Mandalas As Mirrors

"Ross".  Gouache on paper, 30" x 22". 2024.

“I sketched every morning in a notebook a small circular drawing, a mandala, which seemed to correspond to my inner situation at the time… Only gradually did I discover what the mandala really is: … the Self, the wholeness of the personality, which if all goes well, is harmonious.” ​
– C.G. Jung

The mandala, a Sanskrit word for circle, is an image that I have returned to many times in my painting career. Many scholars propose that mandala means “sacred circle” or “magic circle”, and others claim the simple definition is “circle”. While mandalas have been depicted throughout many ancient traditions, including Buddhism and Hinduism, it was Carl Jung who really brought the mandala to the attention of western society and culture. Jung studied mandalas to a great extent and connected them to psycho-spiritual health and integration.

Jung first used the mandala in 1916, before he knew about its eastern significance, and then began using them in his psychotherapy practice. An archetype is a recurrent symbol or motif in literature, art or mythology, and Jung devoted much study to these symbols. He thought that mandalas were an archetypal form representing the Self and encouraged his patients to draw them spontaneously. He also believed that they represented healing and evolution towards new self-knowledge.

According to the Jung Society of Utah, “Jung believed that the circle invites conflicting parts of our nature to appear and allows for the unification of opposites in order to represent the sum of who we are. He found this sense of wholeness was reflected in the lives of his patients, as he was able to trace the progression of an individual’s psychological recovery by correlating it with the coherence of the mandalas they drew.”

I first started painting mandalas when I was an undergrad student doing my BFA at the San Francisco Art Institute. I don’t have any digital images of this work to share, but these were autobiographical paintings. I developed a lexicon of personal symbols which I used within a mandala composition, to reference things that were going on in my life at the time, avoiding explicit illustration. Coincidentally, this was a difficult transition in my life, when a relationship—which was a source of much pain and discontent— was ending.

In a new gouache series, which I started after I exited the relationship, the mandala metamorphosed into a spinning pinwheel. Traveling in Mexico in 1996, I was immersed in a bright-colored, festive culture. In the main square of the town of San Miguel de Allende where I lived, there were many vendors that sold pinwheels to the children, and I fell in love with that image.

Here is the only image I have from my work at that time. The bear paw became a symbol of Self, now free to fly! And this was in 1996, more than 10 years before I started flying.

"Pinwheel #15", gouache and crayon on paper, 14" x 10" 1996

The next time mandalas resurfaced in my work was in 2004, another personally difficult period in my life. Here is an image from a large painting approximately 5’ x 4’, in which I created a mandala from little “lace” elements I painted from various reference pictures of real lace. The decision to use lace as a patterning element was initially an aesthetic one. Lace is associated with femininity and decoration and has a unique history as an exclusively feminine endeavor. Its explicit ornamental quality, as well as its open and delicate character, has allowed lace an unusual identity: practical to a point, decorative to the extreme. As a garment, it can neither hide nor heat; it is beautiful, extravagant, and intricate. In modern times, it is simultaneously seductive and virginal, erotic and innocent.

"Blue Lace" oil on canvas, 60" x 48", 2004.

In 2006, still working through the same difficult personal situation, I painted this oversized oil painting below, featuring a dragon.

"Lace Mandala" oil on canvas, 62" x 82", 2006.

By this time I had been working with the eastern dragon in a number of works. The dragon drifts in and out of art and mythology of the past and present like a recurring dream. It has enormous power as a symbol and yet stays nebulous in form and in meaning. Dragons of the West are, with few exceptions, evil, hideous creatures symbolic of spiritual desolation and the dark side. Eastern dragons are the complete antithesis: benevolent, elegant, revered demi-gods symbolic of spiritual or meteorological import and often immortality. In China, the dragon originates from a matriarchal society and is closely associated with the serpent. While it is moody and unpredictable, it also represents creation; and in both eastern and western cultures it is tied to knowledge and wisdom. The dragon in my paintings was a metaphor for this duality of spirit. It was self-referential, symbolizing the internal and external conflicts of being human. Like lace, the dragon is intriguingly full of contradictions.

And finally, I have a whole new series of mandala paintings that I started during a very challenging time, when I was undergoing treatment for chronic illness in Calgary. In 2022, I hadn’t painted for months, feeling so consumed by sickness and so overwhelmed by the stringent requirements in order to heal. Having been to numerous doctors who didn’t know what was wrong with me and who weren’t able to offer any help, I finally found a doctor specializing in complex chronic illness, who was able to diagnose me.

But the treatment was hard: I had daily IVs, over a hundred supplements to take every day, colonic hydrotherapy, acupuncture, visceral manipulation therapy or somatic therapy or bio-neuro feedback training daily. I also had severe dietary restrictions and numerous new prescription medications.

But eventually, during my second month of treatment in Calgary, I started to feel improvement in my symptoms. I began painting little mandalas that represented healing, using medical symbols like the rod of Asclepius.

"Healing Brain Fog", gouache on paper, 16" x 12", 2022.

These little paintings blossomed into a series of commissions, many of which use the mandala format as well. To me the mandala is the perfect structure within which to unify disparate themes, and allows me to integrate a variety of images but still anchoring them within the picture plane. My mandalas have gotten increasingly more complex, and while every painting isn’t a mandala, I often return to the motif. This makes sense to me, since I am still on my healing journey, both physically and psychologically, dealing with both complex illness and trauma from my childhood.

"Patrick", gouache on paper, 30" x 22", 2023.

"Phillip", gouache on paper, 2023.

I never seem to tire of the mandala, though I don't use the format in every painting either. I find it so interesting to think of mandalas as a mirror of the Self, and my body of work as a mirror of my life. It's also pretty fascinating to look at the various ways mandalas exist, both in the art of many cultures, like Tibetan sacred sand mandalas, but also in nature! For example, every flower is a perfect mandala, and mandalas occur in diatoms, pollen, our irises, snowflakes, and tree rings, to name a few. Next time you take a walk, it might be fun to see if you can spot a few!

With love,

Lise