At the Feet of The Mother

Lucette Bourdin (1954-2011): Inspired Art and Music

An artist and composer, Lucette Bourdin has drawn her spiritual inspiration from Sri Aurobindo and the Mother and was a close friend of the East-West Cultural Center (now – Sri Aurobindo Center) of Los Angeles. As an artist, Lucette found landscapes as the most durable presentation for her combinations of reality and vision which verges on the mystical. To quote: “the major effect I wish to create in the viewer is the revelation of Light. Form, color, perspective are all bound to this movement of light as it reveals the inner luminosity of the subject. The outer light perceived by the eye is but the reflection of the light which animates and in some way creates the physical expression of the world in which we live.“

Connecting sound and music, artist wrote: “The closest analogy to how I experience both the act of painting and a finished work of art is music. While I am painting I feel like music is streaming through me on to the paper. It is difficult to say whether I am playing the music or the instrument being played. My experience is the reverse of music however, because the

performance is done privately in my studio while the completed score in its entirety is what I show the public. There is another interesting distinction between the two mediums for me as well. Music is played in a line, it is linear, but it creates an atmosphere that continues after it has been played. A painting is a whole piece of music sounding all at once and which the viewer replays by looking at it. As the eye wanders around a painting the colors, forms, textures and their relationships are ‘sounding’ within the viewer creating an experience or mood or atmosphere.”

Lucette took up the making of ambient music as a result of her diagnosis with breast cancer. Her music was especially the product of her transformation through cancer. When diagnosed she said of her desire to create music, ‘if not now, when?’ Bourdin was incredibly prolific in the years before her death, with 23

albums produced in a short span of 5 years.

If you make music like the next day could be your last, it’s amazing what you can achieve: work of such breathtaking immediacy and soul that it betters the lives of all willing to listen. This legacy she has left us is of such consistent beauty and quality that it’s mind-blowing how quickly she became a master of this most difficult musical form. That was Lucette Bourdin’s gift to us, and we are grateful that she left it behind as she departed on her journey to the places only hinted at in her music.

In her own words, “There is new Art and Music and as they are my words, I will let them speak for me. I hope the conversation will be rich and rewarding for you.”

For more, go to the Lucette Bourdin page.