Varaaz Arts — Stories from the Studio
Ode to Purity — A Painting Born from Ancient Verse and Sacred Geometry
Some paintings are made. And some paintings arrive.
Ode to Purity arrived with a verse.
The first time I read the opening line of the Kanakadhara Stotram — an ancient Sanskrit hymn to divine grace — something inside me went very still. The words did not just describe beauty. They described a geometry. An order. A living pattern that I knew I had to bring into form.
This is the story of how that feeling became a painting.
SOLD
What You See
The painting is large, rich, and full of life.
At the centre stands a great Tamala tree — its branches spreading wide like open arms, alive with birds and bees and blossoms. The sky behind it shifts from deep blue to warm gold, as if the world is caught between dawn and dusk — between one breath and the next.
At the base of the tree, where the trunk meets the earth, sits a mandala. Not as decoration. As the source. A circle of orange and gold petals, holding at its very centre the ancient Sacred Geometry symbol — the Seed of Life and the Torus. The whole tree grows from this geometry. The whole painting grows from this geometry.
At the bottom, lotus flowers float on still water — in pink, yellow, and gold. Around all of this, a jewelled border — tiny rubies and emeralds set into the frame — the way temples are decorated, as if to say: what is inside here is sacred.
The Ancient Verse Behind It
This is a Tanjore painting — one of India's oldest and most revered art forms — and it depicts the opening verse of the Kanakadhara Stotram.
The Kanakadhara Stotram is a hymn that celebrates divine grace — the grace that flows when the universe is in alignment. The first verse speaks of the Tamala tree: dark, magnificent, the physical form of the divine. Around it, honeybees circle, drawn to its nectar. Parrots rest in its branches.
These are not just beautiful images. Each one is a teaching.
What Every Element Means
The Tamala Tree
The tree is the physical form of the divine — vast, providing shade, deeply rooted, always giving. It is a reminder that divinity is not somewhere above us. It is here. In nature. In matter. In the world we can touch.
The Honeybees
The bees represent devotees — those who are drawn, naturally and instinctively, to what is sweet and nourishing. The bee does not question whether the flower is worthy. It simply knows. There is a teaching there for all of us — about how to move through life.
The Parrots
The parrot represents the mind that has been calmed. A mind that once chattered and scattered, now resting. Present. Still. Watching from the branch of something greater.
The Lotus
The lotus grows in water. Its roots are in mud. And yet it blooms above the surface — untouched, immaculate. Purity not as something we protect from the world, but as the nature of the soul that cannot be stained by circumstance.
The Mandala — Torus and Seed of Life
At the heart of the tree is the Sacred Geometry mandala. The Torus is the shape of the eternal cycle — energy that flows outward, curves back, and returns to its source. Like breath. Like seasons. Like all of life. The Seed of Life at the centre — seven interlocking circles — represents the blueprint of creation. The first pattern from which all living forms emerge.
The Philosophy This Painting Carries
I believe that the underlying geometry of a mandala creates our living senses.
When we connect with a mandala — truly connect, not just look at it — something happens. The geometry speaks to the geometry already inside us. And it moves outward from there like a ripple. The same pattern. The same form. Life recognising itself.
Ode to Purity was made from this understanding. Every element is placed with intention. The geometry was decided first. Then the painting grew from it, the way a tree grows from a seed.
To create this painting was an act of evolution and alignment. A thought became a geometry. A geometry became a composition. A composition became something a viewer can stand before and feel — without needing to know why. That is the moment I am always working toward. The moment the painting responds to the person watching it.
Two Months from Thought to Completion
From the moment this idea arrived — as a feeling, then a verse, then a sketch on paper — to the day this painting was complete and ready to be seen, two months passed.
Two months of working out the geometry first. Of placing the mandala before the tree. Of deciding which birds would sit where and what each one would mean. Of mixing the gold. Of painting each tiny honeybee with the same care as the largest branch.
There is a kind of meditation in that process. Long, slow, deliberate. Not unlike drawing a mandala itself.
This Painting Has Found Its Home
Ode to Purity is sold.
It lives now with someone who felt what they felt when they stood before it. That is the only way I know a painting is complete — not when I put down the brush, but when it finds the person it was made for.
A Painting Begins Before the Brush
What I want you to take from this story is not just the painting — it is the understanding that every mandala, every sacred geometry work, carries something inside it. A vibration. A thought. A philosophical question that it offers quietly to the person who looks.
When you observe a mandala — mine, or one you draw yourself — you are not just looking. You are entering into a conversation with a pattern that has existed since the beginning of creation.
That conversation can change something in you. Not dramatically. Not loudly. But the way a ripple moves — outward, steadily, in the same form as the stone that made it.
"Where Sacred Geometry meets Art Therapy, the mind finds balance and the soul remembers itself."
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