This complex mandala art is not easily resolved in our perception and so can be a tool in meditation upon deeply meaningful ideas. It takes time in our minds to understand our relationships to nature, to become aware of the wonder, and to ponder the meaning of our situation and actions. The dimension of time is the bridge to the dimension of meaning. Taking some time meditating on four empowerments, one from each category, will encourage you to remember the value of all steps leading towards acting with compassion.
Artist Statement
I started drawing some pretty complex doodles in long meetings, with naturalistic forms and patterns. Scanning them and playing with various digital manipulations I created images that look similar to the complex mandala art found in many cultural and religious traditions. In many of these traditions the combination of the symmetry and the complexity compel a sustained attention as they are not easily resolved at first glance. I then sought to take this further by subjecting these base mandala images I had folded from the drawings, to a stochastic process of filtering through different gradient filters and interactions with multiple blended layers, to create image series. Each image in these series then resembles the others but because of the original complexity different patterns and forms emerge into our perception. Putting them together into an animation blending one image into another in the series, we then have a mandala that changes, but stays familiar.
This process of revealing emergent order and new forms out of complexity resembled the dynamic processes of nature. People seemed to really appreciate how these looked, but I sought to do more with this connection. I realized that since these have the power to encourage more sustained attention, since they can function as tools for meditation, that I could connect the art to a bigger ambition of promoting mindfulness. Many mandala traditions are connected to meditation practices and spiritual traditions, but I did not want to either appropriate these cultural traditions or promote any particular religion.
That is when I came up with the idea of using these as illustrations for cards with short texts worth thinking about. The original thought was that this was a nice twist on the usual card games where one card dominates the other. What if with these cards the different definition of power as empowerment rather than dominance could be applied? Inspired by the four-fold symmetry of the mandalas, I tried to fit them first into four steps of a process for mindful action starting with “relax, look, think, and act” but evolved to the current categories of empowerment cards: four groups of ten empowerments related to: “Life, Awareness, Intelligence and Compassion.”
Inspired by the nature of nature again, I then looked at the ways that the art, the cards, the whole project could become more dynamic, more connected, more able to evolve in a collaborative way with others. In this I wanted people to be able to participate in not just consuming the art or even using it as a tool, but in helping to make it even better and more useful. This led to the website – Neomandala.org and the chance for others to interact with the art and the real world and share their evolving insight and creations with each other.
This is still at an early stage of connecting to the world and just beginning to build a nice community of collaborators. I hope you both enjoy the art, find it useful, and find ways that you can participate in our larger vision for its continued coevolution.
David Wiggins, Artist and Collaborator