My Mandalas: An Artist’s Personal View

      I’m often asked to explain the designs of my mandalas, both the personal commissions and the gallery images, and my answers can not be the concrete ones that people, I think, expect. There is something about a mandala that defies description, and that elusive element originates in the very personal nature of our interaction with the mandala. I’ve been drawing mandalas in one form or another for as long as I can remember, before I understood either their spiritual or their psychological significance. Since then I’ve learned much about them that has come to fascinate me, not the least of which are their amazing Jungian references to some unknown yet common universal link between us all, or between us and our distant, forgotten origins. But I’ve only been drawing mandalas “formally” for about 4 or 5 years, so I’m definitely still a beginner. I guess the real trick is to always stay a beginner, as the Zen monks tell us. Always be a student, never, ever an "expert." To become an expert is the death of growth.
      All of my mandalas are hand drawn, ink on paper. I start with a few compass-drawn circles and an axis to keep me centered, then I just draw. It could take anywhere between a couple of days to a couple of weeks to complete. Sometimes the images have been swimming around in my head for weeks, sometimes I don’t have a clue what’s coming next. But always they feel right and proper, as if I’m uncovering an ancient truth that has lain dormant and forgotten for ages. These are the truths of the mandala, within which we all exist.
      A basic theory of the mandala can summarize its essence as “squaring the circle,” as Carl Jung described it. The circle, as the geometric form with no beginning and no end, is representative of the totality of the cosmos, of everything that exists. The circle is the main defining element of the mandala. It is the most archetypal form, its shape is supremely simple yet within its potential resides all that is possible. It is symbolic of the universe without and within, the space that stretches away from us and toward the deepest recesses of the self. It is basic, efficient and beautiful. It is ancient yet constantly reborn. The square, with its rigid structure and prescribed parameters, instils a matrix of order upon the chaotic universe. The four cardinal points give us a sense of direction, and the Bindu, or center dot, bequeeths us our identity, a sacred place in which to Be. The center of the mandala intimately mirrors the center of our own spirit.
      Every drawn mandala is a representation of the psyche of the artist at that moment, just as every natural mandala is a representation of the material forces that resulted in its specific alignment. It is a diagram of forces and elements that are not translatable into human language, and so the mandala’s own structural language of position and line, of color and shadow, fills in the verbal blanks. There is a subtle, distinct meaning to each mandala, buried deep within the surface, but not one that we can consciously grasp, much less translate into words. It is a momentary contact between the artist’s subconscious psychological pattern and the outside world. I draw what comes to mind, and no matter how much I might want to think that the images are my own creation, I know better. Rather than Creator, my role is closer to that of Instrument. The portion of my psyche that can be considered to define my outward identity, my conscious mind, is definitely not the birthplace of the mandala. Instead the mandala comes from a place far deeper and older, closer to the core, a place free from the dark isolation of the ego. There are forces at play within us that we are not, or at best dimly, aware of—they are very powerful, rooted in long-forgotten experiences. They guide our thoughts and actions, invisibly. The mandala focuses these forces and puts them onto the paper (or whatever media you may use) and basically spills your guts out for all to see. Although it’s all mostly indecipherable to the conscious mind, still we feel some affinities we can’t really put our finger on, or one mandala or another strikes us or touches us though we may not know why. This is nothing less than the subconscious reacting to something it recognizes from distant memory, and points squarely to the underlying spiritual connection we all share. That is the power of the mandala, and the strength of our inter-connected spirit.
      I can not say that I have a specific technique I use each time I start to draw a mandala. I always try to come to the mandala from a different place and then let it draw itself. When I work on a mandala I try to put as little thought and interpretation into it as possible. For a mandala to be a truly genuine reflection of the spirit, it has to be unencumbered by our social preferences and psychological tendancies. It simply flows out of the unconscious and onto the page, and any conscious intentions that I would apply to it would only take away from its integrity.
      Every mandala means something different for each person that interacts with it. Whatever connection it makes with you is its meaning to you. That is a great thing—it is a personal connection with the ancient and the cosmic that resides at the center of your spirit. “rahschak” was the first mandala in mandalaZone and as such it’s the ancient ancestor of them all. It is solid and strong, and the waves of its vibration carry on through all its many children. It is like the beginning of a new universe, a massive burst of energy and an infinity of patterns swirling up of their own volition. It is the seed for all that came after, and the spring from which all may drink. That is what it means to me, but to you, of course, it will mean something else.
      All my mandalas are in black and white, because to me they are about the apparent duality of the universe, the unity of polarities, the intermingling of yin and yang in everything, and the infinite potential of the human condition. They are about darkness and light, center and periphery, positive and negative, being and non-being, even the simultaneously unique and infinite arrangement of elementary particles that make up everything in the universe, from stars to stones to the spirit within each of us. The black is representative of matter, mystery and the unconscious. The white represents energy, knowledge and the self. Each mandala is a frozen instant, and at the same time an eternity– a captured moment, a feeling that will never be repeated. In addition, any person viewing a mandala can be considered a point external to the the printed mandala’s two-dimensional representation. If we imagine the line from the viewer’s eyes into the center of the mandala and consider it the third axis, the mandala has suddenly popped into three dimensions. The viewer is no longer external to the mandala (on paper), but becomes an integral part of the mandala (in space).
      When someone writes me to commission a personal mandala they include a description of themselves, and sometimes I write back with specific questions, just based on the curiosity of the moment. I think about it a while, then with them in mind I draw their mandala. It’s a process that has to be very loose to work. If you force it or consciously try to say "well, this person told me they like nature so I’ll put in a tree," it would be very manipulative of an art form that thrives on freedom. If the resulting mandala is that literal and intentional, then it’s not genuine, and its integrity is undoubtedly compromised. The mandala is more a picture of a subconscious state than anything else, so it all has to come from the part of me that is beyond the conscious thoughts of daily life. In a subtle way the mandala should portray the image I’ve built up of the person it’s for, but the themes are not literal—they are underlying subtext, impressions, ghosts of personality. The whole point of a mandala is its connection to the source, the subconscious elements of our personality, so they must be allowed to grow on their own, like all things in nature.
      The meaning that any mandala has to me will be different from the way that you, or any other person, will relate to it. That’s the truly fascinating thing about the mandala—each one is different, unique, yet at their heart they are all the same, just like human beings. We are all different, but in the core of our spirit we are all the same. You must feel your way sensually through the mandala, and cherish its touch upon your soul. Don’t try to explain it, because the specifics of words have nothing to do with it. Just feel the energy of it with your spirit and your heart. Remember that such a quest as the search for meaning and enlightenment is not so much about the end result as it is about the path you take. Communing with our common spiritual archetypes and symbols is not an end in itself, but rather a step in the wondrous process of self-awareness that never, ever ends.

June 16, 2005
by Peter Patrick Barreda, material copyright 2009, all rights reserved