Hidden Geometries— Generative works on panel (2023→)

The generative paintings in the Hidden Geometries series, convey the dynamic process of meditation within a static image: imperfect, shifting forms rendering archetypes of love, compassion, wisdom, and power through our fuzzy awareness. These images convey the dynamic way in which deities appear to a meditator from the void of “emptiness” (unlimited interdependent possibility), take specific form, and then dissolve back into that void.

They also convey the Buddhist concept of the energy body, sambhogakaya, the bridge between our physical body and immaterial mind, manifest when we speak, move, create, or embrace.

The images pay deliberate homage to early 20th-century Western abstract artists like Paul Klee—also inspired by spirituality—while continuing the thousand-year-old lineage of Himalayan devotional painting whose primary intention is to induce a contemplative experience in the viewer.

 About the Hidden Geometries Series

These works are part of the Hidden Geometries series, based on the grids that Himalayan painters have used for centuries. I learned these techniques over the past 24 years from master Tibetan and Nepalese thangka artists in Nepal and the San Francisco Bay Area.

Like other works in the series, this one is inspired by the long South Asian lineage of devotional art. Unlike much Western art, which often emphasizes cultural, aesthetic, or intellectual content, devotional art seeks to induce a direct inner experience. My work continue that tradition, aiming to evoke specific meditative states in the viewer.

The thangka paintings upon which these works are based are part of Tibetan Buddhism’s Vajrayana tradition. In this form of Buddhism, we understand both these archetypes of enlightenment and ourselves to be comprised of three “bodies”: our physical body, our mind, and an energetic body that bridges them. We experience this energetic body that translates mind to matter when we speak, dance, exercise, play music—and make art.

In tantric visualization practice, the archetype one imagines relates to this energetic body, embodying qualities like love, compassion, wisdom, and power. Its form arises in meditation from a field of infinite light and clarity, into which it eventually dissolves. I echo that process in each artwork’s evolution: emerging from a single color field into which it eventually dissolves.

Technically, each software art piece is executed as custom computer software written by the artist that is rendered in real time on a small computer mounted on the back of the display. It filters a low-resolution image of a traditional thangka painting through the sacred geometry of the particular archetype. These cycles are not video loops, but continuous algorithmic renderings translated through the “mind” of the computer.