When someone hands you a windfall of art stuff (and I mean an exceptional loot!), you don’t just set it on a shelf and wait for inspiration.  You mount a giant sheet of paper, open that bottle of turpentine that’s been sitting sealed for months now — and you get working.

Maybe I should substitute the pronouns for “I” — because that is what I did.

With the click of the bottle cap, that magical smell of turpentine brings back so many memories of when I lived in the mountains, drawing by a foggy window, looking over roofs and the setting sun over the sea in the distance.

This is perhaps my first full-scale painting since 2006.  Yes, I’ve begun drawing this year again, toying with inks and watercolors.  But this is my first mandala to reflect the evolution of my personal style and choice palette. It is also an experimental painting, one without the signature bold black lines.

I notice that my mandalas take for from the things around me.  The focal center with the dark pink flower is very Peranakan in color, I believe?