Mandala

Swamps, alligators, biologic and mythic beings inhabit my written and visual works. These works express embodied memories of growing up in North Florida during the 1950s and 60s.

I use my training as a psychoanalyst, anthropologist, and artist to create a bricolage of associations to memories, wishes, and dreams which arise during the art making process.

My recent work contains embedded Mandalas. Sometimes they are hidden and at other times they are part of the visual design. The Mandala has been used for centuries as a meditation device which has spiritual properties. This symbol is included in Western religion as seen in the Rose windows of Gothic cathedrals as well as in Eastern religions temples and shrines; such as its use in Tibetan Thangka paintings. The Mandala form occurs naturally in nature; such as in the petals of a daisy or in the shape of a nautilus shell. It is my intention to use this universal symbol of the Mandala to subliminally increase a sense of balance and calm to the observing self while viewing the chaos on the picture plane.

This recent work follows in the tradition of Max Ernst, Odilon Redon, and other Surrealists who were influenced by Freud’s theory of the unconscious.

I am inspired by the Theosophical underpinnings of Hilma af Klint and Georgiana Houghton’s work.

I am especially influenced by a quote of Leonardo da Vinci from the Precepts of the Painter:

‘I will not refrain’, da Vinci writes, ‘from setting this forth for consideration… If you look at any wall spotted with various stains or different kinds of stones … you will be able to see in them a resemblance to various landscapes with mountains, rivers, rocks, trees, plains, wide valleys and different groups of hills. You will also be able to see diverse combats and figures in quick movements, strange expressions of faces, outlandish costumes, and an infinite number of things… With such walls and blends of stones … in whose clanging you may discover every name and word that you can imagine…

I consider each piece to be a potential portal which the viewer can use to enter into their own imagined dreamscape.