From Canyon To Cove: A brush with mandalas

I got my hands dirty — well, paint-smeared — a couple of weeks ago at an art workshop in Laguna, and I went home with a wonderful work of art that I’d have never done if not for the guiding hand of mandala artist Jo Ellen Byrnes.

Mandalas are ancient Sanskrit art forms designed to help people find their “centers.” I find mine is useful to focus on while performing yoga moves in front of the TV, which is my particular form of late-night relaxation. I find it calming to breathe slowly and hold a pose while watching a grisly crime case unfold.

Byrnes said she first learned about mandalas while studying psychology; Carl Jung apparently considered them “a gate to who you are inside” as well as a tool for meditation.

The class was at Laguna Canyon Artist Studios, and spending an afternoon amid the pleasant sounds of other people, including real artists, scratching out their designs was very soothing.

And the fact that we were all working on mandalas made it even more so.

Byrnes and her studio-mates are all mandala-philes. There are some beautiful examples of mandala art on the studio walls.

Byrnes herself has done some works that could be in a cathedral, they are so luminous. She claims to have created the first “plein air mandala” by putting the geometric circular form around a landscape, and who would dispute her? Her work is on exhibit at Quorum Gallery, and she has been at the Sawdust Festival for years.

Byrnes has put a lot of effort into figuring out how to make mandalas, which, by the way, are not easy to plot out. It takes some special equipment, because they must be made in a perfect, or near-perfect, circle, and to get the dazzling geometric effect you must carefully plot out your design.

As we worked at a small table, passing tools around and getting instruction, I noticed what the other women were doing — it just so happened that all in the class were women — and began to get inspired.

One had laid out a spiral formation, eschewing the traditional lotus form that we beginners were pursuing. There was a spirited discussion about whether she should go in a clockwise or counter-clockwise direction.

Another woman was coloring her mandala in fiery hues that sent me in a completely different direction from my original plan to use muted blues, silvers and grays. Orange for some reason led me to purple, and there I was, launching fearlessly into a bright spectrum. I had found my center, and it was bold.

Van Gogh

As we worked along, I was thinking about the film I had seen a few nights before: “Van Gogh: Brush with Genius.” MacGillivray Freeman Films held a viewing of its latest IMAX offering at the splendid giant-screen theater at the Irvine Spectrum.

MacGillivray films are usually explorations of magnificent and exotic places, like the Amazon or Egypt. This was different: a docudrama, not actually made by MacGillivray but by a French filmmaker, that sought to bring the 19th century artist into the 21st century more than 100 years after his death. The filmmaker puts himself into the action, and the film is narrated by Van Gogh (with a somewhat improbable French accent), watching people — including a beautiful historian — as they seek clues to his genius.

Seeing Van Gogh paintings in IMAX is like being an ant crawling up a painting: they are so huge you lose what you are looking at. But the film also includes grand vistas of Holland, Paris and the French countryside that were the painter’s inspiration in the final years of his life. It’s a magnificent sweep of time, landscape and art.

I recalled Van Gogh saying in the film that he intentionally used complementary — or opposite — colors to bring his paintings to life. Somehow this idea of opposites combined with the circular form of the mandala in my mind, and I found myself working on opposite sides of the circle, not really sure where it was going but taking Van Gogh’s word for it that it would make the mandala “pop.”

When I mentioned Van Gogh and the film, one of my classmates recalled how she had gone to the big Van Gogh retrospective some years ago at the L.A. County Museum of Art at 2 a.m. The exhibit was so popular it was open 24 hours a day; she hadn’t been able to get tickets at a more agreeable time, so she had seen the exhibit in a half-awake state.

At some point, going on a hunch, I asked Jo Ellen if she had any black paint. Of all the colors laid out on the table, black was not among them. She hesitated a little and said something cautionary, but put a dollop of black into a cup and gave it to me.

I proceeded to paint two black shapes on opposite sides of the circle, and then realized I didn’t know what to do in the center. So I painted that black, too. Then it was time to go home, but the mandala wasn’t finished.

We lined up our mandalas-in-progress, and it was interesting to see how different they all were.

In parting, Jo Ellen gave me all my paints in a little bag, and a brush, to continue the mandala work. When I got home I painted the outer edges black, and put a squiggle of orange in the center. Viola!

After it dried for a few hours, it found a (permanent?) home in the living room.

Byrnes and her studio-mates — painter Leti Stiles, mandala artist Charlotte Backman, and faux finish artist Janice Marashlian — are offering classes in art-making this fall.

The classes, “Beauty & The Brush,” let you bring your own art supplies and other items, and create “recycled” gifts. You might just make a nice gift for yourself.

For more information, e-mail joellen@laguna beachmandalas.com

CINDY FRAZIER is city editor of the Coastline Pilot. She can be contacted at (949) 494-2087 or [email protected].