The Story of Sara Kritikos Sara’s mother was taking my class and asked me if she could bring her daughter to class so she wouldn’t have to be alone. Sara had had encephalitis at birth and carried the scars physically and developmentally. I suggested that perhaps she would be interested in trying mandalas and her...Read More

The Story about Wendy Hawkins Wendy was a regular at Lane Cara Shaw’s drop-in classes, and took a class or two from me as well. She was diagnosed with juvenile rheumatoid arthritis as a baby, requiring her to have numerous surgeries through the years. Her body caused her so much pain and suffering. She found...Read More

The Story of Lane Cara Shaw Petite, British Lane Cara Shaw attended my mandala class when she was a young 83. After her first session, she was hooked! Following the 6-week class, she began teaching a weekly drop-in class herself, teaching the mandala as a tool for self-healing and encouraging and teaching others to teach....Read More

In this 6-week class our intention was to explore the step-by-step growth and blossoming of a lotus flower, as symbolic of the Self. In each class we would try a new sacred geometry design. On day- one we would make a mandala representing one, or the beginning, the point of energy where all begins. The...Read More

  Circles abound in my life. Maybe it’s just because I notice them, now that I paint mandalas, teach mandalas and generally my whole existence is about the Circle. On the left is a potholder my grandmother made for me out of scraps of yarn. She was always busy making something, and all of us...Read More

It wasn’t until my diagnosis of breast cancer that Mary really took a hold of me and I began to paint the images of the Divine Mother which appeared in my mind’s eye. You have to understand how odd her appearances were at first, because in my religious background Mary did not play a significant...Read More

Revisiting the Self Through Photos: In a recent mandala class, we all revisited our ideas of ourselves by including old photos in our mandalas. We started with a photo of ourselves as a child and we all included the photo in a mandala. To the left is me at three, blooming out of a flower....Read More

The Final Project: At the end of our last mandala class for the spring, The Delight of Watercolor Mandalas, some of the class met at the beach to create a beach mandala. We all brought flowers, leaves and natural objects to create an impermanent mandala which would be washed away by the tide. The Flower...Read More

  We saw The Monuments Men movie the other night and loved it, especially the story about the safe return of the stolen Bruges Madonna to the Church of Our Lady in Bruges, Belgium at the end of World War II. What a story! What an influence that Madonna had on me. (And I do...Read More

Magic and Messages Everywhere My husband and I took a recent trip to LA to see some art and said, “Let’s have a magical trip and look for magic and messages everywhere!” When we arrived we parked next to a car with a Flower of Life symbol on its back window. Several of us in...Read More