“Forever In Praise”

This piece is the result of being carried by a sweeping wave of inspiration – hours of total obsession. One of those things where time warps, and 8 hours goes by like 5 minutes. Where your mind is so immersed in creative focus that you enter into a trance-like state, shamanic in nature. This is my favorite place to be.

Spending hours sitting with this piece, I could feel myself stretching deep into another world – rich and vivid landscapes amidst colors bursting with light, and celestial beings beaming with illumined wisdom. Creating this piece was like creating a gateway, a portal, into the preliminary layers of Heaven – or some beautiful angelic kingdom that wants its reality to be known by us. I could feel myself entraining to the frequency of this world. Like some crazed alien translator, I passionately tried to dictate this energy through the language of color. I felt like I was ecstatically uncovering some ancient memory, yet from far within my distant future. It’s a bit hard to speak about, because time becomes elastic in that state, where past, present, and future collapse into a single point that explodes into the timelessness of creative freedom. 

I heard someone once say that the purpose of life is to give praise to the Creator. I believe this to be true. And I believe that you give praise through creating beauty. Through creating beauty in the unique way that only you were designed to do. Through uncovering the treasure that resides in the deepest regions of your heart, and giving life to it beyond yourself. It is the type of beauty that makes you fall madly in love with who you are.

For me, giving rise to this world of color is how I give praise. It is my prayer. It is my medicine. I undergo a deep healing through creating this work, as I feel the divisions within my psyche becoming mended. I create that which heals me. I create that which makes me whole. I find self-acceptance through this work. 

May you give praise for the beauty that lives within the innermost depths of your heart, and may you give praise for the joy and freedom that it offers you.

“I Love You, Forever”

This piece was inspired by a very special angel in my life.

A few years ago I decided to stop painting, and I put it on the back burner. Before this, I would wake up and paint from the time I got out of bed until I would go to sleep. It was my world. It was a gateway for me to go deep into my inner reality, and strike the vein of my deepest inspirations. It was truly my love.

Then something shifted within me, and I decided that other things were more important. Painting lost its appeal, virtually over night. All the sudden this thing that I loved more than anything, that connected me so deeply to myself, felt empty. It was like being madly in love with someone, and then waking up one day and having no feelings for them whatsoever. It was very bizarre.

So I took 2 years off. I decided I needed to focus on making money, and get involved in more “real-world” stuff. Time to grow up and face reality. And so I forgot about painting for a while.

Then I reconnected with an acquaintance from years ago. She said she had been following my art ever since we met, and how profoundly healing it has been for her. She expressed how much it impacted her, how sacred it was, and how much it meant to her.

She encouraged me to start painting again, expressing over and over how important it was. My art meant more to her than it meant to me, it seemed. To witness how much my art affected someone, I decided to give it another shot.

Now, as I’ve started painting again, I feel that same connection to myself that I felt years ago, but with new ideas, concepts, and wisdom. It feels like a renaissance occurring within me, reconnecting with my art. At night, I have dreams of artistic ideas. Throughout my day, continuous artistic visions pour through me like a fountain. It is like there is some world seeking expression through me, and my consciousness is picking up on its language and able to give it life in our reality. To me, this work feels like a bridge to something significant, yet unseen.

But this whole resurgence of creative inspiration, was sparked by one person. One person who saw me. One person who expressed how much my creativity meant to them. One person who believed in me. One person who really saw the light in me, when I didn’t fully see it in myself.

Please, never hesitate to tell someone how much their gifts mean to you. You don’t know the impact that you could have, just through simple words of acknowledgement, encouragement, or expressing gratitude for someone’s talent. I believe it is a powerful practice, to look for the genius in other people, and to openly acknowledge it to them.

There is no greater love, than a love that connects us more deeply to ourselves. That inspires us to bring forth our best. And who calls forth the treasures that live deep within us.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you God.

Thank you for this angel in my life, and every angel that has assisted me in stepping into the person that I am today.

“The Treasure Within”

This piece is a prayer. A statement of devotion. A promise to myself, and to the Creator.

It is a promise to devote my life to what I know to be true in the deepest corridors of my being – that there is a profound treasure that lives within all of us.

All evolutionary patterns serve one function – to call forth this treasure from deep within you.

The reenactment of every trauma, every season and circumstance of your life, and every relationship to come and go – everything revolves around helping you bring forth the gift that lives deep inside of you.

This piece is a symbol of this. The golden being with the halo in the center represents the treasure within, while the circle that surrounds him represents the wholeness that it brings.

The squares surrounding the circle symbolize different scenes from the journey of life, encompassing different seasons, circumstances and relationships – all of which revolve around the treasure that rests in the center.

When we come into harmony with the intention to bring forth the gift that lives within the core of our being, we come back into harmony with the rest of existence. We return home. This is how we are healed. This is how we are made whole.

This piece symbolizes a fundamental universal law. It also represents for me personally, a deep commitment and devotion.

“Devotion To The Love of Self”

I often create works of art that serve as energetic medicine, to remedy what I may be going through on an intimate personal level, knowing that that is what will contribute most directly to our collective healing. 

I created this piece as I was processing drastic changes occurring in my personal life, where I found myself in a very deep period of inner turmoil and confusion.

I often turn to my creativity to process and alchemize my shadows. When I paint, it becomes a sacred space for me for connect deeply with myself, to find my center and receive the guidance that I need. So I went to that inner sanctuary of color, light, and form to extract medicine to assist me. This piece is the result.

What was being asked of me, was to strengthen my devotion to loving myself the way that no-one else ever could. To alchemize my weaknesses into strengths, and to look upon the parts of myself that I have attempted to reject through the eyes of unwavering compassion. To see myself more deeply when I have felt invisible in the midst of others. To transmute my loneliness into a deeper relationship with the part of me joined with all things. And to become an angel first unto my self, so that I may embody that for the world around me. 

I created this piece to materialize this intention. 

The arch around the being symbolizes their inherit holiness, with its satined-glass and cathedral-like effect. The sunrise behind them symbolizes the light of perfect love awakening within the individual, and the golden beings on either side represent our support from the worlds beyond. The circle represents wholeness, and the beings holding hands on the bottom represent the world of sacred praise we are in the midst of creating together. It carries the memory of our ancient future. 

Even though my work carries a colorful and playful ambiance to it, for me, it is profoundly shamanic and transformative. It is alchemizing, symbolizing a deep and heart-felt intention to heal, not only myself, but others through the illuminating light of perfect love. It depicts a journey, a story, of the most epic proportion – the revelation of who we truly are.

“The Song of The Soul”

As my style grows and evolves, I notice a mandala-like theme emerging within my work. Actually, the blueprint for this particular piece came to me upon receiving a wave of inspiration as I was looking at Tibetan Buddhist Mandalas. 

To me, this mandala represents the sacred journey of the soul. It represents the journey of incarnation, with its trials and tribulations, with its alchemy and growth. It depicts the support that we are met with both physically and non-physically, as we carry out the assignments that are seeded within us from beyond the veil. This piece also shows the multi-layered realities that we inhabit. 

I don’t know about you all, but my whole life I have always felt like I have had one foot in this world, and one foot in a world beyond.

Several years ago, I sat with a very gifted medium, and one of the things he told me I will never forget: 

‘You are just barely hanging onto this physical world by a shoestring, mate!’ (He was British ha).

This made me laugh in the moment, but man did it hit me after I processed what he said. It definitely explained why I’d had such a hard time operating here (those that know me personally know it hasn’t been an easy ride haha). It also explained an element of my creative streak, and why I am the way I am. A blessing and curse I suppose lol. I am realizing now, that I feel more “here” the more I can bring an essence from these worlds here with me.

I have always intuitively felt like a part of my niche is to be a bridge between this world and the next, and in my own personal path that’s what art has been for me – a bridge into a vibrant light-filled dreamy world that I feel deeply connected with. It sparks a memory. A memory of something that feels like Home. This feeling of familiarity inspires me to keep creating, because I remember more of who I am the more that I create. 

The deeper I go into my work, the more I find an ancient shamanic essence wanting to be brought forth.

“To Honor What is Holy”

Recently the circle has been speaking to me. Often, ideas for paintings come to me in my dreams, and lately I’ve been having dreams and visions of the circle. Carl Jung, in his book “Man and His Symbols”, states that circles are a universal symbol of wholeness, and when they appear in one’s dreams, they often represent a form of psychic wholeness and healing. As I step more into who I am, it makes sense that the circle would be working its medicine on me. 

Recently, I have found inspiration through incorporating circles into my work. With that, I now find myself measuring out symmetry, balance and geometry, rather than free-handing it like I used to. I can feel this process unlocking new dimensions of creative depth, evolving my style into its next phase of expression. And of course, my art can only be a mirror into myself – revealing the nature of my own psychic growth. That is the profundity of creating art – it is always our own self-portrait.

The name of this piece came to me before I even put a brush to the canvas – “To Honor What is Holy.” Initially, I thought about the sacredness of the Earth – lush and bountiful forests, vast oceans brimming with life, and mountain peaks capturing inflections of light at the sun moves across the sky. 

And then I thought about what is holy within each of us – our inner genius, our unique creative spark. And how when you discover that within yourself, and set the intention to use it in service to all of life, you unlock some of deepest codes of this universe. This is when the world of synchronicity opens up, and you discover you live in a realm of magic. 

Now, walking this path doesn’t free you from challenges and initiations along the way. Challenges are inevitable – it’s part of the alchemical process of our growth. God knows I’ve been through my share of trials and tribulations (homelessness, addiction, depression, poverty, heartbreak, etc.) But the key is to never abandon yourself in the face of such adversity. To never lose touch with what inspires you and fills you with life. Through remaining connected to your deepest inspirations, even in the face of adversity, you build resilience and strength. You also build a love that is not limited by the bounds of your conditions and circumstances. 

In my opinion, that is what it means to honor what is holy – to remain true to the deepest parts of yourself, in spite of whatever it is that you may be going through. To be your own best friend, your own guide, through all the up’s and down’s. To walk in faith, knowing that all of life is supporting you in blossoming into the person that you were always destined to be. 

When we honor what is holy within us, we can’t help but honor what is holy in all that surrounds us.

“The Point of Connection”

For those of you familiar with sacred geometry, you will recognize the Vesica Piscis as the theme of this piece. 

For those not so familiar with sacred geometry, the Vesica Piscis is an ancient symbol depicted as two overlapping circles, representing the union of polarities and the creative force that is catalyzed between them. It has often been used to represent the union of god and goddess, of earth and heaven, and the merging of humanity with Divinity. It is the root element in the Kabbalah’s Flower of Life, and it also symbolizes the birth of Creation. It is used cross-culturally in many ancient traditions, including Christianity, Greek, Judaism, Egyptian, Norse/Celtic, etc. 

This symbol has been a major theme for me this past year, showing up repeatedly in my dreams and visions. There have been instances where I have found myself suddenly waking up in the middle of the night, startled to find the Vesica illumined in my mind’s eye. 

When I receive such symbols bubbling up from the depths of my psyche, I translate them into art, as it helps me to process and synthesize what is showing up.

For me personally, I feel like this symbol has been initiating me into a new paradigm of understanding myself in relation to others.

For my entire life, I have been an extremely solitary person (especially growing up as an only child in a relatively nomadic family). So rather than having a wide circle of connections, I have always had a very small group of friends, and my inner spiritual life has been my primary source of self-nourishment.

Recently, I find myself learning lesson upon lesson of the importance of  branching out to form authentic and meaningful relationships with others. I am finding masks and layers of self-protection that I didn’t even realize were there, now coming down, so that there is an opening for deeper vulnerability, connection, and creative possibility. And of course, this has been terrifying on one level, and totally liberating on another. 

As a microcosm of the macrocosm, I will say that it feels like a collective evolutionary wave is sweeping through our world to remove the blocks and dependencies that have kept us from what is real, what is true. And what is real, is what we share. Everything else will wither and fade, because it was never meant to last. But what we share deep down, our point of connection within our heart of hearts – that is what is real. 

So for me, this symbol has been initiating me into a new phase of growth, of moving beyond my cocoon of self-protection to embrace deeper points of connection. Collectively, I believe we are all going through this in our own unique ways. 

Right now, in our world so much is falling, fading and dying so that new life may be brought forth. And each and every single one of us is a bringer of this new life, learning how to see ourselves and others with a fresh pair of eyes. 

May we see the world anew, as together we breach deeper points of connection.

“Memories of a Song Long-Forgotten”

Everything we see, we color with something of our own essence. Thus, every perspective is unique, like a snowflake. Our greatest contribution is to share our unique way of seeing the world, so that it may take life beyond ourselves, and live through the hearts and minds of others. All of the great artists and revolutionaries that walked this earth – this is the code they lived by. 

Just as the sun extends itself for the sake of giving life, so too is our nature to extend our essence for the sake of enlivening creation. 

When we express from the rawness of our oceanic depths, there can be no comparison. How could you ever compare something that was designed to be unique? There is only the child-like joy that comes through expressing one’s inner life. Living close to our creative pulse is how we align with the intelligent design of nature, for when we are in touch with our own inner nature, we are in touch with heart of nature herself. 

A unique aspect of how I see the world, has to do with inner sight, or inner seeing. Some people might call this “clairvoyance”. It’s been a major part of my everyday experience – perceiving the subtle and energetic aspects of reality. On a physical level, I see solid objects – people, plants, things, etc. But then it is as if another layer of vision is superimposed upon my physical sight, where I see swirling colors and beautifully elaborate patterns of energy that emanate from physical things. So, I “see” multiple levels of reality simultaneously – from the physical to the energetic. And this isn’t anything “special” – I personally know many people that use inner sight, yet everyone’s experience of it is completely unique. 

My whole life, I have been fascinated by these “visions”, and have yearned to express this rich and intriguing aspect of my inner life. My paintings are a way for me to share this. My style takes on a primitive and child-like quality, as an expression of innocence, of seeing through the eyes of the heart. In my visions, the colors are wildly alive and vivid, more vivid than what I see with my physical eyes. It is as if the colors are bursting with light. So, the vitality of color in my work helps to depict the beaming colors in these visions. And the visions are very musical – always flowing and dancing – thus my work has a certain flowing quality to it. 

There’s an intuitive aspect to these visions as well – because the swirling colors and patterns contain information. They are part of a deeper language. It has been (and still is) a process for me to understand and interpret the energetic language of this inner sight. I’ve used these visions in service to offering readings to people, and to my surprise – there’s often a high degree of relevance to the patterns that swirl and spin in my mind’s eye. 

It is all so fascinating – creativity, inspiration, intuition. Not only do we we inhabit a miracle, but we ARE living miracles. We are blessed to the degree that we bless others with the gift of our unique indwelling essence. 

I am the gardener of my psyche.

I make it a practice, to allow myself to be still, where I spend long periods of time in nature.

I often find myself sitting on the bluffs by the ocean, allowing the sun and wind to hold me in a warm cocoon of cool sweeping movements. The pulse of the breeze brings the smell of fresh ocean air, and the living fragrance of nearby flowers and plants. The fullness of my breath becomes the intersect between my inner worlds and the life around me. The infinitude of the ocean allows my mind a certain freedom, where my imagination explores its edge. 

There are worlds always moving within me. 

I find it very important to be as close to these worlds as possible. In these inner realms, I hear messages bubble from the depths of my subconscious, accompanied by elaborate visions of colorful blossoming patterns flowing into melodic passages and tones. The patterns swirling within my psyche arrange themselves into potential paintings, music, and written word. 

Sound and color have little to no distinction in my inner realms. When I paint, it feels as if I am composing music. When I compose music, it feels as if I am painting. And when I write, especially if it is poetic, it simultaneously feels both musical and colorful. It is all one and the same.

As I witness these beautiful patterns flowering within me, watching them organically take shape, I recognize that I am receiving, synthesizing, and translating light. I am receiving light, as a raw living informational substance, and then I am crystalizing it into form. Just like a plant – receiving light from the sun, and through photosynthesis, it creates new leaves and flowers – beautiful, and often colorful, geometric expressions. 

I am no different. I am translating light into form, just as the plant kingdom. My creative process is my version of photosynthesis. 

My creativity is directly connected my unique niche with the greater sphere of life. Just as the role of a plant is to convert light into another form to be utilized by the life surrounding it, my role is the same. 

In uncovering our niche, we strike the source of our deepest joy. We rediscover our place within the tapestry of existence. In this, we join with creation in a balanced exchange of giving and receiving, from a place of naturalness and authenticity. We relate to life from that place of true reality within ourselves. 

In uncovering our niche, we must find balance between celebrating our distinct essence, and honoring what is shared. But before we can honor what is shared, we must first embrace what makes us different, because it is only through our differences where we discover where our unique parts interlock within the whole. This is where we fulfill our niche. And it is only through fulfilling our niche, where we truly understand our connection to the rest of life. 

Just as each flower translates light into a completely unique color, fragrance, and shape, so too are we each meant to translate light in our own unique way. It is through uncovering this unique expression, where we come to know who we actually are. We can’t know ourselves without knowing our function, and we can’t know our function without knowing ourselves. 

We must learn what it means to embrace ourselves, fully. 

When we deny ourselves, wait for someone else’s approval in order to be ourselves, or when we diminish ourselves through comparing ourselves to others, we do the world a disservice. True service and selflessness come through embracing one’s unique essence fearlessly and courageously. 

In my own journey, what this has meant for me, is that I must prioritize my unique creative genius above everything else. My creativity is the vehicle of expression for my core essence, thus it is the most integral aspect in fulfilling my function.  

I come to know myself, through that which I create. 

So I prioritize time to sensitize myself to my inner worlds. I find myself watching and waiting with curiosity, as I move through a process that is beyond my rational understanding. 

It often feels like I am pregnant, like there is an entire universe that is about to rise up from within me. At the same time, it can feel like this random anebulous soup, where I can feel something formulating, but it is still sort of senseless and vague. But it is never dry in this space, for I sense an incredible richness to what stirs within me. 

It is precious, to bear witness to this process, almost like if you could watch an embryo forming within a womb, starting from something totally unrecognizable morphing into something human. It is a miracle. I am watching the miracle of nature unfold within me, as I learn to get out of the way of nature’s intelligent design. 

And that is exactly what I am doing, allowing something of nature to grow from within me. 

I am the gardener of my psyche.

I plant seeds and tend to the garden. I prepare the environment, and then I must get out of the way, so that nature may grow of its own volition. 

I sensitize myself to the biosphere of my inner landscape, noticing the subtleties in ambiance, and the movements of cycles giving way to the inflections of seasons. There is a deep listening occurring. I take note of the subtle changes in mood, feeling, inner vision, and I wait and watch carefully to see what starts to sprout. The creative process is very sacred, very live-giving, especially when done with sensitivity and care. Just as a garden, my psyche is the intersect between my sense of self and the wilderness of nature.

We must remember, that we don’t create who we are. God, nature, designs us. Our job is to allow ourselves to grow into what we naturally are. This means trusting the intelligence of nature within us. And this often means simply just being still for a while, creating space within ourselves so that nature has room to work its magic. 

Every day, I find myself deepening in the realization that I am simply an apprentice to that which desires to reveal itself through me. I must learn to obey its call, yield to its will, and how to hold space so that it may grow in accord to its own rhythm. It is that pure, blossoming revelation of nature, of Divine Will, that I must learn to nurture and support. This is my teacher. It teaches me how to truly live. It is my central sun, through which everything must orbit. 

If I choose to disregard this central sun, the source of my creative light, then my world is thrown into disharmony, and I try to live by something that bears no real life. In this, I deny my function, and I live as something that I am not. 

I must approach myself, and the seed of nature within me, with great humility and love. 

I know all too well what it is like to ignore that central sun, and to allow some hollow idea to take precedence over my own inner light.

I’ve spent a lot of my life zipping around from one thing to another, trying to prove something of myself to the world – trying to prove my value, my worth. In my constant striving, I depleted myself, and no matter how hard I tried, I found myself in a constant state of angst. My main subconscious intention was to gain the approval of others, so I was always seeking external validation. I was lost in a world of mental static, mulling over menial circumstances and shallow relationships, trying to establish a false form of value and security. Constantly worried, constricted breath, and a cloud distorting my mind – I tried my best. Eventually after failing enough times and exhausting myself, I gave up. 

And this giving up looked like the ultimate failure to an old version of myself, but in reality, it was not so much a failure, but a success on behalf of life, to get me out of my own way. 

It’s funny, the ways in which life creates tension, so that it may find resolve. Those moments where we feel we have failed, where we feel we have let ourselves down, are actually those points where life has its greatest victories in us, where we finally allow an opening for something real to rise up from within us, just as a rose breaking through the concrete in a place where nature was once deemed forgotten. 

Emotional Awareness: The Gateway to Self-Knowledge

Here I am, once again in this cabin. 1am. Surrounded by towering Redwoods in the misty stillness of a budding Spring night. As I reflect on the presence of the moment, I feel deep gratitude to be alone. To be with just myself. To have deep conversations with myself, to sensitize myself to my inner workings, and to allow my deeper feelings to arise.

I love studying myself. I love observing the relationship between my thoughts and feelings. I love getting flashes of insight, and finding creative ways to birth them in the outer world. I learn of myself through what I create. I learn of God through what I create. In fact, the most I have ever learned of the Divine – is through the process of giving life to that which lives within me.

Lately I have been coming into this deepening insight into the nature of knowledge. When I was younger, I used to think that I had to study a lot to “know” things, and that my “knowing” was dependent on my ability to remember things in books or from teachers. This perspective has been rapidly shifting lately. I suppose this has been a byproduct of a deepening into my own sense of knowing. I can feel something bubbling up from the deep watery recesses of my unconscious to meet the light of my conscious mind. This new insight is the side effect of some sort of merging within myself.

I have been realizing that my feelings and emotions are gateways into deeper avenues of knowledge. Every emotion is like a code, and each emotion contains an entire universe of information. In one instant, I can feel an emotional wave sweep through my being, resounding within every cell of my body. In one moment, I can feel every cell respond to the emotion, through either a contraction or an expansion. And within half a second, my entire body can be filled with knowledge on any given subject. And the knowledge is always important, meaningful and relevant. And it is always right to the point. I am realizing that real knowledge comes through a feeling sense. Not from an intellectual head space, like so many of us have been taught.

As we open ourselves to our emotions, we open ourselves up to deep knowledge. To Self knowledge.

It is the ancient knowledge found within the great mystery of nature, revealing itself through us.

As I type this, a memory from my childhood is coming to me. This memory actually comes to me quite often, but it is coming in now, so I trust that there’s something deeper here for me to look at.

In school, I always had trouble “learning.” I always felt like I was a little slower than the children around me, as I noticed in my classes I always needed extra help. I was usually one of the last students for concepts to “click.” Also, I remember always feeling like my work in school was mediocre compared to the other students, and I had a hard time understanding how my classmates caught on to things so fast. I remember always having a sense of just “skating by” in my classes. Since I was generally a really well behaved kid, the teachers usually found a way to pass me, despite my often horrid grades.

When I was 12 years old, I remember one day at school standing in line, waiting to enter the cafeteria for lunch, thinking about how much trouble I had retaining information in class, and how exhausting it felt trying to learn in school. I began to wonder if I had some sort of learning disability. I was even considering the thought that my brain wasn’t fully developed. I found myself feeling frustrated. I felt like something was wrong with me.

As I began having these thoughts, a voice came into my head, a voice distinct from my own cycling thoughts. This voice said:

“There is a reason why you are the way you are. You have strength in a different type of knowledge. Your strength is not information of the mind, but rather a knowledge of the heart. You are the way you are for a very specific reason. There is much to discover as you grow.”

I didn’t know what on earth this meant, but it brought me ease in the moment. I remember the feeling of relief as this voice washed over me that day outside the middle school cafeteria.

I reflect on this now, being where I am in my life, doing what I am doing, and having this insight bubble up. This insight that I am learning to embody. I never cease to be amazed at the miracle of this whole process, and precision of how my past, present, and future all intersect. Where these points of meaning connect within time, something timeless reveals itself. I swear, I feel like this world is some fragile makeshift hut that is apt to get blown down by slightest breeze… and once the walls come down, we will be bathed by the light of the glorious blaze of the burning sun.

And in some moments it all feels so planned. It is barely even a secret anymore…