Tags
art, David Rankine, delight, design, geometry, graphics, mandala, negative space, sacred art
The header graphic for this blog is by artist, musician, healer, and meditator David Rankine.
Of course there is nothing particularly Celtic about consciousness, let alone mastering the skill of it, and yet I find something captivating and evocative about repetitive geometrical patterns with just that hint of a fractal quality. This particular graphic was simply an image that David happened to have on hand, the “shield” rondel, which he deftly echoed to fill the space available in the Château WordPress theme. He points out that “Right in the middle of the graphic is a cosmic portal — an eliptoid/vulva/doorway form used in the sacred art of many cultures.” I especially like how that aspect flickers in and out as the positive and negative space, depending on how the eye catches it among the braids of threes.
It is at this point where the qualities of consciousness that I am keen to discuss on this blog come into play. I am quite prepared to attribute to this composition — and perhaps you are too — all kinds of meaning and significance and subtlety. The composition, being art, is without a doubt calculated to evoke this kind of response. I see thoughts about the relationships of parts to the whole; about seeing some parts clearly and other parts not so clearly; about the self-superimposition of self-referentiality; about a preoccupation with one aspect of some matter at the expense of the harmonious integration of other aspects; about how the narrow focus only appears to duplicate the contents of reality within experience; and even in the subtle asymmetry of the horizontal axis of the echo, something about how the whole damn thing won’t line up perfectly even though you think it should, no matter how hard you stare at it, so maybe you should stare harder even though the answer is just a glance to the side away. Sound familiar?
Yes, I am indeed delighted with this graphic. Thank you David!
I am just so tickled monochrome by this graphic that I couldn’t resist saying a bit more about how I see it:
The whole mandala is obvious — I look at it and I “get” it right away, although I may also want to look more closely because it is interesting and engaging. For example, the motif around the perimeter isn’t exactly triangles within circles, but is close enough to catch the eye of anyone sensitized to that shape.
The echo portion consists of two copies of the primary image superimposed, and this could be taken as a suggestion of duality. It is actually less focused for being magnified, not perfectly aligned (can’t be perfectly aligned because the original is not perfectly symmetrical), and misses the bigger picture because of the cropping. The echo promises more but delivers less. It draws the eye, invites figuring out, and seems to be at odds with itself. It suggests more beyond it’s own margins than is actually there. In spite of sprawling over the majority of the area of the entire image, it fails to satisfy.
Am I reading more into it than is there? Yes, of course I am and that is exactly the point. This is a set-up, as is all art. It is people, specifically conscious experiencers and communicators, who generate meaning and project it onto a neutral universe by means of their assertiveness through speech and consciousness. That’s what I am doing here, and enjoying it very much.