My love for mandala’s stemmed from my fascination with ancient, eastern and indigenous cultures and one of my favourite books, The Seven Arrows, was my first glance into the world of shamanism and its representative art forms. I later delved into the world of visionary art and found my own visions to portray…In my early 20’s I discovered Ernst Haeckel and was delighted to find someone had scientifically captured the elegant symmetry in plants and animals in his book, Art Forms In Nature. The merging of art and science, intuition and intellect and the masculine and feminine have always been of interest to me. Finding a balance between these things is perhaps what has drawn me towards creating a mandala which is in itself a way to balance the left and right hemispheres of the brain. The making of a mandala is very much a unifying and meditative experience and I hope to convey this to those who view them. My mandala’s are all drawn by hand and I see them as their own organic creations which aim to capture some of the essence of the universe, of which I am endlessly in awe of.

I have always enjoyed using the human form as a subject and create what some describe as “Soul Portraits”. I have striven to refine my techniques in drawing and painting in the hope to convey with clarity the intricate layers of the human psyche as well as my own dreams. Frida Kahlo once said that her art was not surreal and that she painted her reality. Her use of symbolism to express an inner world speaks universally of the human experience of pain, love and beauty and I have been deeply inspired by her use of art for her own healing. I am interested in art as therapy and think the aesthetics of beauty, even without significance or meaning, can inspire a higher consciousness and enable the process of recovery. Sometimes I like to create something that is simply beautiful, or which serves no purpose at all but to lift my own heart and hopefully the heart of others. I love using oils and gold leaf on wood, and I also like the simplicity of graphite or ink on paper… I am also interested in creating designs for textiles and hope to share some of these at some stage. Many of my designs can be ordered as fine art prints on parchment or canvas.