Author: susanbradfordart

Grace…

by susanbradfordart, posted in Mandala Art
the newest mandala

It seemed like a good idea.  I decided to do a mandala about Grace several months ago.  I took a few notes and did a few doodles, and then put it aside.  My thoughts about grace were all over the place, but that only made me realize how much I needed to work on it.

This quote from Anne Lamott kind of sums it up, “I do not at all understand the mystery of grace – only that it meets us where we are but does not leave us where it found us.”

It is such a tricky and elusive word.  And working with it began to reflect my longing to pin things down, to understand the whys and hows and whats of my own life.  I want physical grace as well as grace on a spiritual level.  I want that ever popular state of grace.  I want it to permeate my thoughts and actions on all levels.  I want to live with grace and age with grace.

Yet my personal journey while working on it was not particularly easy, almost as if I were being shown how much work there is to do.  I’m not exactly sure what I learned, but I know that it made me think and look and feel a lot.

And that’s enough for now.

Better and better

by susanbradfordart, posted in Mandala Art

I like circles because they are such an obvious reflection of how we experience our lives – from moment to moment, day to day, week to week, and then on to months, years, and even lifetimes if that is included in your personal belief system. As I go from one circle to the next, I am becoming increasingly aware that my basic structure doesn’t really change, I just get better and better at functioning within it.

For instance, right now the concept of Communication is really up for me. I am being challenged by how I communicate within my primary relationship, with my friends, and with myself. So to get a little more insight into the situation, I started to look at the Communication mandala that I completed several years ago. I remembered all too well why I put that dark wavy line in the center to represent that black place deep inside myself, the one that stops me from knowing what I really need to say and then saying it. And I was struck that the words I wrote at that time to describe the mandala could have been written yesterday.

“Once I find a new way of communicating with myself, I can then communicate so much more easily with others.”

That is still the way I plod through things today. How I am able to slowly transform that dark, confused core into an open and lighter place. The hope is that I can go through the process a little faster each time and truly transform some of those old, painful patterns into something new, creative, and fresh.

20111103-034730.jpg

Better and better

by susanbradfordart, posted in Mandala Art

I like circles because they are such an obvious reflection of how we experience our lives – from moment to moment, day to day, week to week, and then on to months, years, and even lifetimes if that is included in your personal belief system. As I go from one circle to the next, I am becoming increasingly aware that my basic structure doesn’t really change, I just get better and better at functioning within it.

For instance, right now the concept of Communication is really up for me. I am being challenged by how I communicate within my primary relationship, with my friends, and with myself. So to get a little more insight into the situation, I started to look at the Communication mandala that I completed several years ago. I remembered all too well why I put that dark wavy line in the center to represent that black place deep inside myself, the one that stops me from knowing what I really need to say and then saying it. And I was struck that the words I wrote at that time to describe the mandala could have been written yesterday.

“Once I find a new way of communicating with myself, I can then communicate so much more easily with others.”

That is still the way I plod through things today. How I am able to slowly transform that dark, confused core into an open and lighter place. The hope is that I can go through the process a little faster each time and truly transform some of those old, painful patterns into something new, creative, and fresh.

20111103-034730.jpg

Mandalas Abound

by susanbradfordart, posted in Mandala Art

I really like it when life shows me mandalas.

We went to Port Townsend last week, met some friends from Canada, and had a little get-away. Lovely company, wonderful food and wine, brisk walks all around this historic Victorian town, and an excursion to Fort Worden State Park where the movie An Officer and a Gentleman was filmed.  Nice to see a military base that is no longer in use!

We stayed in a two-bedroom apartment right in the middle of town and could walk everywhere.  What a great find!  Full kitchen, wood stove, fresh flowers on the table when we arrived, right next to a garden, tons of privacy, our own little deck that no one else could see.  I was ready to move in!

But perhaps my favorite thing was the mandala in our bedroom.  Beautiful, inspiring, uplifting.  All that a proper mandala should be.

Synchronicity

by susanbradfordart, posted in Mandala Art

I had to laugh when I read Anita‘s eloquent blog on Tuesday because for the past week I have been immersed in working on a Grace mandala. She captured the concept so well, while it has been quite the struggle for me to grapple with the word and all its meanings.  Mine has been in the works for several months. I had made some sketches and had written down some of my feelings about Grace. But of course, once I started to draw it, everything changed.

And there is Grace in that for sure.

So many opportunities have arisen in the last few days to challenge my ideas about it.  I have to laugh about that as well.  It seems to be the pattern.  Once I make a decision to tackle a particular word, the lessons show up all over the place.

I will be finished with it soon, and will share it here along with more of the story about making it.  I wanted to use just a small detail of it for now, but the lighting was bad, and it is late, and it all felt just a bit beyond my technical capabilities.  So for now, these are the markers and the palette that I’m using.