elaria’s mandala — process

Acrylic, Oil and Col­ored Pen­cil on Hardboard

The sec­ond layer of elaria’s man­dala. I’m block­ing in color and try­ing dif­fer­ent com­bos. If you look closely you can see where I’ve done some scrap­ing to remove a layer of yel­low ocre. I hung this piece on the wall as a dia­mond orig­i­nally but the ori­en­ta­tion spoiled the diag­o­nal rhythm of elaria’s spine as it radi­ates from the center.

Click the thumb­nail to view the whole image.

In doc­u­ment­ing the process, I ask elaria to share he thoughts with me. See the gallery below.

The fol­low­ing is a recap of her experience:

“A begin­ning of sim­ple warm-​up draw­ings — famil­iar­ity and com­fort quickly attained in a wel­com­ing lit­tle art box that was full of warmth and cre­ation energy.
Deep breath of antic­i­pa­tion.
Slate cleaned and bare, vir­gin can­vas laid on an easel that was the entire floor cov­ered with a light brown drop cloth. Already, the room was chal­leng­ing the sense of up and down.
yel­low and water — spritz, sprizt, spritzed — an invi­ta­tion to rest bones and mus­cles upon this solid, leg­less table.
A Feast!
blue and green gave room and oppor­tu­nity for fur­ther immer­sion.
red asked to join…
Sym­bio­sis within the move­ment of both bod­ies cor­re­lated with the col­ors and time passed like noth­ing.
A new cul­ture.. a new dance was taught and learned, the pupil even­tu­ally bold enough to add in her own ingre­di­ents and steps to the pat­terns.. a kind of mas­sage ther­apy to extract artistry.

Each new paint­ing left an impres­sion upon my body and the color dried there until the next piece removed some of it for itself: flot­sam and jet­sam float­ing in fresh new paint.. a bal­ance between the con­crete and the abstract in both the process and result. After the biggest piece — the man­dala (a 9-​dance requirement) — was ready to dry, the ses­sion cul­mi­nated delight­fully, warm water wash­ing all the syn­thetic skin away from my nat­ural skin.

…

Work­ing with Daniel was as com­fort­able as a col­lab­o­ra­tion could be in the way that imme­di­ate under­stand­ing and flow­ing dia­logue was achieved. I believed and trusted his choices and direc­tion and he allowed me to be a con­trib­u­tory artist within the process he had devel­oped, despite the fact that I had never expe­ri­enced some­thing like this before. It was a gen­tle and grat­i­fy­ing expe­ri­ence, and I am excited to view the work after Daniel has fur­ther manip­u­lated the pieces..”

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