How the Universe Becomes an Image
Symbols of the universe in art, mythology and ancient cosmology emerge from a human need to give shape to something that cannot be seen in its entirety. The universe is too vast to encounter as a single object, so cultures have imagined it through circles, eggs, trees, bodies, vessels, stars and layered worlds. These forms do not represent one universal belief, and each cosmology belongs to its own historical, religious and geographical context. What they share is a visual strategy: turning invisible order into an image that can be contemplated. In my own work, halos, doubled faces, eyes, botanical structures and enclosed vessels often become small cosmologies, holding tension between inner space and an immeasurable outside.
Circles, Spheres and Symbols of Cosmic Order
The circle is one of the most persistent symbols of the universe because it has no visible beginning or end. In ancient astronomy, religious diagrams and philosophical systems, circular movement suggested perfection, recurrence and an ordered sky. Spheres became models for planets, celestial layers and the totality of existence, while rings could mark boundaries between sacred and ordinary space. The circular forms in my paintings often behave in several ways at once: as halos, eyes, suns, portals or protective borders. Their apparent completeness can feel reassuring, yet a circle also encloses. It defines what belongs inside and what remains beyond perception.
The Cosmic Egg and the Birth of Worlds
Creation from a primordial egg appears in several ancient cosmological traditions, including distinct narratives in South Asia, the Mediterranean world and other regions. These accounts should not be collapsed into a single interchangeable myth, because each gives the egg a different relationship to divinity, matter and time. Visually, the cosmic egg joins opposites: fragility and totality, enclosure and expansion, silence and creation. I am drawn to rounded vessels and closed forms for the same reason. They can resemble seeds, heads or miniature planets, suggesting that an entire world may exist inside a surface that still appears sealed.
World Trees and the Vertical Structure of the Universe
In many traditions, a great tree connects different regions of existence through roots, trunk and branches. The image can organize underworld, earthly life and celestial space along a single vertical axis, though its meanings vary significantly between cultures. The tree makes the universe appear alive rather than mechanical: a structure that grows, divides and carries memory through its form. Botanical motifs in my practice often perform a similar function. Stems rise from vessels, branches divide around faces, and leaves create pathways between separate visual zones. Growth becomes a diagram of connection, showing the universe not as empty distance but as a living network.
Stars, Eyes and the Idea of a Watching Cosmos
Stars have served as navigational markers, divine signs, calendars and evidence of cosmic order. Their distant light allows the sky to appear both measurable and mysterious. In some visual traditions, stars and eyes approach one another symbolically because both are points of illumination that seem to look back. I often repeat eyes across a composition until they stop functioning only as features of a face and begin to resemble constellations. This changes the scale of the image: a body can become a sky, and a sky can acquire consciousness. The universe is no longer merely observed; it becomes an observing presence.
Cosmic Bodies, Divine Figures and the Universe as Flesh
Ancient cosmologies sometimes imagined the universe through a primordial body whose parts became land, sky, water or celestial structures. Elsewhere, divine or human proportions were used to explain harmony between the body and the larger world. These traditions differ in theology and meaning, but they reveal a recurring desire to connect cosmic scale with embodied experience. My doubled faces and hybrid figures often explore that connection. A head may contain a garden, a halo may become an orbit, and symmetry can turn the body into a diagram. The figure does not simply stand inside the universe; it becomes one possible model of it.
Symbols of the Universe in My Artistic Practice
When I work with symbols of the universe, I am less interested in illustrating a fixed cosmological system than in creating the sensation of an ordered world that remains partly unknowable. Halos and rings establish orbits, vessels hold compressed inner landscapes, repeated eyes suggest constellations, and botanical forms connect separate levels of the composition. Mirrored figures can resemble twin forces or parallel worlds, while symmetry promises balance without guaranteeing stability. Symbols of the universe in art, mythology and ancient cosmology remain powerful because they let the immeasurable enter a human scale. An image becomes a temporary universe: bounded by its edges, yet always implying something larger beyond them.
