A description of the Stage Seven mandala from the Purna Asatti stages model — the chaos of once-certain reality falling apart, where questioning and breakdown open onto the promise of freedom, the true self, the divine, and trust in intuition.
A description of the Stage Six mandala from the Purna Asatti stages model, where rigid ideology begins to share space more equally with the true self, the divine, and emerging energy, while others are still seen mainly through their experiences.
A description of the Stage Five mandala from the Purna Asatti stages model, where ideology dominates entirely — a black hole absorbing others, experiences, and needs — leaving the true self, the divine, and freedom captive to a rigid worldview craving validation.
A description of the Stage Four mandala from the Purna Asatti stages model, where the individual first notices that others have needs too — experiences radiating outward to bring awareness of others — in a stage that feels satisfied but faintly smug.
A description of the Stage Three mandala (I Am My Needs) from the Purna Asatti stages model, where the true self and the divine are pushed aside as body, experiences, and needs swirl into a self-centered vortex of craving and attachment.
A description of the Stage Two mandala from the Purna Asatti stages model, where the divine recedes and the true self sends forth scattered experiences — some encapsulated, some not — etched into the body, with the golden ratio depicting how experiences arrive.
A description of the Stage One artwork from the Purna Asatti stages model, decoding its colors and symbolism: dark red as the one true-self consciousness, teal as the divine manifested into physical form, and gold as the higher intuition intending to manifest, evoking the Big Bang as birth.
A description of the one-of-a-kind silver wax stamp the artist uses to mark original paintings and physical artworks, functioning as both a personal signature and an anti-counterfeit measure with hard-to-copy details built in.
A short note on an abstract jewelry design derived from the author’s Cycle of Human Development model, 3D printed into a necklace and keychain used as personal reminders and as tools for meditation and affirmation work.
A brief note on the original concept design for the author’s tattoo, titled Freedom From Chaos, which was later placed winding up her back and around her arm.
A short observation on flat, smooth sand at Half Moon Bay whose color variation creates the illusion of ridges, captured by the author as a reminder that what we see is not always reality.
A brief note on a morning light pattern cast through blinds at a beach house that so caught the author’s eye she recreated its abstract form in artwork.
A lighthearted note on a collection of small objects found in a son’s pockets on laundry day in 2013, which the author found visually fun and full of curiosity.
A short note on a minimalist project representing each emotion as line and color, which yielded a color wheel of positive emotions and a matching one for negative emotions that the author found worked perfectly.
An abstract painting in shades of blue depicting a tiny self floating in the ocean as a great wave approaches, evoking the ambiguity of major, identity-altering change that is neither clearly good nor bad.
A photograph capturing the artist’s shadow dancing during a music video for the song “Validation,” used to illustrate the concept of the shadow self, the alter ego, with the less confident real self performing as the shadow of the confident songstress.
A wire sculpture inspired by the artist’s chaos-flower paintings, designed to mount on a wall with its tendrils bent outward as if reaching toward passersby.
![What Are We Throwing Away? [An Art Attack Collaboration]](https://kathryncolleen.com/studio/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/TrainStation-1080x675.jpg)
A reflection on a public art collaboration in Purcellville, Virginia, where painted yellow trash bags hung around town overnight posed a question about balancing economic progress against preserving history and small-town character.
An art piece created to depict the artist’s own mind, its pockets of order and intellectual curiosity threatened by, or perhaps threatening, a tidal wave of obsessive distraction, capturing the felt experience of an autistic inner world.
A description of an abstract artwork titled Ordered Chaos, offered for sale, inspired by Chaos Theory in mathematics — the artist playing with the idea that chaos can be ordered and generative, and reframing change as not always a bad thing.
A brief description of an altered photograph studying a rooftop fire seen at a hotel in San Diego — an artistic exploration of what it is about fire that captures and holds the eye.
A brief description of a photographic art study of an old tree stump — drawn to its pronounced rings and cracks as themes running through the years of the tree’s life, and the emptiness at the center marking its birth.
An art photograph of a candlelit statue casting the shadow of a couple on the wall behind it, presented as a study in how outward appearances make it impossible to tell whether a relationship is happy, struggling, or in conflict.
A sketch of a large aloe plant, roughly five to six feet tall, observed on the highest hill in St. Maarten against a stone wall, drawn to study a scene that stayed with the artist.
A description of a mixed-media artwork honoring Salvador Dali’s brief cubist period, built from several smaller canvases with strategically placed holes and glass tiles forming the seeds, offered for sale.