Meditative Symmetries

During an impasse in my work with landscape painting, I had to question how the depiction of a scene with its light effects was fulfilling my own creative and inner need. I ultimately had to ask: how would I proceed if only painting for myself? In response to this inner calling I have been painting mandala-icons at the still point of the turning world.

I have stumbled upon a format in which I can freely blend abstracted elements of the portrait, the figure, and the landscape, with an ambiguous push-pull of perspective (or lack thereof)... These mandalas are not of the hierarchy of saints or deities, nor are they symbols of the universe, but are of the unity of the spirit of the human religious impulse and the Self, along with possibly the spirit of a place or season.

The image can be simple enough to paint quickly as an improvisation or development of a previous image, or more complex and slow to evolve, until the inner monitor is satisfied or intrigued enough to consider it "finished".

I have been influenced by the icon format of the Eastern Church, the psychology of Carl Jung, Rothko, Rouault, and the altarpieces of the Northern Renaissance. Also the tarot, alchemy, Theosophy, and Kandinsky's Concerning the Spiritual in Art.

Perhaps you will see something in these images as I have -

• a reflection
• a conundrum
• a unity or harmony
• an aspiration or atonement

Res Miranda
Transeamus
Toda ciencia trascendiendo