"Syzygy"

It's done. And I have to say, it's rather a let-down. After working on it for 30-40 hours, I feel a sense of loss, because it is finished and I don't have time this coming week to begin the new mondo-dala that I began thinking about two days ago (I'm going to use the 24"x24" canvas I've already got, but turn it so it's a diamond). It just feels weird not to be in the middle of a huge mandala project. Naytheless, it means I can get back to doing small daily mandalas again, which will be nice.

I call it "Syzygy," and if you look closely at the stars in the bindu you will see a syzygy there - three heavenly bodies in alignment.
I'd fully intended to have a ring of stylized clouds in the color modulated outer rings, in honor of Georgia O'Keeffe's "Sky Above Clouds IV," which I love. But once the modulation rings were done, I was convinced that the clouds just wouldn't look right. The mandala seemed done, so I stopped (after a whole lot of tweaking).

I wish there were a way to show you online just how huge an accomplishment this feels like.

Almost every single day now for 44 days I have worked on mandalas or learning techniques to apply to mandalas. I need to take some time to reflect on how that has changed me, but I will say one thing immediately: it has become a habit and a need. Does this equate to an addiction? Of that I am unsure.

~Namaste

The Process

Every so often, a mandala creates itself. This happened Wednesday-Thursday when, after fashioning the bindu (center) precisely the way I intended it, my pen burped up a huge gold blot and "ruined" everything.

I just sat there, staring at the mess for a few seconds, then ran for a paper towel and tried carefully soaking up as much of the liquid as possible. Once the puddling was absorbed, what was left was a perfect circle of gold, just at the right corner of the bindu.

Hm.

So I made another circle opposite this one, at the left corner. And then I just let the mandala sort of take over from there. I got as far as the lotus circle (the nesting circle of pink, black and gold petals) and left it for the night.
In the morning, it finished itself easily without any conscious help from me.

Ro, my painting teacher, would say I'd gotten completely into my right brain when working on this (she's always telling us to "get out of our left brains"). Anneke Huyser, in Mandala Workbook, suggests that we finish a mandala without thinking about it; only after it is finished, she maintains, should we go back to it and analyze its symbolism and meaning. Well, sometimes there are symbols I actively choose to incorporate - that I set out to use before I even begin the mandala. So I don't always take her advice.

But I call this "letting the mandala create itself." I know that it comes from somewhere inside myself, but . . . well, it's rather akin to the Taoist concept of wu-wei: non-interference. I just step back and let it happen, instead of trying to force it. And sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn't.

In preparation for my first painting project, I've been doing sketching studies of my bobbling buddha, so for yesterday's mandala I did a buddha mandala. Here's a good counter-example to the previous mandala: one full of conscious choices. I left the inner circles open to each other on purpose. I just had fun with this, making my little friend into a mandala.
~Namaste