The Yakima Arts Scene: A soulful exploration of the mandala | Explore Yakima

The first painting I bought from artist Paul Heussenstamm was in Carlsbad, Calif., when attending a weeklong retreat in silence. He had set up a booth of artwork for workshop individuals, and I visited every working day to search at a golden graphic of a Buddha he had painted. A person working day I confirmed up and it was long gone. He pulled it from a hiding area and explained, “Are you on the lookout for this?” Staying in silence, I purchased it without having uttering a word.

At another workshop, I acquired a tree loaded with mandalas, and then yet another tree painting I acquired at a yoga retreat in Costa Rica. It was there that I requested Heussenstamm if he would be fascinated in an show at the Larson Gallery. Quick ahead a couple of yrs, and the new show “Mandalas as a Non secular Path” will be opening on Saturday, July 9, from 3-5 p.m.

Mandalas are usually believed of as a geometric representation of the universe and are found principally in Hinduism and Buddhism. They can be made use of as a visual meditation.

Heussenstamm tells of a “powerful dream voice” that arrived to him in 1992 when he was painting in Hawaii: “It clearly symbolizes the essence of my do the job as a painter, exactly where soul styles are colorfully manifested through the ancient image of the mandala. Mandala implies circle or center, and it has virtually been around for 1000’s of many years, though not perfectly regarded listed here in the West.”

“The mandala, for me,” he suggests, “more than any other instructor in this life time, has opened the doorway into the symbolic language of the soul. The moment this language is known, at the time the doorway into the unconscious has been opened, once the dynamism of intuitive sample examining is recognized, then life as it is acknowledged adjustments out of the blue and substantially.”

As a teacher and fourth-generation artist, Heussenstamm has been sharing his exceptional gift of aiding men and women uncover their soul by his paintings and workshops all over the world. He has designed a lot more than 2,000 exceptional and religious paintings though passionately sharing his inventive capacity to explore and develop sacred artwork from several traditions these kinds of as Buddhism, Hinduism and Christianity.

Heussenstamm explains that as he “began to open up up this historic doorway, I received accessibility to and knowledge of a soul language that has powerfully altered my existence and the life of all those who come into get hold of with this level of intuitive figuring out. A single of the true items of this language is a deep comprehension of the designs, symbols and currents in nature and how they relate to my individual soul’s ‘unfoldment’ and development.

“These insights emphasize my journey into the probable of entire radiance of the soul. As I seem into my possess soul’s pattern, I have appear to see the “long body” (a way of seeing the past) of my very own soul’s ‘unfoldment.’

“Mandalas as a Non secular Path” will open conjointly with the operate of Richard C. Elliot’s “Vibrational” at the Larson Gallery this Saturday.

• David Lynx is executive director of the Larson Gallery at Yakima Valley Faculty. He writes this weekly column for Explore. Study a lot more at www.larsongallery.org.