Om Mani and the Padme Hung

The Buddha, awakened fully, sees beyond the binds of karmic rebirth and suffering. The Buddha gazes back at Mara, and the temptations presented but says only a prayer of compassion, spoken into the Buddha’s left ear by the fearless and eternally brilliant Tara. Mara, recoiled and defeated, retreats, leaving the self to cease from within and without while ignorance surrenders to compassion and is destroyed. With that the eternal truth reveals itself in the savagery and necessity of the Fierce Gods and the wisdom and compassion of the Bodhisattvas.

This series at a technical level represent a major departure for me. Here I abandoned control of my medium to a large extent and relied on patience, trial and error, and a desire to tell a story important to my developing spirituality. Ink, conte crayon, acrylic paint, watercolor, and marker are the primary media and through these I have found new means of representation and expression. Human form was never important in my mind for this but I knew that the hints of form would help to bind and anchor the overall elements together to invite the viewer to explore and relate to the intimate portrayal of the non-dual nature of reality I have found solace in.