Over the weekend, yesterday in fact, I sorta remember making a statement here to the effect that I was going to have a mandala art project ready to put up… now.  Today.  While that was my original plan, you know how weekends can go ~ someone (spouse) comes up with a novel suggestion that now would be a great time to clear out the crawlspace and organize the basement and get the mud room in order.  I saw my plans for spending a quiet day snuggling up to my easel go bye bye, to be replaced by a ‘boxes of stuff that should never have been saved in the first place but still needed to be sorted through anyway’ hell.

Mandala by Paul Heussenstamm.  Gorgeous!

Best part of all that sorting and organizing was that I scored a perfectamundo support for my mandala project!  Jackpot! A plain, square cabinet door sample that I had picked up years ago when in my recycled art phase.  Sadly, many of my ‘supplies’ found their way back into the trash, but I meant well.

This is what I’m starting with as my base.  Because I like the feel of the wood so much, and the crispness of the framed edge, I’ve decided to take my time and really do something special. I gessoed the whole thing to seal the wood and prepare the surface to accept oil paint.  The next step was to find the exact center point and from there draw in my concentric circles.  This would have been easy had I used a compass but I kinda winged it.  I think it’s pretty close.

Because I have such a wonderful piece of cabinetry to work on I decided to make this mandala about what inspires me as an artist, hence the flower in the center. I won’t know what’s going in the next rings until I paint them.

(pinched from Wikipedia)

“In various spiritual traditions, mandalas may be employed for focusing attention of aspirants and adepts, as a spiritual teaching tool, for establishing a sacred space, and as an aid to meditation and trance induction. According to David Fontana, its symbolic nature can help one “to access progressively deeper levels of the unconscious, ultimately assisting the meditator to experience a mystical sense of oneness with the ultimate unity from which the cosmos in all its manifold forms arises.”  The psychoanalyst Carl Jung saw the mandala as “a representation of the unconscious self,” and believed his paintings of mandalas enabled him to identify emotional disorders and work towards wholeness in personality.

In common use, mandala has become a generic term for any plan, chart or geometric pattern that represents the cosmos metaphysically or symbolically, a microcosm of the Universe from the human perspective.”

I thought it was interesting that a circle design like this is often used in “establishing a sacred space, and as an aid to meditation…”  When I think of a mandala I usually pictured the Tibetan or Buddhist designs, but then it occurred to me that the  Rose windows found in Gothic churches are also a form of mandala.

Rose window in the Cathedral in Strasbourg

Stained glass in the Presidential Palace ~ Lima, Peru

I’m almost overwhelmed by the amount of information you can find on mandalas and sacred circles on the internet.  I have to say, my favourite sacred circle is the one my family and friends make when we gather around a table, whether it’s to enjoy a great meal or play poker.  Or the circle we formed every summer around the campfire roasting mystery meats and marshmallows on a stick. There’s something very special about a circle.  I especially couldn’t do without my circle of girlfriends. The bigger the circle, the better!