"In The Flow" how intuition TOOK ME ON A NEW PATH
ANNUAL ART MEET AND GREET PARTY TIME:
GOST, the Gardiner Open Studio Tour, is the 1st Saturday and Sunday of May, 2026
The Way of Water breathes in blue. The surface moves the way a tide does, slow, inevitable. Then one day, a friend fell in love with it. He bought it, and I had a special art crate built to safely ship it from New York to his home in Costa Rica.
It holds the calm that shows up between swells, the small pauses that keep you from capsizing. It fit the man who bought it, and the life he has built. He walks people toward what they avoid. Then he brings them back to solid ground.
I did not want the starving artist story, so I ran hard in the other direction. In my youth, I left my artist's studio, sold everything, bought a one way ticket, and moved to Alaska. I did not call it Flow then. But it was Flow. I followed my path into the physics of rocks and minerals.
Years later, it is math and rock that keep showing up in my hands, even when I am holding a brush. Those influences spill into my paintings. It’s no accident that waveforms and terrains keep surfacing in my abstracts.
(for more, jump to the bottom of this page)
It holds the calm that shows up between swells, the small pauses that keep you from capsizing. It fit the man who bought it, and the life he has built. He walks people toward what they avoid. Then he brings them back to solid ground.
I did not want the starving artist story, so I ran hard in the other direction. In my youth, I left my artist's studio, sold everything, bought a one way ticket, and moved to Alaska. I did not call it Flow then. But it was Flow. I followed my path into the physics of rocks and minerals.
Years later, it is math and rock that keep showing up in my hands, even when I am holding a brush. Those influences spill into my paintings. It’s no accident that waveforms and terrains keep surfacing in my abstracts.
(for more, jump to the bottom of this page)
-- SOLD -- "The Way Of Water" 60x48-in acrylic on aluminum
"Coast" 20x20-in acrylic on board
"In the Flow" pieces, "Coast" and "Blue Peak" are hanging in the invitational art exhibition, "Boundaries: Hard and Soft"
The opening reception is the 3rd Saturday, the 15th of March
at the Gardiner Public Library exhibition room, in Gardiner, NY 12525 |
--SOLD-- "Shifting Rainbow"
|
"Blue Peak", 36 x 24-in, acrylic on board
|
"Southern Sunset", 24x18-in, acrylic on board
|
(From the top ...So it shouldn't be too surprising when landscapes and waveforms appear in my abstracts.)
For a year I woke between two and three, not anxious, not restless. More like a tap on the shoulder that would not stop. In those quiet hours I stumbled across videos of people using “flow acrylics” to make fast art and glossy tabletops. Night has always been when messages arrive cleanest. I've learned to trust it and go with it.
The first videos that appeared looked like a cross between an art show and a baking demo. Spatulas, wooden panels, cookie racks, and cups of layered paint filled the screen. Soon I had a list of materials and ratios for medium to pigment.
A few weeks later, an almost physical demand to create took hold. I built a small studio for flow painting and began experimenting on small panels. I learned how to set the conditions and then step aside. That became the Intentional Flow Method.
For six months I painted without a clock. If I hit a wall, I slept, and the fix was there when I woke, waiting. The work settled into me until the process became instinctive. I didn’t analyze it. I followed my intuition. It was serene and electric at once.
When I finally stepped back, I saw what had happened. My earlier series, Ethereal, carried scars from illness. Scratches, cuts, and tension in every line. The new In the Flow pieces moved easily, without resistance. It amused me that the paint itself was called flow acrylics. The universe has a sense of humor, and it is not subtle.
I spent years using physics to see beneath the surface; waves, fields, lattices. Painting is how I show hidden movements without equations. Then the lesson changed. Flow stopped being only physics.
I started attending shamanic plant ceremonies, searching the metaphysical areas for answers doctors couldn't find. During one very intense ceremony the voices commanded I stop counting: dots, tiles, seconds, steps. Counting had always been how I measured the world.
I stopped.
The next message was a deeper hit: stop trying to figure us out.
That direction pushed against my scientist-mind. The battle to let go and just be, came during one ceremony, where I repeatedly spun through infinite darkness. Each time I landed I was asked, "Do you know where you are and what is happening?"
Each time, I tried to answer, pulling from my decades long quest to understand our planets, the solar system, our universe. Each time I was flung out and spun again until I said, “I don’t know anything.”
The reply was instant: “Right.”
Everything went still.
Four years later I went back to Rythmia with a different question. On the second night the universe asked for deeper access. Would I allow them closer. I said yes. The experience defied language. Motion, light, and knowing beyond thought. Each time fear rose, they waited until I nodded. I saw my husband far down a tunnel, steady and calm, his presence grounding me.
When it was over, I sat outside under heavy clouds, hair loose, a red scrunchie in my hand. I asked, “What should I do with this?” The answer came: ‘Put it on your big toe.’ I lost it. Full body laughter.
I laughed until I bent over, and the universe laughed back. Then I saw the joke. Years earlier I had read My Big TOE, a physics Theory of Everything. Now I was wearing my own version. That’s Universe humor, flowing through both paint and spirit.
When I came home, life settled into a quieter rhythm. No alcohol. No red meat. No vow. Just a knowing. My husband accepted it easily.
At work, the people were the same, but my reactions weren’t. I stopped fixing what wasn’t mine to fix. I listened instead. Eighteen days after finishing that project, a recruiter called. “We have a remote position at Microsoft that seems made for you. Interested?”
I was.
Two kinds of flow run through my life now. One is physical, a property of paint and motion. The other is spiritual, a sentient current that connects work, health, and purpose. The paint didn’t teach me that. My guides did. The medium only made their lesson visible.
I don’t try to define it anymore. I follow it.
Later, the story shifted. The work got more honest.
Life and Artistic Expression
I lived with trigeminal neuralgia. It demanded heavy medication just to tolerate eating, speaking, or letting a pillow touch my face. Nothing cut the pain completely. Nothing cut the pain cleanly. Medication bought me function, and it also dulled everything else.
I kept searching anyway.
Was it physical?
Was it emotional?
Was it both?
Was the pain part of my path? I needed the answer to be true, not comforting. These were the questions I discussed with doctors, healers, shamans, family and friends. Now I understand it was never one cause. It was a knot, and many hands helped loosen it.
When the work is coming through, you do not get the full reason upfront. You get the next stroke. The explanation comes later. Even then, it may still not unveil the answers until you sit still and write about it.
These days my guides send information as clean hits. An impression. A phrase I understand without hearing it. There is no room for the old starving artist story here. When I follow Flow, doors open in practical ways, and the good work keeps arriving.
For a year I woke between two and three, not anxious, not restless. More like a tap on the shoulder that would not stop. In those quiet hours I stumbled across videos of people using “flow acrylics” to make fast art and glossy tabletops. Night has always been when messages arrive cleanest. I've learned to trust it and go with it.
The first videos that appeared looked like a cross between an art show and a baking demo. Spatulas, wooden panels, cookie racks, and cups of layered paint filled the screen. Soon I had a list of materials and ratios for medium to pigment.
A few weeks later, an almost physical demand to create took hold. I built a small studio for flow painting and began experimenting on small panels. I learned how to set the conditions and then step aside. That became the Intentional Flow Method.
For six months I painted without a clock. If I hit a wall, I slept, and the fix was there when I woke, waiting. The work settled into me until the process became instinctive. I didn’t analyze it. I followed my intuition. It was serene and electric at once.
When I finally stepped back, I saw what had happened. My earlier series, Ethereal, carried scars from illness. Scratches, cuts, and tension in every line. The new In the Flow pieces moved easily, without resistance. It amused me that the paint itself was called flow acrylics. The universe has a sense of humor, and it is not subtle.
I spent years using physics to see beneath the surface; waves, fields, lattices. Painting is how I show hidden movements without equations. Then the lesson changed. Flow stopped being only physics.
I started attending shamanic plant ceremonies, searching the metaphysical areas for answers doctors couldn't find. During one very intense ceremony the voices commanded I stop counting: dots, tiles, seconds, steps. Counting had always been how I measured the world.
I stopped.
The next message was a deeper hit: stop trying to figure us out.
That direction pushed against my scientist-mind. The battle to let go and just be, came during one ceremony, where I repeatedly spun through infinite darkness. Each time I landed I was asked, "Do you know where you are and what is happening?"
Each time, I tried to answer, pulling from my decades long quest to understand our planets, the solar system, our universe. Each time I was flung out and spun again until I said, “I don’t know anything.”
The reply was instant: “Right.”
Everything went still.
Four years later I went back to Rythmia with a different question. On the second night the universe asked for deeper access. Would I allow them closer. I said yes. The experience defied language. Motion, light, and knowing beyond thought. Each time fear rose, they waited until I nodded. I saw my husband far down a tunnel, steady and calm, his presence grounding me.
When it was over, I sat outside under heavy clouds, hair loose, a red scrunchie in my hand. I asked, “What should I do with this?” The answer came: ‘Put it on your big toe.’ I lost it. Full body laughter.
I laughed until I bent over, and the universe laughed back. Then I saw the joke. Years earlier I had read My Big TOE, a physics Theory of Everything. Now I was wearing my own version. That’s Universe humor, flowing through both paint and spirit.
When I came home, life settled into a quieter rhythm. No alcohol. No red meat. No vow. Just a knowing. My husband accepted it easily.
At work, the people were the same, but my reactions weren’t. I stopped fixing what wasn’t mine to fix. I listened instead. Eighteen days after finishing that project, a recruiter called. “We have a remote position at Microsoft that seems made for you. Interested?”
I was.
Two kinds of flow run through my life now. One is physical, a property of paint and motion. The other is spiritual, a sentient current that connects work, health, and purpose. The paint didn’t teach me that. My guides did. The medium only made their lesson visible.
I don’t try to define it anymore. I follow it.
Later, the story shifted. The work got more honest.
Life and Artistic Expression
I lived with trigeminal neuralgia. It demanded heavy medication just to tolerate eating, speaking, or letting a pillow touch my face. Nothing cut the pain completely. Nothing cut the pain cleanly. Medication bought me function, and it also dulled everything else.
I kept searching anyway.
Was it physical?
Was it emotional?
Was it both?
Was the pain part of my path? I needed the answer to be true, not comforting. These were the questions I discussed with doctors, healers, shamans, family and friends. Now I understand it was never one cause. It was a knot, and many hands helped loosen it.
When the work is coming through, you do not get the full reason upfront. You get the next stroke. The explanation comes later. Even then, it may still not unveil the answers until you sit still and write about it.
These days my guides send information as clean hits. An impression. A phrase I understand without hearing it. There is no room for the old starving artist story here. When I follow Flow, doors open in practical ways, and the good work keeps arriving.
The Break Through series of my intentional flow paintings debuted at an exhibition in Redwood City, CA "The Main Gallery" in winter/spring of 2019.
See a quick glimpse at a rare out of studio Flow painting session
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