DavidOfMA's profile

Ithaca, NY; New York City; Amherst, VA; Millay Colony for the Arts; Cambridge, MA; Boston, MA; Salem, MA; Gloucester, MA; Albany, NY; Paris; Northern Italy

I'm a psychotherapist, photographer, and writer by trade, and these are also three of my passions. I'm a major movie fan, like being around kids and artists, spending time with close friends, and have lived near water, by choice, for most of my adult life.

Now, perhaps more than I did when I was younger, I think of relationships as intimate partnerships rather than as a meeting of soulmates. I'm looking for someone with whom to build a life for the duration. The ability to be mutually nurturing and supportive, to relate on a sense of humor level, and to be committed to working things through are important to me. Creativity, emotional sensitivity, loyalty, honesty, and intelligence are important traits I both possess and seek in a potential mate. It would also be great to meet someone with common interests, but this is ultimately less important to me than these other qualities.

My personal motivation in creating the images displayed here was to heal from a decade of physical and emotional trauma, the consequence of a near-fatal event in Albany, New York, in 1993. I began this project shortly after I bought my first digital camera and found myself shooting patterns of color and light, rather than the people and buildings I had shot in my black-and-white days. I learned to manipulate the images, hoping at first merely to improve them, but soon realizing that once an image file was on my hard drive, I could do anything I wanted with it.

Listening to what the mandalas were telling me led me out of a dark place and, indirectly, to my decision to become a psychotherapist. Working with images of the sea and sky make me feel as if I'm in wordless communication with creative forces far greater than myself. Both shoting the images and processing them are a kind of meditation.

Carl Jung, one of the fathers of modern psychology, believed mandalas are a pathway to the essential Self and used them in his own personal transformation. In a small way, as both mandala artist and psychotherapist, I carry on Jung's tradition. I display several of the flower mandalas in my treatment room, and from time to time they become part of discussions with clients. The combination of natural elements and digital manipulation seems both to stimulate and to relax them.

The current selection is part of a book-in-progress. My intent is to pair 52 images with inspirational quotations such that each image-and-quote pair resonates with a fundamental aspect of human experience.

I hope publication of these images will further the process of harnessing the power of the mandala to heal.

writing, photography, art, movies, digital art, mandalas, buddhism, sufism, psychotherapy