Andy Harper 'The Mandalas'

each simple substance has relations that express all the others,
and consequently, that each simple substance is a perpetual,
living mirror of the universe.” It is a grasping of this sense of
oneness, that can be both expressed and experienced through
this form. The re-introduction of mandalas into modern Western
thought is largely credited to psychologist Carl Gustav Jung. In
his exploration of the unconscious through art, Jung observed
the common appearance of a circle motif across religions and
cultures. He hypothesized that’s own circle drawings reflected
the mind’s inner state at the moment of creation and were a kind
of symbolic archetype in the collective unconscious.
Although there may be a relationship between these theoretical
standpoints and the works exhibited, Harper hasn’t been
deliberately led by them. Instead, it is through the act of
praxis, where thought and intuition meet through the hand, that
discovery can occur. He states that “there is a system to the
paintings production but this network of marks and calculations
have to be capable of catching a poetry that creates its own self
contained world, a world within a world…a cycle within a cycle”.
I am reminded of Isaac Asimov who wrote in his book ’Second
Foundation’ that “a circle has no end.”
Joseph Clarke, 2023
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