spirituality

Shekinah Series: Flowers for the Bride

This is a new work from my series, Shekinah. It is 36″x24″ acrylic on canvas. ($700)

There is twilight inside of each of us, like a light within that becomes otherworldly. It is beyond time and order and is an in-dwelling force of love, of newness, of the promise of all things good. Without this inner twilight, we are simply animals striving, eating, scratching out a life. It is the Bride who reminds us that we are more, we are spiritual beings within a human body, and it is cause for great celebration. And it is with a sense of awe that we step softly or run vigorously to thrive as best we can all the days of this brief life.

At twilight on Shabbat, we welcome the Bride. She is Shekinah. Welcome the part of yourself that is not just physical but which gives the physical its ballast and hope. Celebrate that mysterious other, the magical and wondrous aspects of yourself, and recognize it in others.

Why Stream Drawing Makes You Psychic

My first book for children was on conflict resolution and then as a visiting author and artist in schools, libraries and museums, with public and private groups I taught a drawing technique to children for the purpose of developing empathy and working well with peers as a result. That lead to a deep meditation drawing practice that I teach mainly to adults (kids already know naturally) and found it to be a joyous way to recapture creative empowerment (an essential for being human) and empathic, intuitive “quiet knowing”. This is something we all have and need to develop more since imagination, creativity and spiritual sensing are all in one place (not just the right side of the brain, but in our hearts, too).

To read this article in full, go to:

Stream Drawing with Young Adult Creators

Last night I taught stream drawing to a large group of young adults at Covenant House. I was so moved by not just their creative expressiveness, but the depth and insightful reflections they had based on their stream drawings. I was able to hear them explain profound and meaningful associations and emotions they had based on their imagery. I can’t say enough how wonderful this experience was, and how important it is for us to draw freely with open hearts and minds, and embrace one another while supporting the creative genius within ourselves and others.

Stream Drawings in Water Color Offer Up Surprises

Water Color Stream Drawing/ August 2019

I’ve been doing stream drawings (stream drawing is a drawing meditation technique I developed and you can see more at MAKING MARKS: Discover the Art of Intuitive Drawing/Simon and Schuster) with studio visitors and it is enlivening, relaxing and at times profound.  Playful, creative (our natural state of being, in essence!) presence at times springs forth wisdom, conscious awareness in the form of surprise and delight, and gives us the chance to see things in new, unexpected ways.  Book your stream drawing session time with me and let’s see where it takes us.

Let Me Paint You Into a Garden

Doesn’t the world feel very extreme and polarized? In my series Earth Changes/Pole Shift, I’ve painted with the intention to bring a visual/emotional harmony in the negative emotions despite the conflict. And now I’m offering to put you in a garden or enchanted forest. All is not lost and we are not only wandering in a wasteland of sorrow, there is also beauty, unending. Souls can’t be degraded, let’s focus on our souls instead of all the fighting and misery. If enough of us remain centered (loving, forgiving) maybe what is ugly out there will begin to transform through our good gestures and essence of positivity. The price range for these commissions are the same as for Spirit Paintings–see Spirit Paintings here on my site for more info or contact me directly through the site. (These are healing-painting- meditation artworks.)

With Thunder in the Dwelling/8th grade  Acrylic on canvas 36″x36″

 

In Her Enchanted Forest Acrylic on canvas 8″x10″

Passport to Wellness at Indigo!

Come join us at Indigo on Nov 18th at 3-6 pm EST. We are hosting a fun event to celebrate the many ways we can elevate our wellness and embody wellbeing. This event will be fun and interesting with such excellent practitioners to meet and learn about. Register on FB or contact Indigo Wellness at 404-370-1151.

I look forward to seeing you there!

Guilt is the Ego’s Way of Entrapping Us

Detail of a work in progress

Transitional times often are full of resistance due to negative emotions such as guilt. Guilt can be the first step in acknowledging responsibility for mistakes once made, yet guilt is also the ego’s successful way of entrapping us (ego does not like to let go of pain because it is one of the ways that it knows itself–the ego wants identifiers and pain and guilt do feed the ego-self which needs blame in order to hold others and self hostage–it is a control thing).

Often people will “guilt you” for not doing as they’d like you to do, or by reminding others where they/we fell short. And we often do that to those around us. Since none of us are perfect, the most kind people of all may be rendered excessively hurt by someone laying guilt upon them, and the one receiving the accusations may then disallow harmony as a way of self punishing. Forgiveness purifies all of this: we forgive ourselves, we forgive the accusers and we forgive our ego for trying to hold on to negative emotion. What if everyone said,”I’m sorry, I love you. You and I made and make mistakes, but we are only human”–wouldn’t that be great? Sometimes there is no way to resolve an issue except from within, which is to embrace forgiveness on our own terms, whether the people around us are able to do so or not. And they may have not even asked us for forgiveness. Do it anyway to set yourself free. And set yourself free again by not allowing others to guilt you into paralysis or self misery.

Don’t hold on to guilt, but grab forgiveness and see if you feel so wonderful you alight your path in the blink of an eye with tremendous love and joy.

Viktor Frankl’s Powerful Choice

Detail of a recent painting in progress/2018

“When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.” Viktor Frankl

Viktor Frankl survived the brutality of the Holocaust by remaining present within his own mind and heart, by not giving away his attitude. “One’s attitude in any given set of circumstances,” can be that one element that allows a human being, even in the most dire of situations, to survive on his/her own terms.

Most of us don’t know what a bad day really, really is, but Frankl and millions more endured the unthinkable. Frankl’s living example demonstrates the power of choice; we do not have to think of ourselves as surrendering, but more so empowering ourselves to inwardly, fiercely keep our strength,   to “choose our own way.”

 

Epic Spring II: Our Choices and Destiny

Earth Changes Series/Pole Shift: Epic Spring II

This new painting in the series is currently at Art/Place Gallery in Fairfield, CT. In the meditative state I entered painting it, I felt that swell of momentum reminding me of great ocean waves. Even stepping just a few feet into the breaking waves, there is a power so tremendous, so epic. And when we are subjected to the tide, we succumb to it. We may play with it, but it is with the understanding that the force within each crashing arc of salt water, there is incomprehensible power. We in your physical form are but a moment of time upon a shore that raged thousands of years before we were present, and this same rising and falling, according to its attraction to the moon and the sun, will breathe in and breathe out long after we are all gone in our current form. White horses run toward us, crashing at our feet, as we stand in “the tide of time and light” as it says in the Siddur. Our time is upon us with each wave, our choices and destiny.