Shami Orkibi

The painting of mandalas has been around for thousands of years. The Native Americans and the Tibetans made sand mandalas. In many Gothic cathedrals there are circular stained-glass windows, called rose windows.

The Hindu people made them, too. It looks like every primitive culture made circles and circle-like shapes; these shapes are very basic.

It's a lot of fun to paint mandalas with color. There is something in the order and symmetry that has a calming and peaceful effect on the creator and the beholder, too.

There is a similarity between life and the mandala. You can see the center as the seed that has been sown, the place from which everything starts. And the the small circles close to the center are infancy, babies, small children and so on. As you grow from the center you cover more area; it's like going out to the big world to new adventures. The mandala could go on forever - maybe like one's spirit. An interesting thing to point out is that like a wheel when it turns, in the center-most point there is no movement at all, and when you go further from that point the circles are bigger and wider.

I think in primitive cultures people drew, danced and made ceremonies in order to express their inner power to the outside world and probably also to make their surroundings more pleasant. Maybe they performed these acts in order to control the outside world using the inner world. Primitive cultures don't have videos and cameras in order to see themselves. It could be that self- expression is self-realization and self-reflection.

I think today people create for the same reasons.

Shami Orkibi