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A winter of rains, two months labor, and 6,000 circles characterize Rainstorm. It is a dazzling, energetic array that has the hazard under the influence of trippy mesmerization. A raindrop's view in a heavy shower of the approaching pond, perhaps?

Another environmental painting is Ocean, of 4,800 circles. The work is derived from computerized images of NASA & NOAA data of currents and of satellite views of spiral plankton concentrations.

Lava Fields, of 11,000 circles, is based on aerial photographs during an eruption of Mauna Loa in Hawai‘i.

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For March 2024 is an environmental work, Global Climate Change. Trees in the Sierra Nevada (King's Canyon) are dying, unable to adapt to rising average annual temperatures and cumulative drought. The trees also become more susceptible to pathogens and insect infestation. The painting is based directly on a cropped governmental photograph and consists of about 1,525 circles.

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A follow-up work, Global Climate Change II, is of a hurricane seen from space. Hurricanes/typhoons are trending toward intensity and more frequency. Close inspection of the source photograph shows the effects of thermals on cloud formation. Thermals are rising heat bubbles from the ground that allow birds to glide and soar upwards without flapping their wings and help form globular clouds. At the macro scale, even hurricane cloud groupings take on a globular forms, which here are reduced to elemental circles. Besides the clear small circles, some 3,500, the canvas fabric itself contributes to the art, providing myriad mini circles, individual puffs within groupings.

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Mind Tunnel began as a 'what-if' doodle (or the influence of a 2-day precognition of encountering Georgia O'Keeffe's painting Light Coming on the Plains No. 1). After a series of studies using 3 colors for the inner circles, the simple 2 proved more dramatic.

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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 involve 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.

 

Debra Jan Bibel

MORPHOLOGIES:
An Exploration, An Evolution

Fresh Paint

This page features the latest visual compositions, completed in 2023 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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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 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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The Seasons: Autumn  (2024), 16 × 16 in.

The painting was designed akin to a NASA planetary flyby with a more interesting pattern. Psychological oddity: flipping the image 90° provides a more familiar astronaut perspective where the planet feels closer with a sense of movement toward the horizon.  Turn this image upside down and the pattern suggests Antarctica.

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

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