THE ART OF
CODY SEEKINS

As an individual and artist, I’ve always held a reflective nature.  Because the primacy of awareness in my life produced an affinity for Buddhist philosophy,  I refer to some of my works as “Jātaka Tales” or simply “Jātakas”, after the historical 3rd person Jātaka narratives of Gautama Buddha prior to his enlightenment. The term “Budgie-Sattva” within my oeuvre is an appropriation combining the word budgie (parrot) with “bodhisattva”, or one who is still on the path toward perfect awareness.

The traditional Jātaka tales are a collection of Buddhist allegories which detail the subjective journey toward enlightenment by illustrating the evolution of a protagonist. That evolution manifests as incarnations of personal identity, experience, and learning; a framework allowing me to build a body of paintings pulling from my exterior and interior life. Traditional Jātaka tales describe multiple past lives of the Gautama Buddha, where each identity is a separate incarnation.  In my works, these multiple incarnations of self are sourced from the transformations within one life.  In effect, I am narrating contemporary Jātaka tales from a 1st person perspective.

About the Artist