Let's Chant the Sound of Om to Relax the Mind

Graziella Bettinardi - Mandala Eternity

I fell in love with this painting in Italy. It was in the window of a art shop that I walked by frequently, and I wanted it so much. Unfortunately, it was a good €200, plus another €50-100 to ship it back to the US. So instead of buying the canvas mounted on wood, I settled for a print. The canvas would have been much better - there's something about texture in the paint that makes a painting so much more beautiful than a print. Even works that are too abstract or in a style I don't like become somewhat attractive when I can get up close to the work and see the texture. And the gold paint in the tree leaves - a print just can't make that gold shine like the actual paint does. A real canvas also has so much more subtlety in the coloring, shading from one color to the next rather than dividing the color into pixels. Basically the painting is superior to the print in every category except cost.

But even the print has something to offer. A mandala is a geometric design used in Eastern religions as an aid to meditation. The whole painting has that sort of feel. I have a yoga video, and at one point the instructor says "Let's chant the sound of om to relax the mind." And surprisingly enough, just saying that sound clears your head and does actually relax your mind. This painting is the visual equivalent of chanting 'om'. Just staring at it for awhile makes me feel calm and peaceful. The colors are relaxed and focused. It's a painting you can take in reflexively, as a whole, or dissect into pieces and find layers of detail and skill and story. It feels like the concentric rings are both enclosing and expanding, but not trapping or exploding. How did she decide to overlap the trees in some places, and leave that part of the ring open in others? What does the symbol in the center mean - is it the center of the universe (mandalas often represent the universe)? Is it a soul? Is it just nonsense? Why did she texture the squares, making the outside edges thick with paint in random places? I haven't figured out the symbolism in this painting, and maybe there is none - maybe it's supposed to be interpreted by the viewer free of the artist's intentions. Maybe all art is like that.