I’ve long been drawn to mandalas – to their symmetry, their beauty and, most of all, to the calmness that they evoke. But I’ve always been afraid of trying to draw them. This year, though, I finally took the plunge.
And it was so hard! Whoever said dividing a circle into 12 equal pies is easy, is lying! I wish I could show you how many pieces of paper I crumpled up and threw and how many tears I shed just trying to draw those 12 symmetrical pies. By the end of it, I’d much rather have been eating apple pie, and I’m not even that fond of it! And when I finally did manage to get it divided up, drawing symmetrical shapes in that circle gave me nightmares!
– and you’re pretty much on your way.
Wabi-sabi is a Japanese philosophy, like Kintsugi, that embraces imperfection. Wabi-sabi, which is the art of finding beauty in imperfection and revering authenticity above all, emerged as a reaction to the 15th century aesthetic of rich ornamentation and lavish opulence. It is characterized by asymmetry, roughness or irregularity, simplicity, austerity, modesty, and appreciation of the ingenuous integrity of natural objects and processes. The concept is derived from the Buddhist teaching of the three marks of existence – impermanence, suffering and emptiness.