What a couple of days, weeks, months it’s been while I wrangled with a difficult decision I needed to make. Actually, it wasn’t making the decision, it was acting on it by overcoming the uncomfortable feelings of guilt and giving up that were the hardest things to do. But yesterday, I acted. Decisively for me.
A weight was lifted off my shoulders, but there was also the stress-comedown ‘hangover’ of extreme fatigue, spaced-outness, but no headache (thankgoodness!).
I’m still tired today, but that’s to be expected as the stress has been growing and growing. I think that’s been reflected in my dark, dingy, incohesive art of late.
So, when I woke this morning, I really wanted to create a mandala. And this is a mandala that is so different for me. But perhaps it represents what is happening inside me. Carl Jung believed mandalas, when created intuitively, reveal what is going on in our subconscious mind, things we’re not yet aware of, changes that are occuring, emotions we’re suppressing or ignoring.
It has been an enjoyable way to spend a couple of hours this morning. It’s just the art I needed to do after days, a couple of weeks even, pottering around with pen on paper doing zentangle-style drawings. Comfort art in the extreme.
Mandalas are comfort art for me, they do soothe my soul, but sometimes I do ones that break the ‘comfort’ mould a bit. This may be one of them. I’m fairly happy with it for sure, especially using a limited colour palette.
Angela Porter 