David Rankine is a professional creator. In a world of creators, he is distinguished by his extraordinary expression of original art and music. To experience either, is to be transformed.
Rankine, also a philosopher, educator, healer, and writer, based in Everett believes everyone is a creator. “All acts of creation are sacred,” he says. “Creativity is a birthright and when we are creating, we are closest to ourselves.”
Besides designing jewelry, labyrinths, posters, logos, book and CD covers, and teaching a variety of artistic skills, Rankine is lauded in the art world for his paintings created from a Celtic perspective influenced by Arabic, Hindu, Persian and Hebrew traditions.
“In each painting I want to create a blasting ferocity of colour and movement which still has within it a startling sense of clarity,” says Rankine.
His signature paintings include butterflies or birds around a tranquil scene of land, sea, and sky. Rankine compares these to his paintings in the more traditional form of a mandala, “The quiet, serene landscape is in balance. It is indestructible. It is self - the centre point of the mandala.”
People are most familiar with the concept of a mandala as a meditative tool associated with ancient eastern religions. It is geometric and built around a centre. Rankine’s definition relates to self, “You are the mandala. It is about you and everything around you is an expression of that - a thought.”
Since each of us is a creator, he considers a mandala a metaphor for creation. “We stand at the centre point- as Self and the circle around us is our ever expanding consciousness and also the expression of Self. The mandala is an interface between the conscious and the subconscious - a shimmering window”.
When creating a physical mandala, the mandala is both the process and the resulting image or creative output.
As a child, painting and colouring were a natural part of Rankine’s home life. Both parents and his grandmother drew and painted. Panoramics of Egyptians building pyramids and scenes of Ancient Greece, including thousands of little people and building blocks, were favourite subjects for Rankine. He says, “I was fascinated with how things went together.”
That fascination has not left him. His detailed paintings of wildlife and the amazing intricate mandalas reflect that. It is also found in his music. Through both his art and his music Rankine goes beyond the individual mechanics of something to explore how everything and everyone is individual, but also part of a whole - the Big All. All things are interconnected in ways that are not always evident, but are always there.
Rankine is a first-generation Canadian born in Willowdale, Ontario to Scottish parents. When he was thirteen he started to play the bagpipes and went on to perform at close to 800 events (regiment). When studying fine arts at York University he saw a link between Celtic music and the illuminated sacred texts.
“When I first started looking at Celtic art in art school, I became aware that the fluidic circular rhythm found in the Celtic manuscript art (eg. Book of Kells) could be directly linked to the same rhythms in Celtic music and dance. Indeed, there was a sense of controlled chaos in all of the Celtic art forms. I draw upon those thousands of hours of piping and dancing every day when I am creating new works.”
Rankine is continually creating in one form or another, often multiple forms. He says, “The centre of an act of creativity is an expression of feeling. The longer I am an expressive artist, the more I see it is less about the tools. The cross-over into music doesn’t seem any different than expressing through art. Each holds patterns, colours, synthesis - the painting and the song are slightly different expressions of the same feeling. Every song and every painting has a feeling.”
A painting or a piece of music begins when Rankine is pulled to create and he is guided intuitively. He sits down with the intention - “I wish to create - and the mandala opens.” With a painting, he may start out with a small sketch that he takes to his drafting table and begins mapping out the larger patterns and then fills in. To have something fully planned out, Rankine considers to be death to the creative act.
He always paints while music is playing - often loud, rock music such as The Who. The movement toward expressing through music seems a natural progression or flow.
When he played bagpipes, it was always someone else’s music. He is not interested in that any more, and only plays his own music. Rankine composes strong pieces that contain echoes of rock, eastern sounds and Celtic rhythm.
In 2006, he and local musician and drum maker, Billy Fairley, formed East by West and recorded a CD, Trancemhor.
Rankine went on to various collaborative projects. Under Arathusa Records, he released All That Is (EP 2007), Gnosis (2007), Revealed Structure (2008), Sacred Sounds (2008), and Awakening the Heart (2008).
Since 2007, his band, Dulcimerhead, has been comprised of Rankine (mountain dulcimer) and Fernando Villalobos (percussion).
Villalobos and Rankine do not share any reference points when it comes to a musical background. Rankine grew up in the classic rock era, and learned Irish and Scots folk dancing. Villalobos is into speed and thrash metal rock.
The mix brings unexpected sound that works. They play against each other resulting in a very powerful experience of music. Rankine says playing with Villalobos, “Is like jumping off a precipice and landing together on a ledge”.
Dulcimerhead engaged audiences at the Illumination Ceremony at the Sharon Temple (Sacred Sounds CD music), at the Royal Botanical Gardens in Hamilton, Windfall Ecology Festival, Newmarket and several coffee houses and events in Southern Ontario. They are now recording a new CD, Dark Mandala.
The recording includes Villalobos moving from the djembe, to a full drum kit, making sound that seems like much more than two musicians. The songs, a collection about paradox, continue in the Dulcimerhead tradition of not manipulating audiences but rather “playing with pure intent so the emotions being expressed will resonate with the audience.”
This philosophy of allowing people to receive the experience rather than forcing it, carries into Rankine’s open space workshops where he encourages people not to force anything. He says, “It is about creating moment to moment, rather than working toward an ideal. It is easier to leave something alone until it is ready to express itself.”
His workshops range from calligraphy to a full day experiential workshop in nature at Inverhuron Provincial Park, Return To Spirit. In every workshop, Rankine presents an opportunity to the participant to “come away with a clearer sense of themselves as creative beings.”
Rankine’s respect for the individual as a creative part of a collective whole is reflected in the concept of co-creation. He says, “I have never been comfortable with the wall between artist and the viewer, between student and teacher, performer and audience. It is not just the performer. It is not just the audience. It is what happens together.”
Moving his art from paper to hands through henna tattoos is another example of co-creation. Each design is intuitively created by Rankine to suit the individual receiving it. In other words, the receiver inspires the design that is worn home. In a sort of reversal, Rankine’s mandala colouring books provide an outline for someone to fill with colours that suit his or her own sense of self.
The fascination with how things work, and the interconnectedness of all things, carries through all of Rankine’s work. His active paintings around a quiet centre are reflected in the meditation CDs, Revealed Structure and Awakening the Heart, that serve as guides to inner knowing and to finding a balanced centre amid the busy-ness of life.
Because of the inherent integrity of Rankine’s workshops, his art and his music, the observer is given open space to deepen a sense of self and the sense of belonging to, and influencing, a larger whole - to be a creator.
To commission pieces, buy paintings, CDs and other products, arrange or attend a workshop visit www.davidrankineart.com.
