Painting for me has always been a vehicle for reclaiming my sanity in this life, a safe place where images could represent what was inside I could not voice. It is my major healing tool, and I thank the Creator for this gift. My prayer is that my paintings go on to heal others as they do so much for me.

CREATION'S CHILD was created through visions of many dark nights, painting my pain, my inner child, my life, with the intent of not caring what others might think. I emerged myself willingly into my true emotional feelings to rediscover the lost child and reawaken a higher sense of purity, creativity, healing and spirituality.

REMEMBER who I am! Ancient secrets seeded, a leap of crimson rust, in light that casts shadows

of distant memories, I trust.

There is no unknown, only unremembered.

Some edited notes from my Journal while I was painting on Creation's Child:

Friday, January 13, 2000: I've been getting a strong vision; a face of a little girl, half-falling off, sad and broken, revealing her strong spiritual self underneath. I am going to paint her, me. I am going to paint her and not concern myself with what others might think, unedited, unplugged and real. My truth, my healing as I do, through my painting. Aho!

I started her today on a very large canvas. Red, lots of red and black. She's my pain. I cried really hard while I was laying out the base paint. I put some Rue leaves over the area of her Yoni to protect and heal her. Then I turned the Rue into the Tree of Life.

Saturday. Jan.14, 2000: I've been painting all day and into the night, it's late now. I had to make myself stop. I'm really into her and very happy with the way she's coming out. I prayed and meditated before beginning to paint. I'm going to do this every time before I start.

Jan.19, 2000. I meditated and prayed this morning and heard I needed to meet a Spirit Teacher, someone who blows smoke on me in the spirit world to help heal my wounds from childhood. I was told to go paint and meet the spirit in my painting. And so I go to paint with anticipation.

Later, I painted all day, and an African woman, very black with white in her hair and something on her back, she's smoking a very big cigar. A snake hangs off of her, and a medicine drum sits at her feet. Not anything like what I expected, but exciting and very cool!

Spirits', and images started coming through onto the canvas. I haven't painted anything from the African culture before, except for Jimi Hendrix. Nothing was planned and I was amazed. Never before has a painting come through me so profound and magical. Never before have I been so guided and never before have I asked so for guidance in prayer and meditation in the process of painting before now. It feels really right.

January 25, 2000. In my meditation this morning I heard, why you afraid to shine? It feels like she's an old African grandma, I heard, babaloua, but slave boy you are no more, and a very black medicine baby, eche. I don't know what this all means, she is encouraging me though to continue. She told me she too blows smoke on me in the sprit world.

January 30, 2000. Listen to this, I received a call from a woman, I've never met, she is a friend of a good friend of mine. She said her name was Yoshi, and that she was a Yoruba Priestess. She told me she hadn't done any healings in a long time, but Spirit had called her to offer a healing for me. She continued to tell me a little bit about the ceremony and the African tradition, and that she would be blowing cigar smoke on me. She said she would call on a Spirit medicine woman, a Babalou, the same name I had heard in my meditation. I was completely mesmerized, I had never heard of this kind of stuff before last week in my meditation, and now she calls me to say these things, and mysteriously confirming them for me. The Sprits are most definitely communicating with me. I then proceeded to tell her of my resent experiences and what was going on with my painting and meditation. I told her I most definitely would accept her offer of the Yoruba healing ceremony.

It feels like the spirits are totally painting through me, as if the canvas takes a breath with each stroke of my brush in hand. The African man on the right top of the painting seemed to almost just appear, beautiful and full of mystery and watchfulness. Watching Orion.

Here another African is embracing a nursing breast, squeezing the milk flow into the healing for Creations Child.

When I paint, I first create the background, then I look for images hidden in the textures. The owl and the eagle were already on the canvas naturally from the way the paint dried. The only thing I did to make them more clear was a little bit of shading. The owl looks like it has two heads, I left it that way.

 

Feb.8, 2000. Thank you creator for painting through me. I did my prayer and meditation ceremony, I have a fire warming in the fireplace and candles burning they provide comfort and peace and I use the medicine of the fire for my Prayers. By intension I've opened up to the spot I've been struggling with for weeks: the memory of the cat that was killed in front of me when I was a child. I painted a warrior lion carrying my soul and the spirit of the cat to higher ground. It's incredible and again Spirit totally painted through me, but it took a lot of trust, it wasn't easy. I burned a lot of sage tonight and I'm falling asleep, already painting in my dreams.

Feb.11, 2000. I have been painting all day, started a little later this morning, 7:30am.Wow I've never been like this when I paint. Always if I'm up really late in the night painting, I sleep in, but not this time around. I can feel the magic and the power of healing it is being for me and ultimately what it will be for others. I've been experiencing a lot of anger, it's surfaced again so I can release it through my painting. Thank you Creator for this gift of healing through my art. I realize I've been feeling so much through the process of painting this painting, painting my anger, using my medicine to push it through the birth canal and giving birth to it.

Today I was painting near the image of my father and I actually felt like I was almost going to be sick, I noticed that my arm was near him and I could feel how angry I was at with him. Then I started thinking about how sick he is inside and his hurts and dark abuse he himself experienced as a child, I suddenly felt compassion for him and a drop of light blue paint fell near him, and I left it and I cried. He has a higher spirit somewhere too, somewhere deep within him. I left the light blue drop to help heal him. and I painted flowers along the stairway to light his way.

Sun. Feb.13, 2000. It's my brother's birthday today. I painted him, carrying his spirit to the Tall Ones. His tears run into the river of all healing, where the angels gather the flow and carry them in vessels to the Heavens. I'm feeling like I'm falling apart, my body, my mind, falling apart completely. Darkest just before the dawn? So many dawns lead again to so many dark, dark nights, sometimes I think I can't take it anymore. I feel like giving up, this painting is bringing up all my pain, opening my wounds I thought I'd so cleverly hidden. Still I'm obsessed to go more into the shadow. I know it's healing for me and ultimately others too.

Feb.14, 2000. Valentines Day, 9pm. I'm painting and listening to music. The fireplace warming my studio. I am in love! The water bird in my painting is totally protecting the African child locked in the chains created by father's bloodline, his lineage and mine. A part of me that is praying for freedom.

Feb.15, 2000. I feel like I am swimming in my past way too much! It's the painting, she's so intense, so many layers, so very deep. This is way too deep for me to be alone. I need a guide for my physical stuff, pains of the body, shame, and things like that, that are not of a higher spirit. I find myself afraid to trust again. You forget again who you are, trust! Help me Creator release this PAIN the painting is bringing up in me. My heart is bearing too much. I guess, really it's forgiveness I need to truly heal this. The dark door, how soon I forget Spirit's message to me, my painting red and black, on the other side of the door is love, even though I can't see it. The challenge is to walk through the black, through the fire, through the dark door. The dark door is in the painting now.

Feb.16, 2000. There is a stairway coming up in and around my fathers' image, it's rough, and almost crumbling down, but you can still climb out of there. Roots are over grown around a Rue plant with a tiny few leaves of blue, Spirit of healing that still remains. I keep on needing to remind myself not to care what others think of my painting, barring my naked soul. I'm feeling very vulnerable right now.

Feb.28, 2000. This painting, my masterpiece so far, painted with my own blood and tears, it's worth it all, and I love her! I named her Creations Child. From the mask in my dreams, and a Goddess in the rocks behind my house, she is now in my painting. I dreamed of her days ago and now although there are no bright colors as there were in my dream, she's black and red, indigenous, and praying blowing smoke on me for healing.

Mar.1, 2000. I started to paint on Creations Child, I walked by it and saw something I wanted to do. After, I turned around for a minute and the whole canvas just tipped over and fell on my head. I realized that I started working on her before praying and meditating. Okay, that's a pretty clear message! I know from now on I will make every painting I do a prayer and meditation ceremony. It's so much more powerful and exciting doing it this way!

Thursday, Mar.3, 2000, 5:30am. When the moon is new, Venus will follow the sun and become an evening star. I painted until late last night, and now I'm going to paint today, but of course, I am obsessed, a tortured artist and digging the mystery of it all! Well I'd like to move away from the tortured artist theory and move into being a dedicated painter/healer whose digging the mystery of it all and exploring un-traveled highways of the subconscious, bring light back into this dimension, seeing through the illusion of it all. I painted a snake man Shaman today; he stands powerfully transmuting the poisons with his powers.

Friday, Mar.4, 2000. Creations Child just keeps getting deeper. I need to talk to someone who has also seen the other worlds. I just heard in the back of my head, we exist in your world; we are an energy like you. I painted me as a fairie woman blessing the phallus with her love. I love her; she is so strong and beautiful.

Every week, there is a sweat lodge on the land where I live. When I paint at night, my studio is lit up and very visible. Some people I didn't really know very well came to my front door and wanted to see what I was working on. I let them in, not really minding, which was odd considering how private I am, especially when I'm painting. But I enjoyed watching the expressions on their faces as they silently stared at the painting. Several of them mentioned to me later that seeing Creations Child helped them look at themselves deeper and face their own inner fears. It seems the healing power of the painting is already at work on others as well as myself. Thank-you Creator.

Sat. Mar.5, 2000. While everyone prayed in the sweat lodge, I prayed on my moon time with my painting. An amazing Hawaiian Goddess and a dolphin, now bless the painting with their presence.

Mar.6, 2000. I did a dance ceremony with Jim Morrison's' Spirit, asking all the spirits "is everybody in?" IS EVERYBODY IN? We had fun! One last dragon needed to go into the painting, a dragon bringing healing to the fire above the hips! Also a dragonfly is flying through the dungeon, working it's magic of power of light to see through the illusion of darkness and pain.

Painting Creations Child has been about healing through the shadow, walking through the door and finding I'm not alone.

My prayer is for the wounded child in all of us to heal, and to remember who we really are: Light and Love. For the children on the Earth: may we help them remember who they truly are; protect, guide, support them, and allow them their right to shine their own light, their own truth, for what they truly are, our future.