"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
This painting is titled 'The Way of Water.' Its surface moves with serene hues of blue, like a tide breathing in and out. For years, it hung by the front entrance of my home. 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.
Can you feel those abstracted moments of calm? The temporary bits of calm in between huge swells of rough and scary moments. That fits my client and the life he built so well. He helps people face their deepest fears and brings them into a calm port at the end of the day.
When I was a young adult, I resisted the "starving artist" story. In a hyper-energized search for some other way to live, I sold everything I owned, bought a one-way ticket and moved to Alaska to study at the University of Alaska. Was I following the Flow back then? Probably.
Years later, my life is a strange weave of mathematics, rocks, minerals, and landscapes. 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)
Can you feel those abstracted moments of calm? The temporary bits of calm in between huge swells of rough and scary moments. That fits my client and the life he built so well. He helps people face their deepest fears and brings them into a calm port at the end of the day.
When I was a young adult, I resisted the "starving artist" story. In a hyper-energized search for some other way to live, I sold everything I owned, bought a one-way ticket and moved to Alaska to study at the University of Alaska. Was I following the Flow back then? Probably.
Years later, my life is a strange weave of mathematics, rocks, minerals, and landscapes. 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.)
During the year leading up to this series, I often woke between two and three a.m. with a distinct urge to open YouTube. In those quiet hours I stumbled across videos of people using “flow acrylics” to make fast art and glossy tabletops. I’d had witching-hour inspirations before, so I went with it.
The first videos 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. Over time I developed a repeatable technique I call the Intentional Flow Method.
For six months I painted day and night. When problems appeared, answers arrived by morning. 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, I’ve learned, enjoys a corny pun.
My training in geophysics explained the appeal. I had always studied motion and hidden structure: seismic waves, magnetic fields, crystal lattices. Later, in Silicon Valley, I used the same pattern-recognition skills as a technical writer, mapping complex software systems and translating them for engineers. Art, science, and writing all speak the same language, pattern made visible.
Then my guides began to teach me about another kind of Flow.
Several years ago, during ceremony, they asked me to stop counting; dots, tiles, seconds, steps. Counting had always been how I measured the world. I stopped. The next message was simple: Stop trying to figure us out.
That direction silenced the scientist in me. During one ceremony I spun through darkness until I said, “I don’t know anything.” The reply was instant: “Right.” Everything went still.
Four years later I returned to Rythmia with a different question. I wanted to understand why I lost my footing around cruelty. On the second night my guides asked if I would allow them to merge with my soul. 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 laughed until I bent over, and the universe laughed back. Then I saw the joke. Years earlier, I had studied a physics book titled My Big TOE—T.O.E., meaning "Theory of Everything". Now I was wearing my own version. That’s the universe’s 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.
__________________________________________________________________________
Life and Artistic Expression
Physical problems like what I had, trigeminal neuralgia, AKA the suicide disease, demands strong pain meds to withstand even the simplest daily activities or physical contact with any part of the face. Nothing cut the pain completely. Drugs made it so life was borderline tolerable so I could eat, or talk, or lay down on a pillow. Even so, I hated the price of a foggy, depressed, state.
Even in a debilitated state, I pressed towards a seemingly endless search for an answer; was it something I could physically heal or was it an emotional scar, something I could not easily gain access to? Maybe this pain and suffering was part of my spiritual path? These were the questions I discussed with doctors, healers, shamans, family and friends. Now, on the other side, I know the answer to my complicated case was a combination of all of those things with help from all those people.
The thing about soul-inspired artwork is you are never quite sure why you are making something until it is long ago finished and you have time to step away and look back at what you did. Even then, it may still not unveil the answers until you sit still and write about it.
These days, my guides send information to me in intuitive hits. Sometimes, it's an impression. Sometimes it's words i understand, but not really hear. This style of life leaves no room for the starving artist syndrome. By living in The Flow amazing things, of which I never would have imagined on my own, suddenly appear in my life.
During the year leading up to this series, I often woke between two and three a.m. with a distinct urge to open YouTube. In those quiet hours I stumbled across videos of people using “flow acrylics” to make fast art and glossy tabletops. I’d had witching-hour inspirations before, so I went with it.
The first videos 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. Over time I developed a repeatable technique I call the Intentional Flow Method.
For six months I painted day and night. When problems appeared, answers arrived by morning. 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, I’ve learned, enjoys a corny pun.
My training in geophysics explained the appeal. I had always studied motion and hidden structure: seismic waves, magnetic fields, crystal lattices. Later, in Silicon Valley, I used the same pattern-recognition skills as a technical writer, mapping complex software systems and translating them for engineers. Art, science, and writing all speak the same language, pattern made visible.
Then my guides began to teach me about another kind of Flow.
Several years ago, during ceremony, they asked me to stop counting; dots, tiles, seconds, steps. Counting had always been how I measured the world. I stopped. The next message was simple: Stop trying to figure us out.
That direction silenced the scientist in me. During one ceremony I spun through darkness until I said, “I don’t know anything.” The reply was instant: “Right.” Everything went still.
Four years later I returned to Rythmia with a different question. I wanted to understand why I lost my footing around cruelty. On the second night my guides asked if I would allow them to merge with my soul. 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 laughed until I bent over, and the universe laughed back. Then I saw the joke. Years earlier, I had studied a physics book titled My Big TOE—T.O.E., meaning "Theory of Everything". Now I was wearing my own version. That’s the universe’s 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.
__________________________________________________________________________
Life and Artistic Expression
Physical problems like what I had, trigeminal neuralgia, AKA the suicide disease, demands strong pain meds to withstand even the simplest daily activities or physical contact with any part of the face. Nothing cut the pain completely. Drugs made it so life was borderline tolerable so I could eat, or talk, or lay down on a pillow. Even so, I hated the price of a foggy, depressed, state.
Even in a debilitated state, I pressed towards a seemingly endless search for an answer; was it something I could physically heal or was it an emotional scar, something I could not easily gain access to? Maybe this pain and suffering was part of my spiritual path? These were the questions I discussed with doctors, healers, shamans, family and friends. Now, on the other side, I know the answer to my complicated case was a combination of all of those things with help from all those people.
The thing about soul-inspired artwork is you are never quite sure why you are making something until it is long ago finished and you have time to step away and look back at what you did. Even then, it may still not unveil the answers until you sit still and write about it.
These days, my guides send information to me in intuitive hits. Sometimes, it's an impression. Sometimes it's words i understand, but not really hear. This style of life leaves no room for the starving artist syndrome. By living in The Flow amazing things, of which I never would have imagined on my own, suddenly appear in my life.
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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