March 2008 Archives

Mandalas by Ofira Oriel

Ofira Oriel is an Israeli artist and teacher. She is a graduate of Hadassah College in Jerusalem and of the Ramat Hasharon Seminary for Teachers of Art. She also has a degree in Education for children with special needs and eighteen years of experience in the field.

Ofira has studied numerous healing and spiritual arts, including Kabbalah, Jewish Meditation, Reiki, Healing through colors, Shamanism, and Bach Flower Therapy.

Her current focus is on the connection between painting and healing, and she leads seminars and workshops on these subjects. Here, she writes about her work in mandala painting, illustrated above.

Contact
e-mail: ofira@oriel-o.com
Website: http://www.oriel-o.com

More Mandala Paintings:
http://www.oriel-o.com/Gallery-view.asp?gid=17
http://www.oriel-o.com/Gallery-view.asp?gid=21

Discussion:
Painting Mandalas: Ofira Oriel

Painting Mandalas: Healing and Personal Development

Several years ago I went through a crisis, as a result of which I returned to painting, after a long hiatus.

I began all the paintings I made by looking for the central point on the canvas. I then described circles around that point. The circles created various shapes, such as bouquets, round ponds, the sun, and the moon. These became the center of the picture. I added different images around the center in a balanced and symmetrical way.

At the time I didn’t understand why I was obsessively repeating the same structure. At a certain stage that structure reminded me of paintings of mandalas which I had seen in Nepal many years ago. In the process of looking for material on the mandala I met Hava Bat Haim, a teacher of painting, a researcher in the field of children’s painting, and a leader of mandala painting workshops. With her help I understood that what I had been doing was part of a process of healing myself. Intuitively I was painting mandalic structures which helped me to concentrate and to experience the relaxing feeling of order and equilibrium within me. Since that time I have been studying the subject of the mandala.

We know of mandala paintings primarily from India and Tibet. From there the name of this structure has reached the west. Paintings with a mandalic structure have appeared, however, in various cultures throughout history, and the philosophical idea behind them is identical in all of them. The mandalic structure appears (with different names) in American Indian culture, in the culture of the Australian aborigine, in that of the Celts, and the Aztecs, and others. They appear in religious symbols. They appear in children’s paintings as part of the child’s natural development in his painting. They appear in nature in a large variety of forms. They appear in Carl jung’s theory, as part of his concept of therapy.

Temples in different cultures are built as mandalic structures. The holy temple in Jerusalem had a similar structure. Walking within it led us from the external to the internal, to the center of the temple, to the Holy of Holies. The central point of the mandala is parallel in the soul of man to the “spark of the soul” or, in the language of Hassidism, “the internal point.”

In the Book of Exodus is written, “Build me a temple and I shall dwell therein.” The temple, like a mandala, is perceived as the inner temple which exists in every one of us. Jung maintained that the mandala symbol describes the human soul. That same, central point symbolizes the self. Our central point is the function which is responsible for the integration of the varied and opposing forces in the human soul.

In the Zohar is written, “There exists no circle in the world which is not made from within a single point which is located in the center…and this point, which is located in the center, receives all the light, illuminates the body, and all is enlightened.” (Tishbi, Vol.1:247).

The English researcher Herbert Reid demonstrated that children draw mandalic designs spontaneously when asked to draw harmony and balance. He saw this as proof that the mandala is a basic form extant in the human soul. In so doing he sided with Jung’s opinion that the mandala is an archetypical form, whose source is in the depths of the human soul, and has forever been so. For that reason, mandala painting is called organic painting; a painting which springs from within the organism itself.

Mandala painting is intuitive painting. The center of the mandala is parallel to our own center; the one from which we come, and to which we will return. The process of painting enables us to contemplate ourselves. The manner in which the pencil moves on the paper reflects the way we move through reality. At the same time, it allows us to link up with the forces and abilities buried deep within our souls, and to bring them forth into the light. We enable ourselves to tap into the wavelengths we need by means of the link to colors, lines, and forms. This linkage in the structure of the mandala creates the feeling of balance.

According to the holistic approach, the creation of balance means healing.

Ofira Oriel, painter

© 2008, Ofira Oriel

Beach Rose III
I've created a new group designed to foster creativity in your lives and I'm inviting you to join, and to ask you to invite anyone you know who may be interested in enhancing the creative parts of their lives to join, too.

Earlier this week, I did a workshop with about 20 local folks who all wanted to build more creativity into their lives. Some were already artists of some sort, some had done a lot of creative work in the past but had left it behind years ago, and others just had a recollection of being creative when they were young and a yearning for that part of themselves to come back. The workshop was very alive and seemed to me to be really successful. I think it has already jump-started a few people and that good things are yet to come.

In that spirit, I created a Beliefnet group to try to get the same thing to happen here in cyberspace. The group, Cultivating Creativity, is designed to provide a safe, supportive, and encouraging -- yet stimulating and challenging -- environment for its members to cultivate their creative selves. Its basic framework is to use a series of questions to help people help each other do that:

1. Identify the problems in your creative life
2. Imagine what your creative life will be like when those problems no longer exist
3. Determine what parts of this ideal are already there
4. Discover how to move, in a step-by-step fashion, to making the ideal a reality.

It will, I hope, use the power of the group to propel its members forward, within this framework.

The group is an experiment. I'm able to help groups of people do this in the "real world," and it will be interesting to see how much can happen, and how it can happen, here in cyberspace.

The first step is for anyone interested to start his or her own post in this group. Begin the post with a short description of yourself, then start complaining! Identify, for the rest of us, issues you have or problems you are facing as a creative person.

Then, following the framework outlined in the post entitled The 'Miracle Question,' write your miracle, and share it with at least one other group member by inviting that group member to respond to your miracle, in the thread that you have created. You, in turn, will respond to that person's miracle in their thread. The two of you become "miracle partners." Others can -- and, I hope, will -- join in to help you make your miracle a reality.

Once you and your "miracle partner" have shared your miracles in your respective posts, identify how much of the miracle is already there, even a little bit, in your lives. Write this up in your post's thread, too.

Next, also in your thread, rate yourself on a scale of 1 to 10, where "1" is you are as far from your creative life miracle as you have ever been, and "10" is you are solidly in it. Share this, too, with your "miracle partner" from the previous step.

Finally, with the help of your partner, come up with an experiment that will move you a little closer to the miracle. Choose something that you are sure you are willing to do, but something that also breaks some new ground.

When you've done the step, report back to your thread and let us know what you did, how it went and how it affected your 1 - 10 score.

After that, it's a matter of getting the support of your partner and the group, and coming up with a new experiment that moves you one step closer to your miracle, and reporting back.

As they say in the Hair Club for Men ads, I'm not only the leader, I'm also a member, so I'll be posting my miracle in the group soon, and I'm as interested in anyone else in getting help working toward my miracle.

In your posts, I suggest you identify your thread with your Beliefnet name, followed by whatever else you'd like to add to identify the purpose of the thread.

Now, as Maurice Sendak said in "Where the Wild Things Are," let the rumpus begin!

NOTE: This is primarily a group for people who want to actively work on their creative selves and want to team up with others doing the same. So, when you sign up, sign up to post, and to help others with their process, not only to read what others are doing!

More anon,

David

Discussion:
Cultivating Creativity group
The 'Miracle Question'
Art, Healing, and Transformation group
Flower Mandalas Project group

Request a flower mandala screensaver: Fifteen Flower Mandalas

© 2008, David J. Bookbinder

Rhododendron 'Ponticum Roseum II'
Click here to pop up the original full-color image

An Addendum to 'Black and White Thinking' in Shades of Gray
By 'shades of gray,' in my previous post, I'm thinking like a black-and-white photographer, whose images can actually display up to thousands of discrete shades of gray (including many variants of gray -- silver-toned, blue-toned, brown-toned, warm-toned, cold-toned, etc), selected from a technically infinite number between pure blacks and whites. I'm thinking of those "boring grays," as some may characterize the color gray, instead as the architecture of thoughts, feelings, ideas, and of course of works of art, not as a uniform color-that-is-no-color. In my work with clients, for example, I'm starting to see this architecture as the complex intersection of genetics, environment, experience, and soul that makes them who they truly are, the interplay of all these inheritances and forces beneath the more apparent "colors" of their appearance, social status, and immediate presentation. I'm just starting to think about this, but I believe it has wide application in the ways I function everywhere in my life, and most likely in the ways we all function.

Of course, that then makes me curious about the role in all these things that color plays. I think there is an equally complex and rich way to think about that, and that thinking about these things -- intensities and shades of color, varieties and shades of gray -- separately for a while will ultimately result in a richer understanding of how they work together to create a whole.

Any thoughts on this are both welcome and appreicated.

- David

Discussion:
'Black and White Thinking' in Shades of Gray
Art, Healing, and Transformation group
Flower Mandalas Project group

Request a flower mandala screensaver: Fifteen Flower Mandalas

© 2008, David J. Bookbinder

Pink Hibiscus II (sepia)
Click here to pop up the original Pink Hibiscus II

I've been experimenting with applying old photographic techniques to new, digitally created images and am curious to know how they compare, from your points of view. My own sense is that the architecture of the image is clearer, and there is a kind of quietness to the image that comes from the faded-brown look, but I'm interested in your responses, either here or in the Flower Mandalas Project group.

Then I got to thinking about how black-and-white photography can sometimes enable us to see more clearly the composition and feel the emotion of a scene. It distracts us from what we most immediately know about the subject -- that blur of color -- and forces us to look at what else is there. And I got to wondering how the clarity that can come from removing the color from an image might apply to other aspects of our lives. "Black and White Thinking" gets a bad rap because it implies we think only of one extreme or the other. But what about "Shades of Gray Thinking," where we omit the most obvious and see the underlying structure of our lives and our world?

How do you, out there, practice "Shades of Gray Thinking"? Let us know, either as a comment to this post or in the discussion thread of the same name in the Art, Healing, and Transformation group

Thanks!

- David

Discussion:
'Black and White Thinking' in Shades of Gray
Art, Healing, and Transformation group
Flower Mandalas Project group

Request a flower mandala screensaver: Fifteen Flower Mandalas

© 2008, David J. Bookbinder

Crocus II

Several members of the Art, Healing, and Transformation group have expressed interest in the artistic process, as described by the artists themselves. So, this is a call to all you artists of all persuasions out there (you know who you are!) to let us know how you do what you do, and how it affects you.

As a rough model, I'm thinking, if anyone out there is old enough to remember, of the Paris Review series of interviews with writers on their writing processes. The magazine's interviewers got down to the finest details of how the writers they interviewed thought about and felt about their work, and also the specifics of how they actually created it. For instance, if I recall correctly, George Simenon, the French mystery writer, wrote each of his books in about six weeks. He began by scratching out the rough outline on the back of a manila envelope, went to his doctor to see if he was physically up to the strain of a six-week writing marathon, then had people bring him in food, drink (and, it turns out, women) as he completed each of his more than 200 novels.

I'll begin, here, with my own process for the flower mandala images, which is a bit more sedate than Simenon's. I'll also start a discussion thread in the Art, Healing, and Transformation group for others to contribute their work and descriptions of their processes. Hopefully, a lively discussion will ensue, and some of the artists who post in the group will wind up as guest writers/artists in the blog.

I begin, first, with selection. I look through the thousands of snapshots I've taken of flowers for ones that are in some way odd. Perhaps they are a little bedraggled, or maybe they are wet with dew, or the lighting on them throws strange shadows. I've found that these flowers produce more interesting mandala candidates than the many lovely shots I have of more perfect flowers. I think of them as "Ugly Duckling" flowers, and part of my task is to reveal their true natures.

I tend to work on a series of three or four mandalas at once. I open several shots of the same or similar flowers in my photo editor, then I take many pie-slice-shaped triangular cuts of the images and multiply them around, somewhat like a kaleidoscope, until I find myself saying, "Wow." The "wow" effect is almost exactly the same as when I know I've shot a "keeper" in the Real World, only in this case my "camera" is the computer screen. I have an almost instantaneous sense of recognition, usually a feeling of excitement or enthrallment, sometimes a more specific feeling or association.

When I have a basic mandala form I like, I will look at several of the other mandala-candidate images I've created (I may have 40 or 50 open at once) and see if there are parts of them that enhance the original. I experiment with merging bits of the secondary images with the primary one. Often, what changes the most is the center. I'm aiming for some motion from the outside inward, or from the inside outward. I can't really quantify how I get that feel, but I tend to know when I've achieved it. Here, the feeling is of internal peacefulness, of literally being centered.

When I have both the outside of the flower and the center basically the way I want it, I usually remove the background, replacing it with pure black, so that the flower mandala stands on its own. This is often a tedious, time-consuming process -- and sometimes, as in the image at the top of this post, I leave some of the background in.

Once the background is complete, I experiment with slight modifications of hue, contrast, brightness, sharpness, focus, and other image enhancements, until finally I arrive at an image that feels whole and alive.

On each piece, I spend anywhere from a few hours at once to a sequence of several-hour sessions spread out over a couple of months. The experience, overall, is reminiscent of meditation.

My initial intent was to create all of these images in color, but I've experimented with black-and-white and sepia-toned images as well. With the color removed, the architecture of the images tends to emerge more fully.

As I've mentioned earlier, most of my mandala images have a hexagram at the center, and often a Star of David. My choice of the Star of David as the organizing shape for these mandalas was initially subconscious, but after I became aware of it, this choice became deliberate. In many traditions, the Star of David, composed of two overlapping triangles, represents the reconciliation of opposites — male/female, fire/water, and so on. Their combination symbolizes unity and harmony. Also, in Hebrew, the name "David," my name, means beloved. I began creating these mandalas in a dark, unloved place, and I think one thing the work on them did for me was to provide a means to soothe and love myself. From this core of self-soothing and self-love came my desire, indirectly, to become a psychotherapist, which at its best is a job where I am paid to love people in a special, compassionate way that helps them find their own inner light and bring it out into the world.

So... that's a bit about my process. I hope to hear from you, now, about yours, either as comments to this post or, better, as entries in the Art, Healing, and Transformation group, where you can discuss your process with other creators and appreciators of art.

Thanks for listening --

More anon,
- David
David J. Bookbinder, LMHC

Discussion:
Artistic Process presentations/discussions
Art, Healing, and Transformation group
Flower Mandalas Project group

Request a flower mandala screensaver: Fifteen Flower Mandalas

© 2008, David J. Bookbinder