Metatron's Cube

Oil on Canvas 14"x1o"
This is my unfinished take on Metatron's Cube, which came from an impulse to create a Mandala. The drawing for this is generated by overlapping circles, sharing the same radius. In effect it is a fractal process that generates all the polygons. I find it amazing that this happens. Within the boundary set by the first circle drawn, the image can go infinitely large, or infinitely small. In addition to contemplating infinity within boundaries, painting these shapes is a sort of realism, but the shapes are ideal, generated out of the fractal process. So, it is a bit of a paradox to call it realistic, yet I am painting, and imagining what these ideal forms might look like. In this case I chose to work with the secondary colors, orange, green, and violet. Is it a coincidence that the primaries and secondaries work in two equilateral triangles. By using light and dark, I created the illusion of 3D, which is suggested in the two dimensional pattern. The tetrahedron is the first polygon that introduces the three axis that make up 3D. The three on a personal level are left-right, back-front, which at this point is still 2D. I isn't until you include up-down that the third dimension is acknowledged. It seems obvious that we live in a 3D world, yet for those of us creating the illusion of 3D on a two dimensional surface, it isn't so obvious as to how to move from the condition of 2D to to the condition of 3D. One thing is clear, it depends on perspective. If it is true that the reality we live in is actually a virtual matrix, then the matrix itself is generating all possible perspectives, beginning with a dimensionless point at the center of a circle. As far as I am concerned, only consciousness can do that, and any perspective chosen or experienced is a result of intention.
The other sacred geometry revealed in this image is the twelve over one geometry. There are twelve signs of the zodiac, divided into four groups of three. The four elemental qualities of earth, water, fire, air, are divided into three qualities of Cardinal, Fixed, and Mutable signs. It occured to me that we have four arithmetical functions, plus, minus, divide, multiply, and three axis on which to calculate the dynamics of the observed world we exist in. There are more four by threes if you look for them.