A Mandala is always about a center in the middle of a circle. It is an ancient form of spiritual art in the civilizations of the Indians, Tibetans, Incas and others, in which the great themes of life, such as the search for the meaning of human existence, of transcendence, of the mysterious whole behind the innumerable phenomena, find expression. A Mandala affects the observer through its vibrations. All that IS, in the universe as well as in the smallest cell, revolves around a core that it is always related to, even if this may look extremely chaotic.

I think there is nothing that exists outside this order.

As long as the center and the circle are respected, everything is possible in a Mandala, even polarities, since together they again add up to the whole. Nothing can exist without its opposite. Held together and contained by the circle, the poles co-exist in creative playfulness. Love and hatred, for example, are merely two aspects of the same energy. As long as the circle has a visible center, all freedom of expression is guaranteed. The center has an almost magical effect.

That’s right. In my perception it is the acknowledgment of the center, the realization that I have a center within myself. Many people get lost in externals and have forgotten their center. But it is always there. That is the wonderful thing about Mandalas: The outer chaos is being rearranged into a kind of inner harmony. The unconscious mind recognizes our longing to be centered again; with awareness, an individual can allow thoughts and emotions to freely dance around this center.

Because of these power images, both the creator and the observer of Mandalas will be able to feel their own center more strongly or to re-discover it. Moreover, they rouse our interest in something that is perhaps forgotten, but our senses are opening up toward it again.

They influence the observer very much, not by changing things in a manipulative way but by leading us back to the essence: A lively dance around the center.

A Mandala affects the unconscious directly because it is a picture, it is form and color, and that is why we do not need our reason to understand and interpret it. The unconscious absorbs the information like a dry sponge, since it has this longing of coming to rest and being at peace with itself.

A Mandala vibrates energetically. How it does this depends on the state of consciousness of the person who created it: On whether the vibrations are weak or strong, on whether they work on an individual or a universal level. You do not even have to look at the Mandalas in order to feel their effect or impact, they vibrate by themselves. Personally, I prefer not to look at the Mandalas but to sense their energy waves with closed eyes. They resonate with the rhythm of life and the user can resonate more deeply with this rhythm with their help.

A Mandala is never manipulative, never negative. Its energies are friendly. They do not want to change anything but are merely invitations. They affect the user only inasmuch as he/she opens him/herself for them, consciously or unconsciously. It is like a window through which the sun is shining. You can open the curtain as much as seems good for you. The sun shines without any intention of shedding heat or light at all, but if you decide to stand in its light you will also feel warmed. It is a source of energy that is never exhausted or used up. It all depends on how susceptible you are.

We have mechanisms in our unconscious that open and close, and I respect them very much. There is a higher intelligence at work beyond what we call good or bad. And I am in harmony with this intelligence while I am creating.

My role is making the essence visible. I open up to the mysterious energies beyond space and time and feel it the moment I resonate in these frequencies. I am merely the channel for what is happening in this moment, a medium for colors and structures.

First I meditate. Then over a period of time I am busy tuning into the given theme or a particular person. It is not a question of thinking. It is a consciousness beyond thinking. In fact, my whole life has been a striving, a kind of yearning, toward meditation. And I feel that I am getting closer and closer to the essential. The Mandalas are a journey into this.

I find the word “artist” a little strange if applied to myself. Frankly, I can’t relate to it at all, since I do not intend by any means to create art. I would rather like to give expression to that which is, and of course, in this process beauty arises. Wholeness is simply beautiful.

Whether I am an artist or not is completely insignificant to me. I just do what I do.

A friend of mine saw it in this way. I do not know whether I myself would have dared express it like this. But it is indeed my aim to create objective art, which means that I am only the tool, the means through which something is expressed – without my personal opinions and ideas. I take stock of what is, exactly the way my awareness can perceive it at this moment.

It is like a wave in the ocean, an expression of wind, water and power, not shaped by anybody in this particular way but something that has simply arisen.

There are laws for structures, angles and proportions which have been described long, long ago. They are universal mathematical laws that have a certain effect on man and cause certain vibrations.
I have adopted this concept because I wanted to emphasize the fact that I do not just sit down and arbitrarily draw a few strokes, but that I center myself and tune in, in order to be open for that which is true.

I am not interested in reproducing old forms but I am connected to the wisdom that lies behind their invention.

It is only that nowadays, in the 21st century, we resonate on different frequencies; the urgent issues of our time are different from those of one or two thousand years ago. For this reason I do not want to have any ancient symbols around me or even use them. This does not mean that I am questioning their quality; it is just that they belong to a different time. The cross will, of course, occur in a Mandala since it is so universal; it does not belong to a particular epoch or civilization, it is not the property of Christianity, either. In the cross the horizontal and the vertical principle are coming together, it is the meeting point of the outer and the inner life, it means oneness.

I call Mandalas those pictures which I paint exclusively by hand, with diverse techniques. A hand-painted Mandala is good for someone who would like to get a lot of attention and time from me. The creative process mostly stretches across months, and during that time I cannot create any other power images.

The Energy Symbols, however, I only draw by hand as a structure on graph paper and then I scan them into the computer. There I bring the colors into the Symbol as sources of light, i.e., as if a light were shining through them. Right now I am focusing on creating these light symbols.

I use a professional computer graphics program. That is a real voyage of discovery. I am self-taught; I acquired my artistic and technical skills without anybody else’s help. I know what I want to express and I have searched experimentally for a long time until I found a way how, for example, to put many different layers one upon the other.

I would never have thought that I would create so much on the computer. But the computer offers us completely different possibilities from painting by hand. After all, I am not interested in artistic and manual skills so I can go around and boast about them.

I would like, of course, that my images give joy to others and help many people find their own center. And that they be touched by the beauty of my creations.

In my work is reflected my great love of ordinary human existence, my compassion for all experiences of this life.

I would like my Mandalas to lead people away from their “suffering” towards a joyous lifestyle. Even a Mandala with the theme of anguish or pain belongs in this context since it says “yes” to these deeply human experiences, these particular vibrations, and takes the observer into a space beyond fear and pain.

Such a Mandala has, after all, been created by someone who has experienced, and survived, the deepest depths and the darkest sides of life.

Mandalas are amazing. They are one of the best things that could have happened to me. They give me so much joy.