Dedicated to Zen and Stones

This week, we’ve looked at work that showed a couple of artists pushing themselves in form and repetition. The use of repetition can have an exciting and energized look or it can be calm and grounding. But for the artist creating it, it is often a doorway to the sometimes elusive state of what is often referred to as flow. It’s that time when you are so enthralled and engrossed by what you are doing that you completely lose track of time, of where you are, and sometimes what exactly you are doing. It’s a fantastic state to reach because it means that the work you are doing is satisfying your many sides. This kind of work is challenging enough to keep your attention, interesting enough to basically mesmerize you, but is not frustrating or tedious so you can relax and enjoy the process.

This little bit of insanity you see here is just such a process for Elspeth McLean, an Australian living in Canada and a self-proclaimed “Dotillism” artist. According to an article published on the Mother Nature Network, creating art is her form of meditation and these mandala stones are at the heart of that process for her. The joy and dedication she gets from her work is so readily apparent that the poor girl is overrun with requests for these beautiful stones.

Images of these stones went viral recently, and now Elspeth has been forced to do something rather different from most Etsy sellers–she releases the sale of her stones only on certain days and during certain hours, just a couple of times a month, with many selling instantly and all selling out, it appears, within the day. What a problem to have! The colorful and zen-like beauty of the stones can also be found in her dotillism paintings. However, there is something to the centered patterns of the mandala stones that really draws your eye and pulls at something deeply rooted in all of us. And for those of you that cane, does this not spark some ideas?

To see the short article and all the wonderful photos of her stones, go to this page on MNN.com. You can admire her illustrations and photographs of her work artfully placed in nature on her website and, of course, in her Etsy shop.

http://www.mnn.com/lifestyle/arts-culture/blogs/dotted-mandala-stones-reveal-artist-vibrant-life

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