John Van der Does

John van der Does  Sarmoung Images
John van der Does May All Beings be Happy and Free
John van der Does Turning Around
John van der Does Yantra with Sanskrit Alphabet
John van der Does Blue and Red Turning
John van der Does Sunburst

Artworks 

john-van-der-does-sunburst
john-van-der-does-triangles

John van der Does

Sunburst

2010

Ink and marker on paper

8 x 8 in

$300

John van der Does

Triangles

2017

Ink and marker on paper

8 x 8 in

$300

john-van-der-does-outer-dimension-friends

John van der Does

Outer Dimension Friends

2010

Ink and marker on paper

8.5 x 11 in

Sold

john-van-der-does-turning-around

John van der Does

Turning Around

2022

Ink and marker on paper

8 x 8 in

$300

Purchase
john-van-der-does-after-agnes-martin

John van der Does

After Agnes Martin

2015

Graphite and pen on canvas

22 x 30 in

$600

john-van-der-does-yantra-with-sanskrit-alphabet

John van der Does

Yantra with Sanskrit Alphabet 

2021

Ink on paper

18 x 18 in

$1500

john-van-de-does-confused

John van der Does

Confused

2010

Marker on canvas

5 x 4 in

Sold

john-van-der-does-spiral

John van der Does

Spiral

2022

Ink and marker on paper

5 x 5 in

$250

john-van-der-does-gate

John van der Does

Gate

2015

Ink and marker on paper

10 x 8 in

$150

john-van-der-does-blue-and-red-turning

John van der Does

Blue and Red Turning

2021

Ink on paper

6 x 6 in 

$80

john-van-der-does-venus-of-willendorf
john-van-der-does-starburst

John van der Does

Venus of Willendorf

2010

Ink and marker on paper

7 x 5 in

$70

John van der Does 

Starburst

2010

Ink and marker on paper

7 x 5 in

$100

john-van-der-does-may-all-beings-be-happy-and-free
john-van-der-does-wheels-within-wheels

John van der Does

May All Beings be Happy and Free

2010

Ink on paper

22 x 18 in

$2000

John van der Does

Wheels within Wheels

2016

Ink on paper

5 x 9 in

$90

john-van-der-does_-sarmoung-images

John van der Does 

Sarmoung Images

2010

Ink and marker on paper

19 x 20 in

$800

john-van-der-rdoes-afraid

John van der Does

Afraid

2020

Graphite on paper

5 x 4.5 in

$40

John Van der Does 

American, Based in Springfield, VT



Artist’s Statement


Overall it’s an interesting story, and I’ll make it brief. Back in the 1970s and 80s, I lived in Paris. My female companion at that time was Cynthia. Back then I was part of a Tibetan Buddhist group located in the outskirts of Paris.  I met a young woman, a Sanskrit scholar and poet by the name of Louise Landes Levi. She stayed with Cynthia and I for no more than three days, and she had translated René Daumal’s Raza, Essays on Hindu Aesthetics and Sanskrit Studies. She gave me my first yoga lesson on Avenue du Maine in a large apartment with friends.  


Back in those days I was interested in René Daumal, who managed a group called Le Grand Jeu (The Great Game) an alternative to André Breton’s Surrealism. Daumal was also a Sanskrit scholar. René Daumal also wrote A Night of Serious Drinking and Mount Analogue: A Novel  of Symbolically Authentic Non-Euclidian Adventures in Mountain Climbing.


In the very late 1980s I was living in New York City. Perhaps on a weekend, I was downtown and moseyed into Weiser’s, an occult bookshop on 24th Street off broadway. I found Louise’s translation of René Daumal’s translation of Sanskrit studies, Rasa or Knowledge of the Self: Essays on Indian Aesthetics and Selected Sanskrit Studies. On my way to the cash register Louise, the translator of Daumal, was in the line front of me. We rekindled our acquaintances and were glad to see each other.  


And we went to one of the nearby Indian restaurants. Louise spoke Hindi with the waiter. She signed the book I just had bought and which she had translated. She told me she was going to give a lecture at Jivamukti, a yoga studio, then located on 8th Street. The the title of the lecture was “How a Dog taught me Sanskrit.” Actually, Louise was having trouble learning Sanskrit and a dog bit her and she ended up in an Indian Hospital. During stay in the hospital, perhaps in a delirium, all the Sanskrit letters, grammar of noun declensions, verb conjugations, root words, etc. danced in her head and she knew Sanskrit.  


I lost track of Louise but continue doing yoga at Jivamukti. During the 1990s I took Sanskrit with Vyaas Houston and the American Sanskrit Institute and moved over to Eddie Stern’s Ashtanga Yoga Shala and went through a four week yoga teacher training course at the Sivananda Yoga Camp in Val Morin in 1994. Got married in 2000 and moved to Vermont in 2001. Over the years I’ve taken several juice fasting workshops and as well Astanga workshops at Yoga Vermont with David Swenson. In 2012 Marty, my wife, and I went on a four week trip to India with Robert Moses and Namarupa doing a Tamil Temple Yatra, a pilgrimage visiting Tamil temples in southern India. Martha Nichols, an accomplished artist, died recently of kidney failure on 6 June 2021.  


That’s about it. I could elaborate a more. The whole coincidence of having known Louise in Paris and then meeting meeting her again at Weiser’s bookshop in New York with her translation in hand, is for me astonishing. 

 

Best, John




Biography


John van der Does, Based in Andover, Vermont is a lifelong Yoga practitioner and teacher using the visual tool of creating Yantras. A Yantra is a diagram illustrating sacred geometrical arrangements in a symmetrical design. Usage of Yantras has been practiced since 3300 B.C.. Practitioners use Yantras to emit cosmic positive energies, curb negative energies and help individuals upraise spiritually. Van der Does’s work explores this sacred geometry while also incorporating written and translated Sanskrit.

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Nicholas Kekic
Deedee Jones
Kim Grall
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MC Noyes
Kathleen Zimmerman
Maurine Sutter
John Van der Does
Phyllis Rosser
Lisa Eckhardt McNealus
Charles W. Norris-Brown

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