Of Maps, Mandalas, and Distant Fields

If Ron Teachworth's paintings are windows on the exotic terrain of the imagination—infinite seaside horizons, spectacular night skies, and fields of vibrantly stippled geometry—it's possible to see his mandalas as furtive maps to those distant worlds. From an inch away or across the room, the circular paintings and sculptures are trying to tell us something; they are compasses trying to direct us somewhere.

The signals occasionally seem obvious: arrows lead us to the rough clay edges of some, and many find crosses at their center (a symbol which, like the mandala itself, could be associated with the religious dogma of your choosing). In others, the compass is thrown off by a fragmented letter, repurposed scraps of metal, or brilliantly colored sticks.

Certainly, Teachworth's dedication and repetition of mandalas proves him a committed student of Carl Jung, who first brought the form into Western consciousness. Jung himself obsessively created mandalas during meditation, attempting to "make maps" to the center of himself.

But Teachworth's maps and meditations pursue larger explorations than the long-sought “self”—even if the mandalas rarely eclipse the size of a dinner plate. With brightly colored, fleeting lines, his drawn mandalas spin the ancient form into the hustle of present-day, while his rough hewn mandalas of mixed media – pressed into clay, mounted on slate, and framed in wood—appear as primeval relics.

If they seem to be directing us to different ends of a timeline, when they appear next to Teachworth’s paintings, the mandalas’ direction becomes clear. His earliest acrylics—serene destinations with titles like “Orchard Trees” and “Blue Water Beach,” all in pointillist textures which bring to mind carefully placed patterns of tic tacs—depict languid afternoons of gently surreal, time-forgotten tranquility. Some of his whimsical watercolors find figures at play, but most of these scenes suggest a recently absent human presence. We're invited to curiously deserted lifeguard chairs, shady trees, and colorful burial markers, but Teachworth’s scenes never seem forsaken.

The objects at center seem just as carefully placed as the swatches of color enlivening the surrounding atmospheres. Eventually, as with the casually suggested horizon of “Pyramid Beach,” or the hazily rendered mountain range of “Twin Peaks,” the bright geometry of these atmospheres demands our complete attention. It's as if, overtime, we’ve taken perch in the abandoned lifeguard chair, looked skyward and let our minds do the rest. The energetic mélange of color and shapes that dominates his later work needs little tie to earthly constructs.

Arriving at a recent painting like “A Cross for Helen & Vern,” its hard not to see the lambent shape at the center of the green and blue turf as a sideways X that marks the spot after long travels. Looking at it long enough, it appears to be the enlarged symbol on a map, as if the journey is about to begin.