“The acrylic Mandala paintings started in the late 1960’s, inspired by a book on Tantric Art,“ Hall states. ”It was the time of the Viet Nam war, a period of fragmentation and disunity in America and people were looking inward. Many people became interested in Eastern thought and religion. The mandala is a tool for psychic integration —the reintegration of the self with deeper cosmic reality.

The paintings were made by a machine I designed and built originally in the basement of my grandmother’s home… an airbrush moving on a gear assembly, driven by an electric motor. I later rebuilt the machine in Los Angeles, CA.

The creation of the mandala itself is traditionally a calming meditative experience, but in this case it was one of awareness of the frustrated self…the airbrush would clog, the chain would slip off the gears and the motor would stop unexpectedly.
The deconstructed American flag painting, done in 1976, is still relevant today, for representing a fractured America.

Though the paintings have their origins in art and not in philosophy or psychology, here is an idea related to my repeated cyclic curves from Psychology today, April 1974: “…When person concentrates on a single stimulus, it seems eventually to disappear, leaving pure attention without any specific content.”

Mandala Airbrush Machine Above