerick with his partner. Since moving to Ireland in 2014 he has been exploring abstract and figurative painting, Buddha figures and self-portraits, relationships with all the tensions and struggles and love inherent in that.
In 2018 he started making sculptures again after a break of fifteen years. From broken tools and discarded metal, he makes mythical figures of power, grace and humour.