The Art of Mark Griffin, PO Box 2139, Port Hueneme, CA (2026)

05/10/2025

This artwork is another oil on canvas from Mark Griffin's "Man in the Hat" series, and it measures 8' x 6'. The paintings in this series are considered self-portraits that chronicle Mark's journey towards the yogic state of samadhi, which is a supra-conscious experience where subjective and objective consciousness are completely integrated and indistinguishable. Mark has described this state as "ecstatic equilibrium," which is different from our everyday experience of "mundane equilibrium." The ecstatic element of the experience is depicted with flowing colors that stream down from the yogi's crown chakra in a fountain of red and golden light.

To learn more about Mark Griffin's artwork, please visit: https://artofmarkgriffin.com/

To learn about Mark Griffin's Hard Light Center of Awakening, visit: https://www.hardlight.org/

05/09/2024

Mark Griffin's 'Dream Red Body' series is a collection of lost wax bronze sculptures completed by the artist in the years between 2008 and 2011. At the time, Mark was also working on large scale photographic images, often of the Divine Feminine in her wrathful form. In preparation for his Dream Red Body Show at he explained:
"These past years I have been involved in two streams of work: large-scale photography and lost wax bronze sculpture. The connecting idea is that these forms and images are essentially figurative--an exploration of expression of the matrix between the physical and unseen energetic components of the human form."

This slide show features music from Mark Griffin. It was recorded to tape on a DA88 digital mixer at his home studio in Malibu, CA and was found on a tape labeled: "Griffin DA88 Piano A-9-9-02 Synth Riffs"

🔮🌙

02/25/2024

"There has to be a second thing to observe a first thing. A perceiver has been carved out of infinite consciousness, and the perceiver begins the chain of events called perception. Perception produces a product. That product is called phenomena...

For the person deep within ecstatic equilibrium, everything arises simultaneously with no relativity. From the point of view of the individual identity within mundane consciousness, everything’s relative. This is where the idea of phenomena arises..."

But, remember...

"There is only one mind. There are not two minds. There’s not one mind that is universal in which everything arises simultaneously and spontaneously, and another mind that is relative in which everything arises linearly. Mind is a singularity that operates at different frequencies."--Mark Griffin

Mark Griffin, "Dream Red Body #6," 2009, Lost Wax Bronze Sculpture, 20.5"x15"x10"

To learn more about the artist Mark Griffin, visit: https://artofmarkgriffin.com/
To learn about Mark Griffin's Hard Light Center of Awakening, visit: https://www.hardlight.org/

12/13/2023

Portrait of the artist as a young man...This photo was recently unearthed from the archive. This shot of Mark Griffin was taken at his Oakland studio in the 1980s. Sculptures from Mark's solo exhibition 'Laughing Dog' are prominently displayed here. As that show happened in 1983 at San Francisco's Southern Exposure Gallery, it is likely this photo was taken in or around that time. Also visible in the photo are two early large-scale canvas which are still in the possession of the artist's estate. Like those canvases, much of Mark's art work has been preserved. Unfortunately, though, the sculptures from the 'Laughing Dog' exhibition no longer seem to be in the picture...

For more about Mark Griffin's art, visit: https://artofmarkgriffin.com/
For more about Mark Griffin's Hard Light Center of Awakening, visit: https://www.hardlight.org/

12/09/2023

Searching through the archive of Mark Griffin's oil paintings, I found this stunning canvas. For reference, today, we'll call it "Self-Portrait of a Kundalini Awakening," as I believe many of the paintings and drawings in this vein are meant to depict Mark's spiritual transformation visually.

The tag phrase for his Hard Light Center of Awakening was always "Awaken the Fire Within," and here, the yogi's blue body radiates intensely transformational heat and fire. This yogi's heart is also prominently depicted, seeming to glow with white and blue light. This sign of spiritual awakening in many cultures visually brings to mind representations of the Christ but is also integral to Eastern culture, where it is known as "Boddhicitta," or heart/mind. Central to Buddhist philosophy and yogic understanding, it is a topic Mark spoke about at great length at his Hard Light Center of Awakening.

The hallmarks of a Kundalini awakening are further represented by the yogi's extraordinary and radiant crown, as well as his third eye, while the fangs find him in a fierce mood, perhaps as a representation of Bhairava, the frightening form of Shiva the Destroyer.

To learn more about Mark Griffin's art work, please visit: https://artofmarkgriffin.com/

To learn about Mark Griffin's Hard Light Center of Awakening, visit: https://www.hardlight.org/

10/30/2023

It was a magical night at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery for their annual celebration of Dia de Los Mu***os this past Saturday night! In celebration of the event, members of Mark Griffin's Hard Light Center of Awakening set up an altar commemorating "The Masters of Consciousness." Mark's lost wax bronze sculpture 'The Fabulous Mr. Head' played center stage while posters of his work can be seen hanging on the right and left side of the altar. The nighttime hours also featured an extended slide show of his work looping beside Mark's art table. Unfortunately, the centerpiece of that table, a life-size skeleton with an electric guitar, is not visible in this picture. But this photo does capture the piercing full moon from that night with a very bright Jupiter visible below. The day also featured a full moon lunar eclipse, so, needless to say, everything was aligned for an extraordinary celebration of life and death.

For more about Mark Griffin's art, please visit: https://artofmarkgriffin.com/

For more about Mark Griffin's Hard Light Center of Awakening, visit: https://www.hardlight.org/

10/11/2023

We will celebrate the artist and spiritual teacher Mark Griffin on October 28th for this year's Dia de Los Mu***os Festival at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery in Los Angeles. Mark is buried at the cemetery and his organization, The Hard Light Center of Awakening, will be building an alter that day in commemoration of his full moon lunar Mahasamadhi anniversary, as well as that of his beloved teacher and Guru, Swami Muktananda.

Mark Griffin loved to do graveyard sadhana at the Hollywood Forever, performing a particular form of Tibetan practice called Chöd for cutting thru the attachments to the ego. That day will also feature a lunar eclipse, so all the forces are aligning for a raucous celebration in the cemetery. Be there, or be square...

Saturday, October 28th
9:00 AM - Midnight
Hollywood Forever Cemetery
https://www.ladayofthedead.com/event-info/

Dia de Los Mu***os Event Info:
The Festival is divided into two sections – from 9:00 AM until 3:00 PM and from 5:00 PM until midnight. A separate ticket is required for each section of the day.

Costumes are highly encouraged!

09/18/2023

While many of Mark Griffin's paintings were untitled and undated, many are self-portraits--reflections of his Kundalini awakening process. Mark began an intense period of sadhana, or spiritual practice, starting in 1976 when he met Swami Muktananda in Oakland, CA. Mark was a student at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music and the San Francisco Academy of Art at the time. Still, this life-altering meeting with his beloved teacher launched him into the upper pantheons of yogic accomplishment, eventually leading to his attainment of Nirvakalpa Samadhi, the highest achievement of meditative practice. He explains:

"As the kundalini rises it begins to change the vibration of your being, both expanding and accelerating your awareness. As it illuminates the chakras, the chakras begin to switch on and vibrate, sending powerful surges of energy and vibrations up the spinal column into the brain.

These vibrations stimulate the brain which operates with increasingly greater efficiency. The brain's ability to detect subtle phenomena expands. Like a very compressed program of evolution, the brain operates in increasingly powerful ways, experiencing reality at increasingly subtle levels. Rather than observing the surface of things that is the report of the senses, you begin to experience reality at its vibrational essence.

What we call yoga, spiritual life, is the experience of the kundalini rising and stimulating the brain, causing it to evolve in its operations. Meditation is the essence of yoga and calibrates this process."

Mark Griffin, oil painting on canvas, "Untitled (Self-Portrait with Blazing Saharara)," ND.

To learn more about the artist Mark Griffin, please visit: https://artofmarkgriffin.com/

09/07/2023

"As perceivers, we are so absolutely affected by everything it is inconceivable. The template that you declare to be the open portal through which you view your existence is so radically conditioned by past action that the entire framework of your present experience is based on what you have already experienced.

What happened to us before completely conditions how we experience what happens to us now, which will so utterly condition the possibility of what will happen to us in the future."--Mark Griffin

This oil painting by Mark Griffin is from his "Man in the Hat" series. Mark's art work is a depiction of his spiritual journey. His work is mostly figurative and seeks to express the "architecture of the human form" from a yogic perspective. Here, the "hat" is the sahasrara chakra. Mark has explained that this energy center at the crown of the head is literally a gateway to infinite consciousness. The figure in the painting, likely the artist himself, seems to gather a golden nectar in his hands as it rains down from the chakra of a "thousand petals."

For more about Mark Griffin's art, please visit: https://artofmarkgriffin.com/

08/16/2023

Today we look at one of the more extraordinary of Mark Griffin’s artist notebooks. As the book cover’s motley assortment of images and ephemera shows, this book is more than just a sketchbook. This intriguing collection of collaged pages has a magical and artsy quality to it. I hope this brief view relays the variety of material and approaches contained therein.

To learn more about the artist Mark Griffin, please visit: https://artofmarkgriffin.com

08/04/2023

Visiting Mark Griffin's old Oxnard studio is always like a magic carpet ride through his ecstatic imagination. The sheer mass of material is dizzying...racks of oil paintings and large-scale photographs, cabinets filled with drawings and sketches, a room full of lost wax bronze sculptures, cases of home-recorded music, decommissioned installation pieces like "Crossing the Great Ocean," etc. Needless to say, the place buzzes with creative and cosmic energy. Today I'd like to leave you with another small sampling of the material we unearthed during our work this past Spring. Some of this work hasn't been seen in over 40 years.

For more about Mark Griffin's art, visit: https://artofmarkgriffin.com/

To learn about Mark Griffin's Hard Light Center of Awakening, visit: https://www.hardlight.org/

The Art of Mark Griffin

05/10/2025

05/09/2024

02/25/2024

12/13/2023

12/09/2023

10/30/2023

10/11/2023

09/18/2023

09/07/2023

08/16/2023

08/04/2023

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