A Circle Shaped Mystery: Why I Paint on Circles

There is one shape that has shaped my art practice more than any other...

the circle.

I made the choice early on, to paint most of my first exhibition works on circular canvases, despite this being a very challenging shape to source from framers and art stores.

For me, the circle is eternal. Expansive. It is not just a viewfinder to paint through, but a quantum phenomenon, a spiritual structure beyond our senses, a way of being, or something to do with existence itself.

For me painting on the circle becomes a way of touching something I cannot quite grasp, something representing perhaps a continuum stretching from a Higher Creative Force, an ongoing Genesis from a singular, powerful point reaching to me.

I, the artist inside a Circle, also painting inside of a circle.

Phases Collection Mini Circular Study

I went to lengths to be able to work with circular canvases, and it comes from a deep desire to participate in its meaning, something older than me and still unfolding through me.

Ancient and Indigenous cultures, along with traditions such as Alchemy, Theosophy and other symbolic systems, all return to the circle in different ways.

In Theosophy it represents boundless, unmanifest source existence.

In Sacred Geometry it represents the original form from which all other shapes are derived.

In Hermeticism it represents unity, wholeness and the reconciliation of opposites.

In Alchemy it represents transformation, cycles, change and becoming.

In Kabbalah it represents creation through divine contraction and unfolding.

In Pythagorean thought it represents harmony, order and cosmic proportion.

In Jungian psychology it represents wholeness, integration and the Self.

Thanks to archaeology the circle has been uncovered again and again across ancient civilisations, continents, cultures and religions. So, I continue to ask why this shape appears everywhere, across time, across belief and across matter?

In Upper Palaeolithic cave art, circular marks and concentric circles appear as some of the earliest human engravings.

In Neolithic sites, stone circles form built environments often aligning with astronomical and seasonal points.

In Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs, the circle represents the sun and divine presence.

In Indus Valley civilisation, circles decorate seals, pottery and geometric systems.

In Bronze Age cultures, solar wheels express cyclical order, movement and return.

In Buddhist visual culture, the circle is found in the 'wheel of life' representing the cyclical nature of life

In early Christian art, circles frame the first image of Christ as the Good Shepherd in the Catacomb of Priscilla.

In Byzantine mosaics, the circle becomes a halo of divine light over saintly figures.

In Islamic art, the circle becomes structure, infinity and divine order, a way of pointing to the divine without an image.

It doesn't stop there. Into the modern age, it has continued to influence artists. Four of my influencers also have engaged with the circle in their work.

For Kandinsky, the circle was as a living, spiritual vibration.

For Hilma af Klint, the circle was as a diagram of unseen worlds.

For Janet Dawson, the circle was a holding space within painting.

James Turrell, the circle was an experience of light and perception shaped through architectural framing.

(left) James Turrell 'Skyspace' at NGA, (right) Kandinsky and (bottom) Dawson Exhibitions at AGNSW

These artists, in their unique way were pointing to something! And like them, I have only just begun to explore what that is. My moon paintings sit within a circular frame as I explore the cyclical, the eternal, the continuum and a searching for integration and wholeness.

I marvel in the mystery of such a basic shape as I finish this reflection I end with the deeply cosmological verse by Isaiah, 'The One enthroned above the circle of the earth and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers; who stretches out the heavens like a curtain, and spreads them like a tent to dwell in.” (40:22)

Maybe we are still learning what the circle truly means,

in both science and art.

After all

we are on spheres floating in space,

observing our luminous moon,

also floating in gravity.

There are black holes bending light,

causing circles and time warping

in the cosmos.

We start as a fertilised human egg,

another circular form,

so whether on the macro

or in the micro,

something

mysterious,

sacred,

and beautiful

calls out to me

in the circle.

Grace xx

.