Title: Untitled mandala

Media: Colored pencil and oil pastel on white paper

Size: 19" x 19"

Framing: unframed

Price or Current disposition: $700

Date: finished in 1986

Comments: This is by far the loudest mandala I have ever created. Like many others I created at the time it began with a geometric diagram derived from a Hindu temple ground plan. I then kept working and re-working the image, building up layers of oil pastel and scraping them off in dissatisfaction. In my sketch books at the time I had also been drawing and re-drawing an abstract shape that was roughly figural, with upraised wing forms on either side of head. Then, when reworking this image, a variation of the winged figure came out quite forcefully. For a time I had variously titled this work "self" or "ego" but that never sounded quite right. At one point I was showing a dozen mandalas to an art dealer in Seattle who thought this was an "om" symbol and dismissed it as a kind of cliche or new age affectation. It became apparent that any hint of "New Age" was (and still is) the art world equivalent of "not serious art." That hasn't effected what I create (I create what I need to create) but I have had to accept that the very idea of a mandala places it outside the realm of consideration as a modern avant-garde form of art in the minds of most critics and dealers.