Each of Paul Heussenstamm’s mandalas are specific to their subject, be that an individual, pair or group. Thus, there could be no generic paintings, in the scheme in which he paints and uses them. For this reason each work must be commissioned, or envisioned through insight, dream or meditation. Each captures the energy patterns of a single life, collective soul, or unique vision. Heussenstamm refuses to sign the front of the artworks, for the content is not his, rather it is conveyed through him. The purpose of the painting is then for the subject to enter into a dialoque with it. They are to live with it, study it, and begin a process of learning, growth, healing and development. Captured within it is their intrinsic nature, and through it they can come to have self-knowledge.
 Paul Heussenstamm is more then an artist. He is an artist, a teacher, and a healer. His art is not decoration, it is in some cases therapy, in others guidance toward self-realization, and in all cases a sharing. To be sure, each mandala is a portrait of the psyche of its subject. But the object is to help others progress to a stage that Heussenstamm has experienced, to inspire them to “find the spark that moves them deep into their own creative universe.”
IN THE WORDS OF THE ARTIST
I wonder if we can talk about ordering a painting? Perhaps you could walk through the language of the painting and how a mandala reveals the soul.
“When I begin to read somebody, if you asked me to read you, I would begin to open up my soul eyes, An example is that I first see you there and me here. When I begin to read you, I see the surface reality, the way you are dressed, the way I am dressed. I am a man and you are a woman. This surfact reality is where Western people live, The soul does not see the same way. You have to get a little out of your mind. The soul doesn’t know you are sitting there and I am sitting here.
Have you even gone to a movie and the movies becomes a reality – you can’t distinguish that it is separate from yourself – like you are in the movie. There is no separation; it’s the same kind of thing.
The soul looks and it does not see you as separated. There is an old teaching that WE ARE ONE. We hear that! How do you experience that? How can you see the world connected? You cannot possibly do that without the soul.
As I begin to look at you, and begin dropping down out of my mind, where this linear, logical time is, the soul sees you and feels you at other levels, The soul has resources that we do not have.
Everthing you see comes from the inside out, Everything. Look around us. Look at anything in our world, and it comes from the inside out. EVERYTHING. The soul sees from the inside out. I am not seeing that you are wearing a dress when I look at you from a soul level. The soul cannot think “She is wearing a dress,” that is not its realm.
It begins to feel the color purple; it begins to feel the flowers. When you look at someone wearing a flowered dress, it is the same as looking at a flowered field.
When I look at your red lipstick, part of me does not know that you are sitting there and I am sitting here, that it is red lipstick; it is feeling the mystery. I mean when you put red lipstick next to anything, it draws a response especially in men. The soul is beginning to feel at a deep level.” |
