Mandalas and sacred geometric designs have fascinated me all my life. Here are meager attempts to create some of my own.
Below are two mixed media projects.
The Left Hand of Darkness, inspired by a book of that title by Ursula K. Le Guin, combines clippings from a scientific magazine about the cosmos and painted eyes. And the second image is a collection of clippings from a variety of magazines surrounding a painting of Mount Kailash, a sacred mountain in Tibet that has attracted pilgrims from all over Asia for millennia.
Below is a set of four mandalas created during lockdown in 2020.
#1 The first is a square with directional gateways enclosing four circles with nine and eighteen flower petals and a five pointed star. The prime number is nine; the outer square and inner star; four and five add up to nine; and the petals are multiples of nine as well.
#2 The second design is the Flower of Life created in multiple overlapping circles to create hexagons.
#3 The third mandala is inspired by mushrooms. Four mushrooms rooted together as the heart of fertile land and abundant water.
#4 The last mandala I have called the Enneagram. It is also based on Nine. The enneagram is inscribed with a golden line over five concentric circles plus another six circles forming a flower of life and three overlapping triangles.
I made the designs below during a course taken with Sam Allison an instructor at the Port Townsend School of the Arts in 2018.
#1 Magic number 12. #2 Fractal with Sierpinsky Triangles #3 Five Phi Spirals created with Pentagrams #4 Flower of Life Mandala