Doolittle, who once played the violin. He has rejected written language as the vehicle for his participation in a universal culture he believes should be rooted in spirituality, balance, peace and beauty.
Doolittle began painting in 1969 while a creative director at one of America's leading advertising agencies in America. Creating visual art during this period in his life heralded a time of clashing perceptions and priorities. After all, Doolittle was a highly respected wordsmith selling American ideas, ideals and products on foreign soil while at the same time spilling out a unique vision on canvas that wasn't at all concerned with selling, but sharing. This self-taught artist offered up his colorful, mixed-media images that were rooted in the whimsical, the decorative and meditative at galleries in America and South Africa.
Doolittle's artwork is free of narrative and language. Its ethereal dream inspired and inspiring abstractions are not connected in any way to the concrete, and thus offers communication that stands in exact opposition to the deployment of words. His unique symmetry of acrylics, glass, aluminum, and brass leaf creates richly textured scintil-lant compositions noted for their playful, yet disciplined approach to color and shape. He notes that his singularity of design stems from the subconscious use of a technique he has developed over the past four decades. The mandala is a circle or wheel symbolizing an enlightened being's compassion and love for sentient beings. It is dedicated to peace and physical balance, both for the individual and for the world.
Mandala Visual Music
According to mythologist Joseph Campbell, mandalas are ritual geometric designs that symbolize the universe. In Eastern religions they are also considered an aid to meditation. Doolittle's mandalas take the shape of circles, an image his unconscious received in a series of non-narrative dreams. The peace he received from these images, along with whispered admonishments to share them with others, emotionally connected him to a spirituality that was devoid of any horrors. These circles and orbs became the reverberation of a dominant theme that was always dreamed of in color.
It is probably no coincidence that many of Doolittle's circular mandalas often remind one of a music cd or an album's turntable-- a metaphoric musical sphere of visual melody that offers up the same layered quality found in a musical note. His paintings hang like music on a wall, his mandala spheres taking on the function of an album turntable because the paintings can be alternatively turned, spun and placed in any direction—vertically, horizontally, up, down, left, right- in order to achieve individual viewer balance and harmony. Because Doolittle encourages the proactive choice of positioning the paintings according to personal tastes and moods, the viewer can assume the role of conductor by orchestrating these spheres into fresh and unique journeys. Thus, the owner of a Harry Doolittle canvas has the potential to create a "new music" with each turn of the canvas and subsequent viewing.