Circular Anxiety
Circular Anxiety, a series of drawings made during the winter of 2025, explores the emotional experience of recurring fear and psychological repetition and its symbolic transformation through visual form into a contained circular structure. Inspired by the artwork of Louise Bourgeois, the drawings use overlapping mandala-like circles to represent the containment, confrontation, and re-processing of emotional intensity.
Through saturated color, radial symmetry, and layered composition, my artwork reflects both harmony and disquiet, beauty and constraint. Each circle functions as a visual vessel: holding, organizing, and making visible the invisible patterns of my psyche. I am asking: How do I organize my inner chaos? Can repetition offer release? Can repetition restore calm and focus?
Luise Bourgeois said, "To draw is to make an idea precise. Drawing is the only way to overcome one’s fears." She also notably encouraged the act of drawing one's fears into circles, believing that the circular form could act as an enclosure—a symbolic vessel that gives shape to the amorphous and terrifying. In this act, the infinite and enclosing nature of the circle becomes a paradoxical space: both a trap and a sanctuary, repetition and release.
By drawing circles and circular spirals I acknowledge and make visible, soften, witness, and ultimately transform emotions and sensation that are difficult to acknowledge through words.
This statement was written with the aid of Artificial Intelligence.