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The quadriptych The Seasons consists of a display of 4 diamond rhomboid works. A previous set, Four Kakemono for a Teahouse, is a take with square elements on four 'portrait' rectangles; and Chinese calligraphy of the four seasons was created on one sheet by brush-ink and also stylized in acrylic on a single canvas. The intended linear arrangement is designed to allow both focused appreciation of each season and the yearly change. The square arrangement is an approved alternative.

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Following up the minimalistic circle and arc forms of The Seasons is Other Worlds. The painting has remarkable harmony and balance, perhaps instilling a feeling of movement The astronomical aspects may come to mind. The work is reminiscent of previous paintings with swirls and orbs: Ether (1979) and Winter's Harbinger (2012).

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Composed of 12,700 circles, Global Climate Change III — Dying coral reef, is derived from a cropped photograph. Corals vary in shape and develop bold colors, as lime green, rust red, cobalt blue. The source image was red violet. Dying coral are 'bleached' white as their exposed skeleton is calcium carbonate, chalk. As with the 'atoms/canyon' painting, this work should first be seen from afar and then zoomed closer, allowing shifting cognition and feelings in response.

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The circle and sphere have a self-contained completeness to them; they are happy forms, as a child's balloon. During Christmas, the ornamental, shiny spheres and round lights support joy. The close-up of such a tree, the painting Christmas, attempts to express this emotion. The positive, cheerful appearance of the circular ornaments and multi-colored lights has a experiential and neurological basis, as determined by functional MRI imaging. The processing of rounded forms involves different brain regions than sharp, angular shapes. Consider how the rounded faces and larger rounded eyes of babies, both human and animals, bring calm and compassion, while triangles and a multitude of lines, suggesting spikes, thorns, and insect legs, are viewed as hazards. With such contrasting shapes in the painting — as well as an actual decorated tree — undergoing the combination of brain activity, the circular elements dominate and provide relief and pleasure. The solid colored smaller circles as lights are crucial in feelings of warmth and fun. The association with the season and religious/spiritual relationship with circular purity and unity also comes into play.

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34,200 circles are found on Iguazu.The right bottom corner of Bibel's own photograph of Iguazu Falls between Argentina and Brazil, where she visited in 2012, is the basis of this painting. The visual pizzicato is a combination of idealized trees and bushes but also the natural form of falling water. Rain drops are actually globular, and the coherent fluid of rivers, when falling long distances, is subject to turbulence and surface tension effects, leading to disintegration into a flow of spheroid globules. Again, the distance when viewing the painting is influential in emotional effect. As conveyed by the enlargement, the hundreds of falls produced a roar and a saturated atmosphere of microdrops such that despite rain clothing, the skin became wet.

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The final painting of 2024 is Iguazu Mergings, a mix of solids and some 16,500 circles for the falls and plants. The source of the composition is also a Bibel photograph.

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The viewer of this painting may enjoy the eye play of circles and be philosophically aware of the emotional responses to the appearance of changing patterns. The scientist, however, will appreciate that Lizard is the idealized depiction of the skin of these creatures, based on the desert green lizard and the tropical chameleon.

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Classic and traditional, the still life [besides a study device for developing technique] emphasizes composition, balance, and color harmony however many the elements. Moreover, it presents a means to appreciate the simplicity and form of common objects, finding beauty and interest in shape, texture, hue, and tone. The very painting style in still life can create a mood that supports reflection on life, transience, and cultural meaning, a visual metaphor. It pauses our thoughts and instills tranquility. Bibel's only still life, The Circle of Still Life, continues her artistic meditation on the circle, here found in all the East-West manufactured and natural components.

Debra Jan Bibel

MORPHOLOGIES:
An Exploration, An Evolution

Fresh Paint

This page features the latest visual compositions, completed in 2024 to 2025. Because the page will change with each new opus, monitor the page periodically. The images may also be found among the galleries.

NOTE: All reduced and overly processed images fail utterly in even hinting at the quality and the true colors of the actual paintings and their effect on the viewer.

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The year 2025 begins with the first part of a diptych: Islamic Circle. The circle is key symbol in Islam. The circle is found with domes, in tile arabesques, and other wall ornamentation. It represents unity, wholeness or totality, cycles of seasons and generations, and the eternal without beginning or end.  Blue Mosque is on the right side. To emphasize the circular elements of the architecture and design depicted in this work of the Blue Mosque [Sultan Ahmed Mosque] in Istanbul, the composition eliminated the vast filigree, rounded the corners of the wide 8-sided polygon symbols, Rub-el-Hizb, into circles and ovoids, and reduced the detailing, as the stained glass windows and calligraphy. Moreover, the magenta and red oxides of the mosque were changed to greens and browns. Green is associated with Muhammed, as it was his favorite color, and green means life in the desert. The mosque was completed in 1610. On the left: Circles and scalloped arcs are found throughout the mosque in Cordoba, Spain, first constructed in 788 and then expanded in stages This painting Al-Andalus is of the maqsurah section and qibla wall with mihrab entrance at lower righ and skylight above, built by al-Hakam II in 966. Interestingly, Roman corinthion columns are included as decorative wall reliefs, probably via the; craftsmen sent by Emperor Nicephoros II of Byzantium.

 From the dawn of civilization the circle has spiritual and formal religious significance. Suggestive of cycles, as the seasons and moon changes, and the eternal, the never-ending, the circle has been found as Neolithic ceremonial sites, particularly common in the British isles. Burial mounds worldwide are also circular. The round table, made famous in the Camelot myth, has been adopted as a symbol of equality and is found in the United Nations Security Council and other international organizations. Cycle Circle depicts the most famous Neolithic circle of stones, Stonehenge, which is a solstice observatory that also marks the cycle of eclipses. The rain and snow globular circles are themselves symbolic — the water cycle from precipitation to creek to river to ocean to clouds and return to mist, rain, snow, and ice. The lichen growth on stones are roughly circular.

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One of the practices of mindfulness-of-mind meditation is being a 'fair witness' of the spontaneous thoughts and emotions that arise and almost immediately dissolve or fade without attaching associations or judgments. The beginning meditator will find one thought rapidly following another and the mind will chase after them, expanding, and linking them with other thoughts, which is known as monkey mind. In extended practice the mind narrows, concentrates, with fewer thought bubbles. Also bubbles of emotion can arise without context, just feelings of sadness, anger, bliss, and so forth. Examining the origins and form of these thoughts and emotions provide lessons in cause-effect and aid in spiritual development. Most spontaneous thoughts relate to past events or future planning, far less so to the present. This painting, Thought Bubbles, is a visual metaphor of this mindfulness, bubbles being neurological 'noise' or subconsciousness processing with some patterns rising, shifting into conscious-awareness.
 

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Seemingly abstract, this painting is fully representational. Symbolic of trees, the green circles are arrayed as contour lines as on a topographic map. Moreover, circles on the higher elevations are increasingly larger, as trees would be so when viewed from above. Hence, the painting has a quasi three-dimensional perspective. Indeed, it is a precise map of an area in Northern California, in the Shasta-Trinity National Forest. It consists of some 5,560 circles. Its title is Ironside Mountain Lookout.

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The Seasons: Autumn  (2024), 16 × 16 in.

All images are copyright by Debra Jan Bibel.  Permission for use in electronic media or for printed reproduction is required. 

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