Title: Orientation

Media: Colored pencil and oil pastel on black paper

Size: 20" x 20"

Date: 1984

Comments: I created several variations on "Orientation," one of which is still own. The one pictured above won a "Young Artists" competition at the Mid-Columbia Public Library and is now part of their permanent collection. A central theme of this series, and many later mandalas, concerned the relationship between the absolute, rational, intellectual, archetypal, order of sacred geometry on the one hand, and the personal, intuitive, emotional inner life of an individual human being on the other. While I am fascinated by geometry, and the use of sacred geometry in ancient and traditional temples and cathedrals, I've come to the conclusion that it has no life in and of itself. Geometry can give structure to a building, a drawing or painting, but for a work to be alive one must use intuition and emotion and allow the life in a work to evolve and emerge in the making of the thing. It is often at the point where the structure begins to break down and the physicality of the material and the training of ones hand takes over, that the work begins to acquire real life.