There is something very therapeutic about creating a Mandala. This one is about 66cm in diameter and done using various pencils on a board.
I drew this just after I turned 50. I incorporated the Picasso, “Woman Dressing her Hair”, I really identify with how her body seems to be all over the place and the parts not quite fitting the whole.
Next to her is Vincent’s empty room at the Saint-Paul hospital at Saint-Remy with his cloud swirls and cypress trees overlapping. His crows fly on the other side of the woman.
I liked the image of the baby hands holding on to some aging hands, I think this was torn from a magazine and copied. Children are peeking through the cracks next to the empty room.
The watch signifies the march of time, with the watch strap becoming the arms of a sea-anemone and the pattern is repeated on the side, I think they are trying to hold onto everything familiar.
A woman’s face is fragmenting in the changes occurring in her world.
A cloud woman hovers over an imaginary landscape representing creativity and intuition.
Kim is posting an interview with me on 28th January, so please pop over to her blog on Wednesday!
I drew this just after I turned 50. I incorporated the Picasso, “Woman Dressing her Hair”, I really identify with how her body seems to be all over the place and the parts not quite fitting the whole.
Next to her is Vincent’s empty room at the Saint-Paul hospital at Saint-Remy with his cloud swirls and cypress trees overlapping. His crows fly on the other side of the woman.
I liked the image of the baby hands holding on to some aging hands, I think this was torn from a magazine and copied. Children are peeking through the cracks next to the empty room.
The watch signifies the march of time, with the watch strap becoming the arms of a sea-anemone and the pattern is repeated on the side, I think they are trying to hold onto everything familiar.
A woman’s face is fragmenting in the changes occurring in her world.
A cloud woman hovers over an imaginary landscape representing creativity and intuition.
Kim is posting an interview with me on 28th January, so please pop over to her blog on Wednesday!
30 comments:
Wonderful mandala! Using pencil drawings is very unifying. I've done a few mandalas and have always loved the results...something about the round circling movement!
Drawdropping mandala. I rushed to enlarge to see all the detail. Love the difference in the young and old hands and the cut out pieces of faces. Subtle tonal changes. Now I think I understand the difference between a mandala and the zencirlces I have been doing of late.
It is a beautiful free-form mandala full of imagery!!
Hi Mary Ann,
Oh, please share your Mandala's with us! I also find the circular movement quite facinating.
Hi Joan,
This is not a traditional Mandala, just images woven into a circular format, so it is probably similar to your Zencircles. I love doing these things!
Hi Teri,
So glad you liked it!
I love the colors of this mandala. So if I am understanding it right you have both drawn on the paper directly and also used collage? I find mandalas lovely but am not drawn (!) to make one. So far.
what a great mandala, hope marianne sees it.love your from in the middle, specially at 50,the time when the 'meenie menos' are being overly mean! and thanks for your lovely comments about my granddaughter.
Love the mandala Dianne! Especially the Picasso figure, and the hands.
So looking forward to your interview over at Kims,,,exciting!
Also like your new site,,,I've been remiss in blogging lately,,,a little tied up on the home front.
A mandala is ideal for contemplation. Ideal for meditation.
I like the place the watch occupies on it. Times passes, times passes, tic, tac, tic, tac... Are we living a significant life, a life towards unity, or are we losing our path and travel towards fragmented worlds?
Beautiful work, perfect colors and forms for meditation.
Juan Bielsa
Wow Dianne, this is masterful work, it really is!! You are doing an interview at Kim's blog, that is wonderful and I can't wait to see it! I'm woefully behind on reading the blogs, heading over to see Kim's now!
Gee Dianne,
I left a long comment yesterday...who knows what I did when I left here so it did not show up! ARGH
I had said I honestly understand the challenges in drawing these great images in such detail and you have composed them so nicely in a circle! Wow! Pencil work is great fun, but getting it so right can be a real challenge...congratulations. Do you think you would feel pulled to create a similar mandala today? It is truly beautiful, however I am wondering of they way you expressed the mandala might be different.
I am very excited about that Conversation tomorrow!
Thanks Dianne!
Dear Suki,
This was all drawn with pencil, there is no collage, I mentioned that I took the image from a magazine - but I copied it!
See Joan's comment above, she does Zencircles which are like giant doodles.
Hi Soul,
You are so lucky to be able to cuddle your little grandaughter, just the smell of them is so heavenly. I miss that with my grandaughter being so far away, I see her on Skype but cant do the tactile thing.
Hi Babs,
Thanks for dropping by in the midst of all your renovations. Don't worry if you can't get to blogging, these times happen to all of us - we understand the pauses in communication!
Dear Juan,
Thanks for visiting my blog and leaving a comment. This was a purely meditative work which I have never shown publically, it was just for me.
I popped over to your blog and enjoyed spending some time there and will visit again to see your website when I have a moment!
Dear Lynette, so glad you managed to visit here, despite your busy schedule at the moment. Hope you enjoy the interview at Kims.
Hi Kim, oh, I know that awful thing of writing a long comment and it never arrives! I think it does this if the word verification thing is not happy, I now check in the box here to see it has been posted before leaving!
You are right, this Mandala was done a few years ago and now my interpretation might be slightly different. I think it is quite descriptive of how I was feeling at the time!
Looking forward to that conversation tomorrow!
Hugs!!!
Dear Di,
I sympathise with Kim....I too left a long comment (on Monday) and it seems that it must be floating somewhere out there in cyberspace! I was sure I had done all the right things. The first one I posted arrived just fine. Lets hope this will be third time lucky. Anyway, (in brief), I commented on your website. I am so impressed. It has an attractive and simply laid out format, easy on the eye. A case of less is more. As a result your beautiful art works are shown to their best advantage. While I love your wonderful intuitive images, I am blown away by your watercolours. The way you have captured the light in such a gentle and atmospheric way is quite magical! Years ago I too did a pencil mandala and found it very meditative. I must search through my studio and see if I can find it. I loved yours - what an amazing and talented friend you are. Of course designing your own website - well, you are just TOO clever! Love Wyn.
Dear Wyn,
So sorry you had a problem leaving a message - I mentioned to Kim, sometimes if you get the word verification thingie wrong, it doesn't save. Thanks for your very detailed comment on my site, I so value what you have to say, Wyn. I did those watercolours a few years ago and wish I could paint like that now, my more recent ones have become tight again, so I need to loosen up again! Do you still paint in watercolours, I remember you doing some amazing work?
Hi Diane:
You are such a brave woman exploring your inner world! Do you find that having these mandalas around gives you unexpected insight to your life and its goings-on down the road?
- Kathy
What a beautiful mandala! You are so imaginative. I left a little something over at my blog for you. Please come over and pick it up! <3
Dear Di,
I'm afraid my watercolours have taken a back seat of late. I am still so passionate about my oils and have been working in this medium pretty much constantly for the past 2 years. I also love doing monoprints - oil print on paper and then working in on pastel when it is dry. I put 5 into our last exhibition (as an afterthought) and sold 3! One 'resides' in China now, a first for me. During the recent holidays, I never managed to do much serious painting, but must admit to playing around with painting acrylic on glass and I actually pulled out my watercolours too. I have never really been happy with my watercolour paintings and felt that my approach to the medium in the past lacked something vital. I have a book by Lucy Willis and another by Charles Reid and have been pouring over them, trying to glean something which might be that vital thinggie I need. I admire their work so much, especially Charles Reid's. Anyway, as they say, it all boils down to practice, practice, practice! Love Wyn.
A lovely meditation on the passage of time, how the pieces of our lives inform one another.
Dear Wyn,
Those monoprints sound interesting, I wish I had seen them. Congratulations on selling three of them! I always remember your watercolours having a very special quality, so sensitive and ethereal so please don't give them up. You are also playing with acrylics, so you are having an experimental time!
Dear San,
Thankyou for your beautiful, thought-provoking comment!
Dear Kathy,
I love looking at the mandalas a few years later, they really take me back to that point in time, more so than any photographs!
Dear Cynthia,
Thanks so much for the lovely award! I feel quite honoured since you only gave it to five bloggers. I will pass it on when I have a moment.
I would never have the imagination to design this it is beautiful.
Hi Carolann,
It is just like a giant doodle. I borrowed some of the images from bits in magazines and others from paintings that said something of how I was feeling. It was a purely therapeutic thing to do!
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