ARTIST'S STATEMENT: J. ALAN ROSENSTEIN
As long as I can remember I would be fascinated by color, shape, number and form. With my crayons I would draw concentric circles of different colors on the back of many elementary school assignments. I would always doodle, and in the late sixties, caught up in the psychedelic movement that was sweeping the world, I felt my creativity come of age. Perhaps inspired in part by the musical playfulness of Sergeant Pepper and the Grateful Dead, the kozmic connections of the Moody Blues, and the Camelot-like magic of Donovan Wearing his Love like Heaven. In Amsterdam, in the summer of 1970, I began drawing magic fantasy-scapes, always intending to put on paper and canvas the myriad weaving tapestries of imaginings and longings dancing in my mind. About this time I read Carl Jung's Man and his Symbols, the work popularizing his concept of ancient archetypes common to the whole human race, expressed symbolically in art, architecture, and ritual. One of these archetypes is the Mandela, present in virtually all cultures, symbolizing the Universe, the Higher Self, complete wholeness and centeredness. Very soon thereafter, I started creating my own Mandalas.
A Mandala is a circular structure. Its principal parts are the center, symbolizing the Spiritual Self; the radiality, representing The Way; and the circumference, the rest of the Cosmos. Radial symmetry, seen in many living species such as sea urchins and several types of plankton, is also an important characteristic. Beyond these, there is considerable latitude as to what exactly constitutes the Mandala. It can be simply a circle with a dot in the center: an ancient Egyptian and Mayan sun glyph. It can be elaborately geometrical, as the images seen through a kaleidoscope. Much of my inspiration comes from such images, and I am an avid collector of 'scopes. This geometricity is seen in its highest form in Jewish Kabbalistic and Islamic art, where, in both traditions, the portrayal of human figures is prohibited. In many other religious traditions the Mandala is used to visually convey higher and deeper religious truths through depictions, for example, of Christ or Buddha appearing in the center. Toward the periphery one may see saints, mythical depictions or secular scenes. Stained glass rose windows in medieval Gothic cathedrals, and Hindu and Tibetan Thangkas are supreme examples.
The creation of a Mandala is itself an act of spiritual cleansing and centering. Nowhere is this exemplified more clearly than the sand paintings of Tibetan monks and Southwest Indian tribes. Extended meditation and other purification rituals are performed to assure that those who construct the Mandalas are perfectly attuned to their own spiritual centers. This process is as important as the final creation itself. Perhaps more so, as in many cultures the Mandala is destroyed after the completion of the religious rituals.
This is so in my case: it's this process that serves as a spiritual centering function. I could say that the finished creation is simply icing on the cake. In any respect, I certainly am not going to destroy any finished piece! I primarily use Prismacolor pencils, although I will also occasionally use acrylic, watercolor and gouache, airbrushed as well as handbrushed. I use spectrality, as I consider the progression of the colors of the rainbow to represent an inner chakric unfoldment. Number is another expression of sacredness, and virtually all of my Mandalas have twelvefold symmetry or multiples thereof. Architectural motifs symbolizing such archetypes as the Sacred Mountain or Portal, so elegantly exemplified in the highly stylized and ornate temples I saw in Nepal and Thailand, are also present. I'm now combining previously made pieces to create new Mandalas via Photoshop. In the near future I plan to extend to three dimensions using Mandalas and sacred constructions made of several media, including polymer clays.
Jai Guru Dev
Baruch Hashem
J. Alan Rosenstein is a Native Southern Californian, born in Long Beach in August, 1944.* He is presently employed as a scientist at Caltech and lives in Laguna Beach** and has been a regular practitioner of the Transcendental Meditation program since 1969.
*It is said that the Allies liberated Paris
about then, in commemoration of that auspicious occasion!
**And fortunately commutes by rail!
In memory of my father, Louis Rosenstein, 1916-1996.
He had The Hands.