"Wheel for the Lifecycle" Jack Wise

The mandalas created by Buddhist monks and scholars from sand, paint, sculpted and coloured vegetable butter, flowers, fabric and even architecture represent their efforts to unite with the cosmic nature of Buddha. The voyage people take through the mandala as they look carefully at all of its layers has been compared to the actions of pilgrims (U. Mammitzsch, Evolution of the Garbhadhatu Mandala, New Delhi 1991, 20.), who physically visit temples and important Buddhist sites and walk around them in a series of ever-shortening circles, representing their journey towards Buddha and Enlightenment at the centre or top.

Jack Wise lost himself in his mandalas as he painted them, the same way that many of the people who look at his paintings are captured by the power of these iconic circles. He spoke of this feeling and his wish that everyone could experience it. "It is such a relief to be out of one's own skin in meditation. Whenever I'm totally lost in a painting, through one hundred percent attention I don't exist. I'm simply not there … it's wonderful." (Rimmer, Language of the Brush)

Wise worked with a tiny brush and sat very close to pre-cut circles of paper as he created his detailed mandalas. The mandalas are among his most popular works, and include many paintings called, simply, Untitled or Mandala. Rainbow Mandala, painted in 1968, incorporates miniature landscapes, geometric shapes and free form brush work into the larger mandala, almost like a patchwork quilt. Some of Wise's other mandalas work with images found in Tibetan Buddhist art, employing rich, vibrant reds, yellows, blues, blacks and greens to depict Buddha and the Bodhisattvas. Others use concentric circles, setting rings of his calligraphic brush work within each other, moving towards a pearl at the very centre.

Wise painted the mandalas in a concentrated and meditative state, and without diminishing any of their universal significance, he found them to be a very personal form. He felt great guilt over selling these pieces, for he felt that they should be given rather than exchanged for money.

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