Tag Archives: paint

My First Mandala

2 Replies
The start of something, 1996

The start of something, 1996

This is the first mandala I ever drew as an intentional mandala, knowing something of what it meant to draw a mandala. I had recently finished the class on CG Jung where I began to develop some understanding of spirituality beyond what they taught in Hebrew school and what I’d come to understand in a few years of atheism. I had also recently broken up with my boyfriend of almost 3 years, the one with whom I used to do a lot of collaborative psychedelic art.

I’m pretty sure he had come around to try to get me to take him back, or at least to get me into bed, but it was pretty transparent and I was pretty much through with him. Instead, we ended up painting.  Not collaboratively, though. I don’t remember what he worked on, but it wasn’t my mandala. I told him a mutual friend had confided her attraction to him and he left happily, although our friendship was sort of rocky.

Looking at the huge lapses in symmetry, I wonder if my psyche was that deeply out of alignment, or if I just lacked any skill with a paintbrush.

The Trickster’s Hat Part 12

2 Replies
People never listen anyway

People never listen anyway

Some of what Bantock strives to communicate in The Trickster’s Hat is the need to tell your inner critic to shut up. He’s quite right; it was that voice constantly insisting that my work wasn’t good enough that robbed me of the pleasure of intensive visual creation for big chunks of my life. Art is subjective, and I have to believe that it’s better to create something flawed than not to create anything at all.

Exercise 44 is intended as a visual reminder. Paint two parrots, one green and one red. Simple enough. My parrots were born in the space of under a dozen brushstrokes each. But then, the directions continue: paint a big, black X over their beaks. How sad! I was rather pleased with my parrots and did not want to obliterate their little faces. Rules are rules, but, engaging again with the spirit rather than the letter of the law, I poked some holes in the paper and tied their beaks shut instead, a much more elegant solution, and the parrots are silenced just the same.

The text just came to me then; it’s a bit of a joke. I have a few thousand books in my office, and while I had envisioned the room as my personal space, my husband and stepkids would rather hang out in here than in the other public spaces of the house. When the kids (and sometimes my husband) get rowdy, I’ll tell them, “Quiet in the library!” My stepdaughter protested at first, “It’s not a library.” “Oh, really?” I said. “Look around.” When my stepson saw the parrot poster, he said, “OK, that’s hilarious.”

The Trickster’s Hat Part 6

1 Reply
I do hope this image is sufficiently abstract/artistic to avoid suggesting straight up pornography. It's not meant to be erotic; it's meant to describe a dual principle.

I do hope this image is sufficiently abstract/artistic to avoid suggesting straight up pornography. It’s not meant to be erotic; it’s meant to describe a dual principle.

Exercise 20 explored the concept of muse and duende. The term “duende” was new to me; Bantock uses it as a sort of counterpart to the muse. It was supposed to be executed in two pieces, on wood, and I’m kind of sorry I didn’t follow the directions, because I was really pleased with the finished product and the paper was not designed for this kind of paint. It would have looked and held up better on a more suitable canvas.

I followed the spirit of the instructions, if not the letter. I suppose most people would have drawn actual characters, but whichever entity, muse or duende, spoke to me, I was inspired. To highlight the sacred nature of the yoni and the lingam, I adorned the image with stick-on gems.