The Eightfold Fence

2020
Acrylic and Collage on Canvas
36×36 inches

This painting was conceived and executed during a time in my life marked by reflection on marital and domestic life. I was trying to make sense of a long and troubled former marriage, and the stories of other people’s marriages, in the context of my new marriage. The keystone for thought in this composition is “Eightfold Fence,” the first poem to be found in the kojiki, the oldest anthology of Japanese poetry, AD 712.

Eightfold rising clouds
build an eightfold fence
an eightfold Izumo fence
wherein to keep my bride –
Oh! Splendid eightfold fence.

The poem here is written as a calligram, text arranged in such a way that it forms a thematically related image. The form is the sacred spiral, representative of the cycle of rebirth and connection to the spiritual world. The spiral overlies an eight-sided mandala, weaving into the center and then back out in a natural form in opposition to the rigid mandala. The mandala symbolizes the universe in Hinduism and Buddhism, used as an aid to meditation. Here, the eight-sided form also serves as structure to the poem’s content, each window in the design holding images of domestic life. The mandala, as the universe of marriage, is both a rigid cage and gloriously colorful, silver gilt and expanding with radiating energy.