In my apartment, there are two pillars on either side of the doorway between the living room and the ‘office’-‘spare room’-‘guest bedroom’-‘library’-‘tai chi practice room’ (amazing how many functions one room can have).
These rooms used to be part of the public rooms of a rather grand house in a New England river town, and the woodwork is lovely. It used to be an open path, but at some point, a rather ugly wall was built between the two rooms, so it could be used as a more private bedroom.
It’s created two niches, or tokonomas on either side of the doorway. I’ve used these niches to hold god and goddess statues created by my friend Albert Sussler, and various other art objects or knickknacks. The open blank walls above the statues, though, were a bit of a problem.
I’ve finally started working on the first of the paintings that will go on the right-hand side of the doorway. As you can see, it has a yin-yang symbol at the top, and a purple square turned sideways (diamond-wise) at the middle. The bottom will eventually be a green, seven-pointed star. Each of these images will have a circle around it painted in complementary colors, and pathways will join them together. The background will likely be white. Let the wise take note.
