About | DOUG FROHMAN 

Painted primarily with a cement trowel on wood panels and canvas, the EQUATIONS pieces utilize both minimalist geometry and broad expanses of pure color to convey an emotional primacy in the work. The themes are drawn from contemporary physics, mathematical relationships and traditional mandala designs from ancient contemplative art of India and Tibet.

In Tibetan and Indian tantric mandalas, there are complex border designs that suggest the outer architecture of a palace as seen from above and a series of interpenetrating walls, which protect a central inner sanctum. Both the colors, the proportion and design lead progressively inward towards the center. This structure is used as a metaphor and symbolic tool-set to lead the practitioner inward into his or her own central field of awareness.

In the EQUATIONS, the central field has been expanded to embody a varied set of creative relationships, intended to engage and entrain the viewer’s attention in a contemporary framework that also embodies and echoes the past. The theories and diagrams of advanced mathematics, physics and modern architecture have also played prominent parts in my visual thinking.