Above: Geoffrey Armes painting: Fenris and Christ Fennsee

SICA 2027 Calendar Artists, Part II

Assembled by Fayra Teeters

This week SICA is offering up four more Subud Artists’ statements that shine a light into their process of creating their art and culture with the Latihan as their guide.

Aminah Herrman Artist Statement

I like to paint visual stories that open up new worlds of possibility, portray dreams and offer messages of resilience, humor and hope. Color theory has been a field of study that fascinates and delights me.

My subject matter leans heavily on human relationships, the natural world, and spirituality.

I use oils, acrylics, gold leaf, and cold wax. I am influenced by Van Gogh, Chagall, Miro and Monet and other artists that show courage and humor.

I have studied drawing, painting, and color theory for many years. I’ve had an interesting art life in earlier years developing a line of wall decor for franchise owners of Taco Bell, Pizza Hut and KFC.

I had a showroom at Dallas Market where I sold painted furniture and folk art to the trade. I managed an art gallery that had an emphasis on spirituality. At present I am grateful to be here in Eureka with a rich supply of natural beauty and an amazing array of artists in and around Humboldt County.

I take commissions and accept layaway.

Lawrence Pevec

I’ve been an artist and designer my entire life. I’ve enjoyed working in graphic, exhibit, and film / TV design for over fifty years. I’m currently retiring from design / build projects and focusing my creative time on fine art. In recent years, I’ve been exploring encaustic medium. Encaustic: (burn in) is painting with pigmented wax. It is fast and satisfying since so many variations are possible. Many, but not all, of my pieces are mixed media which incorporate photography, found objects, like seeds, collage materials, and other dry media. I’ve been searching for that unique combination that will define my art. It is a joyous journey.

Subud and My Art

By Anna Schroeder

Art has been a tool for my self-discovery, especially as it marched hand in hand with the Latihan. I started painting images as journal entries about 30 years ago. I kept receiving to paint little images such as hearts, houses, horses, and dogs. Most would be in primary colors. Each color became a short hand expression of my state of being. My father commented it was like looking at a weather forecast: “Stormy days ahead” or “Sunshine on the horizon.”

That discipline became a way to witness what I was going through. It is an inner dialogue to tell me things beyond what I know in my mind. It also became a way to care for my true self, the self that God calls me to, the self beyond what I inherited, or my worldly situation.

In difficult situations Art has helped remind me of that true self. It fans the flame of love, and joy, and pulls me out the “morbs”*.

* Morbs refers to morbid thoughts and feelings.

Geoffrey Armes

I’m thinking that Art should in some way act as an ambassador of the Latihan.

At first I felt it was enough to play (as a musician), and soak up compliments:

“I feel your music is healing me”

“Come check out my practice/religion/internal guide on the path”


It didn’t quite work that way, as I always faltered on the second statement. Still, when something steals out through an image or a sound that I have created and touches someone… well, it’s nice.

For a long time. I labored as a musician for various contemporary or modern dance companies based in NYC, the then capital of the world for those that wanted to do this.

Parkinson’s disease arrived and stole the scene, beating down my joints and hammering at my energy. I gave in, retired from the work, and instead resumed another teenage-years’ love: painting, a creative vehicle that can move a little slower, giving second chances by allowing me to adjust images, painting over them, all in a slower, but Latihan touched pace.

In music making I had to be in the flow always, with painting I could step in and out according to my body’s whim. Otherwise, the feeling remains similar. In music I had often felt as if I was painting sound in the air, in relation and conversation with other sounds. In picture painting the piece, if it is going to be a good one, full of vigor and life, starts pushing back and telling me where it wants to go. Culture is life, life is culture, life is love, is life, is Latihan…as is receiving.

I’ve painted a series that portrays people who greet a sun flare and solar energy on a frigid winter late evening, by the Fennsee in Berlin Wilmersdorf. This series, conceived at the frigid dormant turn of the year, as souls climb the light-flight back to Betterness, searches out the light, rides the light through dark, deep backgrounds. It says: keep chasing this light that visits you, as it will lift you.

In the specific painting offered as my page in the SICA Calendar, a tenebrous but fiery tale of Christianity and Norse pagan conversion unfolds in a cold grave yard.