Mandalas

watercolour, 90 x 90 cm

To paint mandalas is a wonderful thing to do. I started doing it 2003 when I lived one year in Barcelona.
It makes me calm and quiets my mind. The brainwaves slows down and the brain enters in a peaceful state and harmony.

I know it works like this. At least for me.

It was not always easy to live in a little flat with lots of noises and smells,  alone and not every day in peace with myself. So instead of walking up and down the room, (which was util in wintertime when the flat was rather chilly) or going to the movie, I dedicated many, many hours to the mandalas when I was inquiet or depressed.

First I coloured pre-drawed mandalas from books (it was easy to find these books in special bookshops) and then I started to do my own ones, which of cource was even more funny.

It is said that CG Jung painted a mandala every day during ten years in order to help him to handle  the separation from S Freud. It helped him to follow his inner psychic development.

The mandala above is inspirated by a traditional tibetan old mandala.
It is so fantastic with mandala-painting because you can give yourself totally freedom to paint whatever you want. You just make a circle and start improvising.
It is good to know that what is inside the circle represents your inner life and what is outside is consequently your outer life.

During my stay in Barcelona I wrote a little tale and paited twelve mandalas with the dragon Isidor and my grandchild Gabriel as protagonists.
As I tomorrow will go to Spain and spend ten days with two other grandchildren and I will be without internet, I plan to translate this tale for my coming blogs. That will be interesting.