Title: Vastupurusa

Media: Colored pencil and oil pastel on white paper

Size: 20" x 20"

Framing: unframed

Price or Current disposition: Collection of the artist

Date: 1987/88

Comments: Vastupurusa is the primordial being. Ancient Indian texts describe him as an immense being who is pinned, face down, into material existence by a grid of squares. A different deity resides in each square establishing the sacred space of the cosmos and the shape of many Hindu temples. I have used 8x8 and 9x9 vastupurusa grids and the geometry used to generate the projections (rathas) of temple plans in many of mandalas I created during the 1980s. On this particular image I had drawn a mandala using the grids on the other side of the page. Dissatisfied with the results I had worked and reworked the image over and over, building up and scraping away layers of pastel. At one point I flipped the image over and saw that the residue of pastel from the drawing board had begun to build up on the back of the drawing, and that a rather primordial looking face had begun to form itself on the page. This struck me as a svayambhu or self manifest image of vastupurusa. With a few more strokes to bring out the shape of the head the work was then done.