"In The Flow" how intuition TOOK ME ON A NEW PATH
This painting is called, The Way of Water. It's filled with flowy, serene hues of blue. After I finished it, I hung it in my home near the front entrance for several years. When I met the person who fell in love with it, I found a way for him to buy it and we shipped it to his home in Costa Rica from New York.
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 looked for ways to be in the world other than just making art. Mostly I was terrified of embracing the starving artist mantra if I were to truly live an artist's life and be another starving artist. However, in a hyper-energized search for some other way to live, I sold everything I owned, bought a 1-way ticket, moved to Alaska, and enrolled in the University of Alaska.
Was I following the Flow back then?
In any case, all these years later mathematics, rocks, minerals and landscapes permeate all aspects of my life. So it shouldn't surprise anyone, me included, when landscapes and waveforms appear in my abstracts.
(for more discussion, scroll to the bottom of 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 looked for ways to be in the world other than just making art. Mostly I was terrified of embracing the starving artist mantra if I were to truly live an artist's life and be another starving artist. However, in a hyper-energized search for some other way to live, I sold everything I owned, bought a 1-way ticket, moved to Alaska, and enrolled in the University of Alaska.
Was I following the Flow back then?
In any case, all these years later mathematics, rocks, minerals and landscapes permeate all aspects of my life. So it shouldn't surprise anyone, me included, when landscapes and waveforms appear in my abstracts.
(for more discussion, scroll to the bottom of page...)
-- SOLD -- "The Way Of Water" 60x48-in acrylic on aluminum
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"Coast" 20x20-in acrylic on board
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-- SOLD --"Tranquility" 36x36-in acrylic on board.
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"Blue Joy" 12x12-in acrylic on board
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--SOLD--"Sunrise Canyon" 48x36-in acrylic on aluminum
Available as print on fashionable dress, scarf, mask, and more. See "Art as Fashion" link.
"Study in Mauve" 10x14-in acrylic on board
Available as print on fashionable dress, scarf, mask, and more. See "Art as Fashion" link.
"Sunny Skies"
12x12-inches acrylic on board
--SOLD-- "Arctic Borealis" 14x12-inches acrylic on board
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--SOLD--"Corral and Sea Foam" 12x12-in acrylic on board
--SOLD--"Red Rock Latte" 10x14-in acrylic on board;
"Sands of Time" 18 x 11-in acrylic on board;
--SOLD--
"Blue, Brown and White" 16x20-in acrylic on board
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SOLD "Cloud Hidden" 40x30-in acrylic on aluminum;
--SOLD-- "Raspberry Foam" 8x10-in acrylic on board;
--SOLD--
"Marigolds II" 10x8-inches acrylic on board
--SOLD--
"Time Is An Ocean" acrylic on board
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(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 continually woke up between 2 and 3 am and had a distinct urge to pull up YouTube. In those dreamy nights, I stumbled on flow acrylic methods crafters used to make fast art and cool looking table tops. I had witching hour inspirational nights before, so I just went with it. In the quiet of the night I opened YouTube and watched videos appear one at a time that described very odd and new type of painting materials.
My first impression of these videos was that of a weird merger of an art show and a baking demo. They used spatulas, wooden panels, wire cookie cooling racks, and plastic cups filled with layers of liquid paint. In the end, I received a well organized list of flow art materials and techniques on how to calculate percentages of medium-to-pigment.
The next phase was a relentless demand to assemble a new studio setup designed for flow paintings. When I had all the materials and I practiced on small panels, I developed a distinctive technique and refer to it as the Intentional Flow method.
I worked with this method day and night, I experienced a sort of out-of-body quality of life, which it lasted over six months. During that time, the new method was ingrained and reproducible. While the new flow techniques were assembling in my subconscious, I did not pause to analyze or question what was happening—I simply gave myself over to my muse and followed my intuition. If a technical problem showed up, an answer appeared by morning. It was a sublimely serene time, even though I was energized and excited as I worked around the clock creating this new series.
While embracing this style of totally intuitive trance-like of creativity, I stepped into the intuitive flow while fully present, relaxed my will, and let go. No preconceived ideas. No plans. Just magical results.
After I completed a dozen new paintings worthy of hanging in a gallery, I could tell how my inspiration-fueled studio experience had a common theme to my journey from disabling illness back to health. Once that connection clicked, I saw how my previous series, Ethereal, the paintings identified by gashes, scapes, and cuts, had documented a long period a major, life-stopping, excruciating pain.
________________
The inside spiritual story of working in The Flow
When painting the "In the Flow" series, I focussed on relaxing into The Flow. At first it was uncomfortable and a bit like work, like when you first start to meditate; the more you relax, the better you are. I find it quite funny in a synchronistic way, that the media I used is called flow acrylics.
The Universe is like funny like that sometimes. The Universe has a sense of humor. Actually, it's a bit corny and on the nose quite often. For instance, my formal training is as a research geophysicist. I set up or got involved in other researcher's original research. My goal was to use highly mathematical and statistical processes on data teased out of minerals or rocks to find differences, anomalies, or just repeating patterns which told me something about the underlying structure of my area of focus. It could be the paleo magnetic signatures of rocks, grand and micro-layers of sediments, or crystalline structures of a phase I created in the lab.
I took that skill set and moved into Silicon Valley as a technical writer, sitting along side software architects and the whole software engineering team to suss out patterns in what they created every few weeks. I distill those results into human readable documents mostly for other engineers. Now onto the juicy spiritual stuff.
The universe, my guides, started asking me to cool it in the analytic thinking arena. At least when it comes to conceiving with the Big Picture is and understanding the universe. She started almost five years ago to stop counting things. I was in a plant ceremony and was watching time pass, waiting for the experience to start. Basically, I was clocking how long it took for me to see patterns and hear advice. "Stop counting," is what I heard before I saw or felt anything. Ooh. That's my favorite pass-time. OK. I thought. I'll do that. Fast forward to the end of the week (I was at the Rythmia medical spa) after a lot of amazing information came down that I wasn't sure what to do with. It was not the usual stuff. I saw my guides party hard on a stage built on my abdomen, celebrating enhanced communication with me, they gold me how my spirit was in a golden egg and pushed into me at birth, then they gave me a second one as sort of an upgrade egg, I talked to my dad about his war time killings, and Mother Ayahuasca drummed with my thigh bones for it seemed like hours, to show me I was "renting" this body and I better take care of it and remember where it came from.
At the end of the week at the end of the last night in ceremony, Mother and the Universe teamed up to deliver the message, "Stop trying to figure us out. You can't. You exist in a human body with earthly limitations." At the last ceremony drink, I couldn't stomach one mire serving and immediately threw it up. Thinking, I wasn't going to journey, I laid down to go into deep meditation. Instead, I was spun out into infinity, and spun so fast, I didn't know what or where I was. I landed somewhere - a beach or a room, I don't recall - and I heard a question. "Do you know what happened? Do you know where you are?" My analytic brain jumped into action and I regurgitated unified theory multi-dimension quark stuff and heard back, "WRONG!" then immediately started spinning out into infinity again. This Q&A session repeated over and over and over again, until I could hang on to the sense I couldn't answer the question. When I answered, "I don't know anything." I heard, "right," and they left me laying still, on my back, exhausted and nauseous.
That's not the funny part. The funny part came in four and a half years later when I was back at Rythmia. During those four years, I stopped looking for updates on the Unification Theory, my favorite being coined in a published book, "My Big TOE" (TOE meaning the theory of everything). In this story, I am only on my second night of my 4-night ayahuasca journey. I am so accustomed to not searching for the Answer myself, I pretty much forgot about how I've changed. I am there this time because I was unable to be around mean people. I lost my nerve and got all weepy and had to run away and physically hide. You can't live like this especially, if the mean person is your manager. My intention was to understand or fix the protector part of me that apparently melted away.
On this second night, my guides were back and this time there was not party or gifts. This time I was asked a serious question. Would I accept them to merge with my soul. I said yes and a phenomenal experience occurred. I can't describe it because it was multi-dimensional in a space without time. I remember lots of symbolic movements on my part and a few moments where I became very scared and asked to stop, they paused and reminded me I had agreed. Sometimes, I saw my husband (who is living) far down a tunnel, gazing at me with comforting eyes, encouraging me to come forward into the swirling mesh. After it was over, I sat back with my hair down and my small scrunchy in my hand. I didn't know what to do with it, as I was told to keep my hair down. My glasses had fallen off and I didn't know where.
I asked, "What should I do with my scrunchie? I don't want to loose it. I still have more plant medicine nights and I need it."
"Put it on your big toe," came the reply.
I was sitting cross-legged on a bed pillow outside on a wrap-around porch. It seemed like a good idea, as there was nothing out there, but the planks under my pillow. After I did that, I looked at it and said, "That looks ridiculous!" and started laughing. The Universe replied, "It's hilarious and laughed with me. In seconds, I was bent over in whole body laughter. "My big toe! Oh my god. This is so funny. You are so funny!! Kinda corny, but really, really funny!"
"I know!!"
That's part of the joy of just being. Being playful and having fun with the Universe's synchronicity. Not everything is funny, ha, ha. Some times, it's just weird but spot on.
__________________________________________________________________________
During the year leading up to this series, I continually woke up between 2 and 3 am and had a distinct urge to pull up YouTube. In those dreamy nights, I stumbled on flow acrylic methods crafters used to make fast art and cool looking table tops. I had witching hour inspirational nights before, so I just went with it. In the quiet of the night I opened YouTube and watched videos appear one at a time that described very odd and new type of painting materials.
My first impression of these videos was that of a weird merger of an art show and a baking demo. They used spatulas, wooden panels, wire cookie cooling racks, and plastic cups filled with layers of liquid paint. In the end, I received a well organized list of flow art materials and techniques on how to calculate percentages of medium-to-pigment.
The next phase was a relentless demand to assemble a new studio setup designed for flow paintings. When I had all the materials and I practiced on small panels, I developed a distinctive technique and refer to it as the Intentional Flow method.
I worked with this method day and night, I experienced a sort of out-of-body quality of life, which it lasted over six months. During that time, the new method was ingrained and reproducible. While the new flow techniques were assembling in my subconscious, I did not pause to analyze or question what was happening—I simply gave myself over to my muse and followed my intuition. If a technical problem showed up, an answer appeared by morning. It was a sublimely serene time, even though I was energized and excited as I worked around the clock creating this new series.
While embracing this style of totally intuitive trance-like of creativity, I stepped into the intuitive flow while fully present, relaxed my will, and let go. No preconceived ideas. No plans. Just magical results.
After I completed a dozen new paintings worthy of hanging in a gallery, I could tell how my inspiration-fueled studio experience had a common theme to my journey from disabling illness back to health. Once that connection clicked, I saw how my previous series, Ethereal, the paintings identified by gashes, scapes, and cuts, had documented a long period a major, life-stopping, excruciating pain.
________________
The inside spiritual story of working in The Flow
When painting the "In the Flow" series, I focussed on relaxing into The Flow. At first it was uncomfortable and a bit like work, like when you first start to meditate; the more you relax, the better you are. I find it quite funny in a synchronistic way, that the media I used is called flow acrylics.
The Universe is like funny like that sometimes. The Universe has a sense of humor. Actually, it's a bit corny and on the nose quite often. For instance, my formal training is as a research geophysicist. I set up or got involved in other researcher's original research. My goal was to use highly mathematical and statistical processes on data teased out of minerals or rocks to find differences, anomalies, or just repeating patterns which told me something about the underlying structure of my area of focus. It could be the paleo magnetic signatures of rocks, grand and micro-layers of sediments, or crystalline structures of a phase I created in the lab.
I took that skill set and moved into Silicon Valley as a technical writer, sitting along side software architects and the whole software engineering team to suss out patterns in what they created every few weeks. I distill those results into human readable documents mostly for other engineers. Now onto the juicy spiritual stuff.
The universe, my guides, started asking me to cool it in the analytic thinking arena. At least when it comes to conceiving with the Big Picture is and understanding the universe. She started almost five years ago to stop counting things. I was in a plant ceremony and was watching time pass, waiting for the experience to start. Basically, I was clocking how long it took for me to see patterns and hear advice. "Stop counting," is what I heard before I saw or felt anything. Ooh. That's my favorite pass-time. OK. I thought. I'll do that. Fast forward to the end of the week (I was at the Rythmia medical spa) after a lot of amazing information came down that I wasn't sure what to do with. It was not the usual stuff. I saw my guides party hard on a stage built on my abdomen, celebrating enhanced communication with me, they gold me how my spirit was in a golden egg and pushed into me at birth, then they gave me a second one as sort of an upgrade egg, I talked to my dad about his war time killings, and Mother Ayahuasca drummed with my thigh bones for it seemed like hours, to show me I was "renting" this body and I better take care of it and remember where it came from.
At the end of the week at the end of the last night in ceremony, Mother and the Universe teamed up to deliver the message, "Stop trying to figure us out. You can't. You exist in a human body with earthly limitations." At the last ceremony drink, I couldn't stomach one mire serving and immediately threw it up. Thinking, I wasn't going to journey, I laid down to go into deep meditation. Instead, I was spun out into infinity, and spun so fast, I didn't know what or where I was. I landed somewhere - a beach or a room, I don't recall - and I heard a question. "Do you know what happened? Do you know where you are?" My analytic brain jumped into action and I regurgitated unified theory multi-dimension quark stuff and heard back, "WRONG!" then immediately started spinning out into infinity again. This Q&A session repeated over and over and over again, until I could hang on to the sense I couldn't answer the question. When I answered, "I don't know anything." I heard, "right," and they left me laying still, on my back, exhausted and nauseous.
That's not the funny part. The funny part came in four and a half years later when I was back at Rythmia. During those four years, I stopped looking for updates on the Unification Theory, my favorite being coined in a published book, "My Big TOE" (TOE meaning the theory of everything). In this story, I am only on my second night of my 4-night ayahuasca journey. I am so accustomed to not searching for the Answer myself, I pretty much forgot about how I've changed. I am there this time because I was unable to be around mean people. I lost my nerve and got all weepy and had to run away and physically hide. You can't live like this especially, if the mean person is your manager. My intention was to understand or fix the protector part of me that apparently melted away.
On this second night, my guides were back and this time there was not party or gifts. This time I was asked a serious question. Would I accept them to merge with my soul. I said yes and a phenomenal experience occurred. I can't describe it because it was multi-dimensional in a space without time. I remember lots of symbolic movements on my part and a few moments where I became very scared and asked to stop, they paused and reminded me I had agreed. Sometimes, I saw my husband (who is living) far down a tunnel, gazing at me with comforting eyes, encouraging me to come forward into the swirling mesh. After it was over, I sat back with my hair down and my small scrunchy in my hand. I didn't know what to do with it, as I was told to keep my hair down. My glasses had fallen off and I didn't know where.
I asked, "What should I do with my scrunchie? I don't want to loose it. I still have more plant medicine nights and I need it."
"Put it on your big toe," came the reply.
I was sitting cross-legged on a bed pillow outside on a wrap-around porch. It seemed like a good idea, as there was nothing out there, but the planks under my pillow. After I did that, I looked at it and said, "That looks ridiculous!" and started laughing. The Universe replied, "It's hilarious and laughed with me. In seconds, I was bent over in whole body laughter. "My big toe! Oh my god. This is so funny. You are so funny!! Kinda corny, but really, really funny!"
"I know!!"
That's part of the joy of just being. Being playful and having fun with the Universe's synchronicity. Not everything is funny, ha, ha. Some times, it's just weird but spot on.
__________________________________________________________________________
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 intuition is my only influencer leaving 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.
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 intuition is my only influencer leaving 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.
