cosmic sensorium: FAQ

Simply put and as I experience it, mystic visionary art is art that comes from heightened states of consciousness; it expresses or pursues a conscious awareness of divinity and truth. For me these heightened states usually include different modes of meditation, dream work, introspection, insight, exaltation, inspiration… channeled by intuition and a sense of being guided from beyond; a sense of letting go and stepping in the flow. Experiencing mystic visionary art at different levels –including the making and the contemplation of it– may serve as a portal to other realms. I use portal here in the sense of actively making and sustaining a personal door or pathway by the use of focused energy, and not necessarily a passive following of a predesigned path.

As has been said before, our world and our being is layered like an onion. There are various documented ways of how to see beyond the layer(s) in which most of our consensual experiences take place. The full breadth of human experience has been expressed by visionary artists – including incursions into pain and darkness, the labyrinths of thought, parallel and alternate realities, psychedelic and entheogenic experiences, the collective unconscious, the worlds of light and shadow, the astral and mental planes… Nonetheless, my purpose is clear: I want my art to be a point of contact with the light and the divine that expresses itself in our day to day world, both within and beyond it. I want my vision to serve as a two way bridge to the realms of light and love.

I may be writing a more detailed article about this sometime in the future, wherever that is. Do check back!

There are various things to consider when answering this question, for example: inspiration, vision, embarking on the path of creation, finding the flow within the path, and using technique. While some of these are still a mystery to me, I will outline some of the more tangible parts of my process, which is always and of course subject to change.

Most of my mandalas usually start out with a photograph of nature. I usually take these photographs while doing walking meditation or when going for walks after sitting meditation; when I feel thankful and at peace with everything around. I ask for permission and guidance to see. Not all photographs will become mandalas, just a select few actually click and invite me to play with them in such a way. Some are rather abstract to begin with. I intuitively manipulate these photographs, mainly in photoshop, and play with layered symmetries, painting, sketching, collage, filters, and reflections to portray what the inner eye may see through the particular shape expressed in the image. I then “bring out” or “ground” the main underlying sacred geometrical blueprint and/or mystic symbolism for what could be considered a “mandala”. This bringing forth or grounding of the shapes, symbols and patterns makes what is there a bit more obvious to the untrained eye, while pushing us to see further beyond the apparent with the use of inner vision. Many times I start bringing shapes forth without fully knowing what they are, or how they look. The process of making them visible is similar to a process of remembering, or separating a crystal gem from the matrix in which it grows: you know something precious is there, and you have to go about it bit by bit...

On more than one occasion, I've been led to "discover" that the shapes I paint (or parts of them) have actually been portrayed before, some having histories that span thousands of years. For a tangible example of how my process may function, you can read about how my first mandala came to be.

[Nov 2009 update:] In search of more depth, textures, new color combinations, and the ability to channel my creative energies through hands and movement, a new stage of my work has begun. Some of my more recent pieces include using brushes and acrylics to paint over my giclées. This results in one-of-a-kind pieces, printed either on canvas or Hahnemühle Torchon (a type of super thick, archival, water color paper), which are then painted over using several layers of acrylic paints, gels, transparencies, and iridescent paints. Some examples are "Veil Lifts / Retrieving the Third Strand" and "Hydrogenesis / Hydroenergen". The finished works are later photographed in order to offer limited edition giclée prints.

[Feb 2010 update:] I am now also creating a series of Activation Circuits that are based solely on digital media and digital painting, no photography, and a lot less sketching. These new pieces serve as "focused short cuts" to some of the places and mind spaces that can be accessed via my other work, and to new ones as well. While the others can be akin to the light a bonfire emits, capable of lighting a long stretch of a dark beach, these are more like LED flashlights, and pinpoint specifics. The energy is a lot more focused, and, in contrast to the more experimental-stream-of-consciousness process I follow in my other lines of work, the Activation Circuits are made more succinctly and with a clearer, more focused intention. These pieces are great for quick glimpses and may be easier to connect with. Do not be fooled though, they also have deeper and deeper layers that will unveil one after the other.

This is a question that pops up very often, as some of my artwork may seem to include fractals or fractal-like patterns.  There's a few reasons for this. Fractals are naturally-occurring at both macro-cosmic and micro-cosmic levels; they can be found everywhere in nature. They are particularly noticeable in snowflakes, the growth of vegetation, the swirls that come up when mixing milk and coffee, and in the way crystals, clouds, mountains, and galaxies grow and develop, among others. There are extensive links between fractal geometry and sacred geometry – and this may be more obvious, for example, when observing recursive iterations in sacred geometrical spirals.

Nonetheless, most fractal art available today is achieved with the aide of computer programs. I have not yet experimented with fractal-generating programs, though I may, some day. Most of my mandalas start out with a photograph of nature - which means that naturally-occurring fractals (or fractal-like patterns) may be present in the photograph. I intuitively manipulate these photographs and play with layered symmetries, filters, and reflections, to portray what the inner eye may see through the particular shape expressed in the photograph. I then “bring out” or “ground” the main underlying sacred geometrical blueprint for what could be considered a “mandala”, which is in part the focal point of the portal into other dimensions. This "bringing out" process can usually include the painting and superposition of sacred geometrical shapes.

Is this fractal art? A closer look...

Strictly speaking, none of the pieces I’ve made (up to now) could fully fit into all the criteria that accurately define fractals. According to Benoît Mandelbrot, who coined the term “fractal” as is being referred to here, a fractal is a geometric shape that can be split into parts, each of which is (at least approximately) a reduced-sized copy of the whole.  The set of images above comes from the Mandelbrot Set, by Wolfgang Beyer. Notice how the same shape can be found at different scales: the ones on the left are the bigger scales, and as we move towards the right the scale becomes smaller and smaller. Similarly, fractal art includes shapes that feeds into and/or build upon replications of themselves at varying scales. Furthermore, there is a set of mathematical and geometrical characteristics that fractals usually feature, for example:

• having a fine structure at arbitrarily small scales;
• being too irregular to be easily described in the language of traditional Euclidean geometry;
• being self-similar;
• having a simple and recursive definition;
• and having a Hausdorff dimension which is greater than its topological dimension.

Some sections of some of my artwork and mandalas may loosely fulfill some of these criteria, most notably being peripheral or outsiders to Euclidean geometry, and having small-scale, detailed, fine structures. In some cases, I have also manually drawn fractal-like structures (for example, drawing pentacles within a pentacle, within a pentacle, within a pentacle, within a pentacle…).

Zooming in on my visionary artwork shows increasing levels of detail and complexity that do not necessarily involve fractals.

I don’t have a clear, definite answer for this… and if I did, where would all the fun go? Actually, if such an answer existed, I doubt that verbal communication would suffice to articulate it… But not trying to articulate is also avoiding the fun.

Each mandala carries with it a multitude of different meanings, while at the same time, each mandala hints at some sort of ‘essential truth’. Mystics and sages from different backgrounds and time periods have coincided: the truth that can be expressed is no longer the truth. In this way, ultimately and in its highest expression, a mandala can be a portal through which we can interact with some realms of truth. Most of the time, mandalas can serve as hints or reminders. Consider this beat example: You have not really seen the moon and you're not sure what it is. Someone points a finger up to show you the moon. You look at the finger and then figure it out, that the moon is up there in the sky. You can also figure out that beyond the moon, there are stars. In a sense, the finger is not the moon, it is not the stars, it is not your vision, and it is not the interaction between you, stars, moon, and the person who shows you. Once you see the moon, the pointing finger may no longer be necessary. Nonetheless, seeing the finger, seeing the moon, experiencing the moon, understanding the moon, being at the moon, and knowing what the moon is with the fullness of your being are not necessarily the same thing. Knowing that the finger can also hint at the stars is also slightly different. Also, the finger is part of a medium, and you can ask other things of this medium. A mandala can serve as any of these things, and may also take you beyond the finger, the moon and the stars and help you become aware of awareness and the process that takes place in this action.

In part, mandalas can have many meanings because they function as mirrors. They will reflect back certain things about yourself, your place in the world and in the evolution of life. They can also show a path, a method, a cycle, a train of thought or action to help us figure things out. They can take you through different layers of the onion that is our world and our being. I have no way of knowing all the possible things that a single mandala may reflect back to a specific viewer. Please share whatever you see!

I would be honored to create artwork for you, your loved ones, and/or your living, working, and sacred spaces. I can also create custom mandalas to serve as cures and enhancers for Feng Shui and Vastu Shastra. Please write to d (at) cosmicsensorium [dot] com and tell me about what you would like. (Do format the email address as you would normally.)

First off, not all of my pieces are necessarily mandalas. I guess that in part it depends on your outlook on life. And on how we define mandala. Here is a quick overview, and here is a full article, part 1 of a series that will continue to grow.

Our prints are so wonderful for a few simple reasons. First, you need a high-quality image to achieve a high-quality print. Also, we adhere to the highest printing standards available today. We only use a Giclée printing system which is commonly found in museums and fine art galleries, even for our open edition prints. This printing system combines the new Ultra-Chrome K3 pigmented inkset from Epson, with Epson's Enhanced Matte heavy weight archival paper. This combination yields highly saturated images while maintaining excellent highlight and shadow detail, all with a Flat Matte Finish. Images printed with this system have a lightfast permanence rating of 76 years under regular glass, and 110 years under UV-filtering glass or acrylic, according to Wilhelm Institute Imaging Research. And when we say heavyweight, we mean 10 mil (250gsm).

Each one of our fine art prints is produced on demand. Each print is then thoroughly inspected, energized, and signed by the artist, to ensure that the artwork is top quality and conveys all that it is intended to.

Also, we never compromise image quality in order to achieve bigger size prints. We know how far in size our prints can go and we will not artificially up-size and/or rescale our images.