Information:
Painted in 2025, later assigned Design index number 027 for the studio records, titled the Emerald Arrows Mandala.
Photoshop and Wacom Cintiq/Stylus
Artist Statement
The Emerald Arrows Mandala marks a return to the radial format after an extended fallow period, approached not through rigid conceptual strain, but through the deliberate freedom of play. Returning to the discipline of the circle, the composition reclaims an open chromatic spectrum, using vibrant hues not as decorative novelty, but as a direct reorientation toward creative momentum.
Technically, the piece breaks away from pristine vector washes, introducing the textured, smudged digital marks like hard pastel and conté crayon that originally formed my drafting hand. The visual hierarchy reads as a top-down architectural layout: an unpretentious, luminous florette at the core, guarded by prickly rings of electric cobalt and deep bluejay, transitioning through segmented fields of citrus warmth onto paved courtyards of earth and stone. The work functions as a self-aware visual map, holding the productive tension between high vital energy abstract color fields and the grounded organic and inorganic structures required to contain it.
Studio Notes for the Catalog
Every sustained practice moves through quiet stretches where the tools sit down and nothing demands to be made. Coming out of that silence, I did not want to force an austere, theoretical composition. I wanted permission to play.
The Emerald Arrows began from a drafting habit rooted in tabletop cartography, looking down on a space from above. I started mapping a structure that felt like an ancient stone circle built around an impossible energy source. The center started with pure, uncomplicated warmth, an organic cross-section that felt as immediate and unpretentious as a sliced citrus fruit, anchored by a kaleidoscopic florette of rich purples and magentas.
Surrounding that warm core, the architecture turns defensive. I laid down sharp, double rings of electric blue and jay-feather indigo, testing a pricklier geometric boundary between inner life and outer space. Beyond that defensive line sits an inlaid stone courtyard, set with emerald cabochons that act like directional steps leading outward into muted shadow.
Working on this digital canvas, I found myself reaching back to the dry-media textures of my early training. I layered in the tooth, drag, and smudge of conté crayons and hard pastels, letting the digital surface hold the tactile grain of physical drawing.
The painting ended up wrestling with a central paradox of creative work: the gap between the living spark in the studio and the final, still object hung on a wall. It lays out a visual journey of competing energy states. You can stay in the unpretentious warmth of the core, run against the sharp discipline of the geometry, or step out into the quiet stonework of the border. It remains a personal record of finding my way back to the easel, guided by curiosity and the plain pleasure of drawing.