For those of you out there who wonder why I paint labyrinths so often

My love of labyrinths started back in college. I was attending a class on psychology and each morning we would meditate to music for 5 minutes at the start of class. One day instead of turning music on, the professor drew a labyrinth on the board and taught us how to draw it as well. Most of my labyrinth art includes the classical style labyrinth he taught me then, as is the one in my backyard. Although the one I did yesterday is a different style which I've recently discovered in the book I read on my first Artist's Date! It's really fun and relaxing to me, both to draw laybinrths and then follow them with my finger or a pen. At that time of my life I was severely disabled (in an electric wheelchair) but they didn't know why. They were doing a lot of testing, and I was grateful for the lesson the professor had given me. It was a tool I would use whenever I had to get scary or painful tests in the hospital. I would sit in the waiting room or in the recovery room afterwards, drawing labyrinths and tracing them with my finger. It helped!


I find them very meditative and my whole family helped build the one in our backyard which I walk as often as possible as a form of physical therapy and of course meditation, or sometimes in ritual. I plan to do an Artist's Date where I simply walk into the labyrinth, sit at it's center and enjoy the nature in my backyard, but going to have to wait till it's below 100 and the monsoons have ended for the year.


Oh, and for anyone who would like to participate/help out, my current labyrinth project is to build a portable labyrinth that is light weight and easy to transport. To this end, I am collecting those little cardboard circles you find in restaurants or bars acting as coasters to save their tables from the rings our cups make. I am painting those circles each with their own design, and then I will be taking them around to my different art shows and workshops to use in ritual or simply to lay out for people to experience walking a labyrinth for themselves. If you run across any of these and want to send them to me, contact me off list for my address. I'm going to leave the back of them unpainted so that the history and initial character of each still shines through. I think a part of the project is found in where all the various coasters have come from!

Sean-Michael

P.S. I am aware there are portable labyrinths people make on various sorts of fabric to roll out and use. And at some point I do plan to paint such a labyrinth. However I would like to do this first because I enjoy labyrinths made with stones or natural elements, yet stones are difficult to carry around. I enjoy the process of a group of people laying stones to create a labyrinth together. And it can be a part of creating ritual space. This is my way of bringing those elements into this particular form of labyrinth.