absolute image: the structure of consciousness in visual form • lawrence sheaff

Lawrence Sheaff NDD, PhD, was born in Yiewsley, near London, England in 1940. He received his Bachelors Degree in Fine Art Painting, Lithography, and Etching (NDD, National Diploma in Design) in 1965 from Ealing College of Art, London. He gained professional experience in publishing, graphic design, and interior design at London design agencies over the following six years.

In 1966 he learned the Transcendental Meditation technique, and became a teacher of the Transcendental Meditation program in 1971. In that same year Sheaff was invited to help form, and direct, the international design team of His Holiness Maharishi Mahesh Yogi’s worldwide Transcendental Meditation program organization. In the twenty years that followed he traveled to twenty different countries, designing over 2,000 books, exhibitions, posters, and brochures.

These materials presented the knowledge of Maharishi Vedic Science and Technology. The creation of them provided Sheaff with the immeasurable privilege of a continuous interaction with Maharishi over many years in relation to visual expression. His other design work included architectural, interior, fabric and fashion design. He began his Ph.D. studies in Maharishi Vedic Science (DSCI—Doctor of the Science of Creative Intelligence) in 1976, graduating from Maharishi European Research University in 1982.

After his return to England in 1990, Sheaff continued his various design responsibilities, but it was during this time that his attention came back to painting and to addressing directly the formal values of art that had always fascinated him. The result was a clear and logical development of his work, which by 1995 gave rise to his continuing series of paintings—Absolute Image: The Structure of Consciousness in Visual Form.

These paintings, along with Sheaff’s ongoing analysis of them in his writings, drew inspiration from the latest findings in modern quantum physics correlated with basic precepts from Maharishi Vedic Science. These precepts provided a framework for reexamining the arena and content of easel painting in the light of the structure of consciousness itself.

The discoveries that emerged for Sheaff from this twin process of painting and writing are the subject of the book ‘Absolute Image’. This book journals the evolving vision of an individual painter resulting from the application of the total knowledge and experience of consciousness provided by Maharishi Vedic Science to the fundamentals of his craft. It places the Absolute Image series in the context of Western painting by presenting Sheaff’s aspiration to bring to fruition the search initiated in the twentieth-century for absolute values within the discipline. It documents a dedicated quest for this ultimate foundation or ground state of our visual aesthetic reality—Absolute Image: The Structure of Consciousness in Visual Form.

Sheaff is at present visiting Maharishi Vedic City, Iowa, USA, to complete his studies in Vedic Science and finalize the reference sections of his book. ENDS.