Touching Darkness, Finding Light

Pamela Sukhum and her younger brother Pat, growing up in Stearns County, Minnesota

For our series exploring compassion through art, Crystal met with Minnesota artist and founder of The Beautiful Project Pamela Sukhum and learned about the practice of opening and relaxing into one’s humanity.

Pamela: When I start a new painting, I never know what it is going to be. I stand in front of a blank canvas and allow myself to just be in that space, allowing for an opening.  When that opening comes, I grab my paints and begin. To get the luminous and fresh-looking effects, I had to break a lot of traditionally held rules.  I used my background in chemistry to mix different mediums together. I didn’t have a voice in my head saying, “you can’t do that” or “that doesn’t work.”  My mentality has always been, “we’ll just figure it out.” When things look like mistakes and disasters, I take a deeper look and discover a turning point that leads to a whole new way of working with the paint.  

Crystal: Is that how you operate in life and bring it to the canvas, or is it the other way around?

Pamela as a little girl.

Pamela:  I love that question. Growing up in a conservative household, with a traditional immigrant, Asian American experience of first-generation parents, there were a lot of expectations.  There was a lot of molding: “this is what life should look like and this is what you should do.” My parents wanted us to have a good future and they wanted us to be safe.

Crystal: Were you on a path that was in that mold?

Pamela: Yes. In high school I loved science. I loved the sense of exploration and the search for the truth of things – this never ending sense of discovery as one looked closer and deeper. You could find a whole universe and cosmos looking underneath a microscope! I focused on molecular and cellular biology and worked at the University of Minnesota in cardiac arrhythmia as a research scientist. It was extremely conservative at the time, and I felt my life get continually more and more constrained.  

Crystal: Had art crossed your life in any way?

Pamela:  In first grade I remember wearing a Snoopy painting smock and being excited because I wanted to look like an artist! [laughs] It wasn’t until I was working as a research scientist that I tried painting for the first time. I fell in love. Although it didn’t feel safe for me to approach life in that open way, it felt safe on a canvas.  So that became my practice for life.  

Painting gave me a space where I dropped the constraints and all the voices and conditioning about right and wrong. If I did have them, it didn’t matter. I would say, “I’m just experimenting. I’m playing. If it doesn’t work, I’ll get a new canvas.” As I practiced being courageous on the canvas, I became more courageous in life. 

As I allowed more room for self-expression on the canvas, I started to allow more self-expression in life. That’s one of the inspirations behind the Beautiful Project. Art has a healing and empowering impact.

For me, art has always been about discovering and expressing where our deepest humanity and deepest potential meet.  When I started the Bamboo Amongst the Oaks collection, I had no idea what I was going to be painting.  What started to arise were these memories of being a little kid and feeling like I don’t fit in.  I just don’t fit in. I had a sense that the people around me were the oak trees with deep roots and foundation and I was this little bamboo reed. Not even a tree. I didn’t know if I had a place amongst the oak trees.

Bamboo Amongst the Oaks, 36 x 60

As I began to paint, all of that feeling, all of that experience surfaced and weaved its way into the painting. Then there was an expansion, a realization that, yes, I felt this way and everyone at some point in their life, if not many times, feels like the odd one out. They feel like they don’t quite fit in for a myriad of reasons - some reasons are the same and some are different. But it’s something that connects us. It’s a part of our shared humanity.  I think that’s at the heart of compassion.  It isn’t that I’m over here and you’re over there. It’s that I can relate to you. I feel it in my body and in my bones because I’m willing to open myself to that experience.  Art fosters that deep understanding that goes beyond the conceptual. Beyond talking about it. 

To be open requires us to allow our hearts to break, over and over again.  

Vulnerability is courageous, because what we have to take a look at and what we have to be open to is the full gamut of the human experience.  All the light qualities and all the dark qualities.  

We have to open ourselves to all of it, and that’s our liberation – that’s our freedom.  It takes a lot of courage. It’s a different type of warriorship. 

Crystal: What has been the biggest surprise for you so far?

 Pamela: The Beautiful Project emerged from my experience. When I painted, I felt myself relaxing more and more in my own humanity. And I thought “I wish this for everyone.” We’re often so afraid of the dark. Our unwillingness to go there and make friends with it has had a lot of consequences for us. Behind my artwork and The Beautiful Project is that sense of reassurance. It’s ok. It’s ok to explore all territories. There’s nothing too dark or anything wrong with the dark. So much beauty can come out of the dark, and sometimes we need that contrast to see that.  

A lot of art has gotten conceptualized or institutionalized, whereas I feel the process of art is truly democratic. For example, in our last project we had a 6-year-old and the mayor working side by side and taking turns washing the brushes. Because people are creating something beautiful together, all the concepts go away.

Art helps us we express and discover our own humanity, and through that, we can discover the humanity within others.