:: The Hierophant ::

If you have ever had a reading from me, and had The Hierophant turn up, then you know that this is a card that I have had mad beefs struggles with.

For years, The Hierophant represented so much of what I resisted in the world: authority figures, pillars of tradition, organized religion and dogmatic structure. Some of my disdain could be chalked up with the ignorance and arrogance that accompany youthful conviction, but some of it was also born out of personal experience and confirmed biases resulting therein.

I won’t lie, a part of me still flinches a little when this card appears to me, but I have been working with the energy of The Hierophant for years and have come around on this stern-seeming taskmaster. For me, The Hierophant has come to represent a form of surrender and an invitation to engage in a much deeper learning by embracing the generational knowledge that is forged (and forgotten) by time. The point isn’t to futz around trying to re-invent the wheel, but rather to learn the rules, inside and out, so that one can effectively break them when necessary.

The Hierophant appears to us as is an invitation to cultivate our deepest inner knowledge, to accrue the wisdom of the ages and become our own teacher and guide. To embody the Hierophant is to engage with our shadows, integrating our darkness and meeting it fully with grace and compassion; holding the keys to Heaven and Hell and knowing that where we direct our focus and attention directly creates the reality which we experience.

For me and my art practice, the lesson of The Hierophant first meant attending art school and completing an MFA program in painting; pursuing gallery and museum exhibitions, applying for grants, and residencies; and choosing subject matter and art techniques/expressions that I hoped would appeal to art collectors. Through this gateway of tradition and establishment, I was able to uncover a more meaningful (to me) purpose for art - art as a means to communicate lost, esoteric teachings, a magickal expression and our connection to the divine. I can clearly see my patterns now, and understand why it was necessary for me to learn and be active in the traditional art world, so that my decision to turn away from it would be an informed one.

My Shadow aspects came in droves when I first accepted this lesson, all my fears and shame came to the surface like a dam breaking.

My inner voice taunted me at first,

‘Are you afraid to paint mermaids and faeries and dragons because none of your peers will take you seriously (at best) and or think you are batshit crazy (at worst)? Well good, because you are going to paint mermaids and faeries and all the ‘girlie’ magical shit you loved so much as a child and you will like it, best stock up on pink colors because you are going to be using them ALL THE TIME.’

Which is exactly what did. I accepted the challenge of digging into my own six-demon-bag and integrated the ever-living shit out of my shadows.

The keys to Heaven and Hell are in my hands and In this way, art has become a form of deepening my connection to the unknown mysteries. My homework has been to understand, accept, and implement this principle of the power of my mindset - that where I direct my will, creates my reality - so it is imperative that my intentions are clear.

Heaven and Hell, we are meant to experience and learn from both. The art which I channel carries lessons on the wings of faeries, the horns of demons, and the scales of dragons. I don’t have to understand why I am painting them, I only have to bring them forth from the unknown and onto a page.

:: More on Channeling ~ A Bridge, a Mirror and Hollow Bone ::

I was recently interviewed by a mentor of mine about my creative process. This was a tremendous honor for me to be asked to do this, and in spite of being nervous about speaking on video, I felt like I could talk and talk for hours. (In fact, I can because I am a Gemini)! Though we spoke effortlessly and nonstop for ninety minutes, I have extreme esprit de l’escalier and eight hours after it was over, I remembered many things that I wished I had said about channeling and creativity.

*Luckily, I have this journal that three of you read, so I am using this as a place to discuss what I missed and left out, if you are interested.

My dear friend Amy (who has an incredible podcast about the creative process called The Starling Creative) introduced me to this quote by neo-expressionist painter Philip Guston:

“When you’re in the studio painting, there are a lot of people in there with you - your teachers, friends, painters from history, critics…and one by one if you’re really painting, they walk out. And if you are really painting, YOU walk out.”

This has been so true of my experience while channeling my art. When I am in channel, ‘I’ - my ego, my hang-ups, my judgements, my victories and failures, the collective accumulation of my art education and experiences as a painter - are not present. This is very much an, ‘Elvis Has Left The Building’ situation. My intuition always cues me in when I need to get quiet (or get moving) to listen and receive messages - and once I am in channel, even my intuition makes an exit. In this state, I am able to receive visions and travel to other worlds and dimensions. Pretty trippy!

This is a difficult thing to describe though, as art is a visual medium and trying to provide explanation in the construct of verbal language can neuter it and rob it of it’s magic. The closest thing I can relate it to is the shamanic process of communing in the spirit world through mastering states of trance. I learned of a teaching called the Way of the Hollow Bone, in which a healer becomes a clear, pure conduit for Spirit. By shifting their state of consciousness with trance, they are able to remove their ego/identity, thus becoming an open channel for Divine energy. This is similar to the way in which I create channeled art. When I am in channel I become a bridge between two (or more) worlds - receiving and relaying messages from the realm of imagination and the Unknown. Of course, my hands, eye and the skills they produce together are the tools used to bring this information back to us, but my rational mind is completely removed from the process.

After being initiated into the Akashic Records, my guides told me to visit the Halls of Amenti for seven days in a row - and to bring a gift. Each day was different, and each day I received a tool from one of my past lives that I could use during this lifetime. During one of my visits, Hathor appeared to me like a universe of stars but shaped like a woman. She blessed me by taking my hands, and I watched as my own hands transformed, filled with the blinking light of the cosmos.

Journeying and achieving altered states of consciousness are very important aspects of my spiritual and creative practice, but I am not in a trance-like state when I am channeling art. I am conversational. I am able to weather interruptions and take breaks. If someone - I’m not naming any names here - were to run into my studio with no pants on, yelling ‘the toilet did something to ME’ whilst my bathroom floor floods, I would not only notice, but would spring into action immediately. When I am working in my flow, I am able to hum along without fatigue because I am not using my own energy to create. That said, I am human and as such occasionally find it challenging to remain in channel (thanks, brain-raccoons), so there are times when I drop out and just need to walk away. When this happens, I take a moment to meditate or go for a walk - for as long as it takes for me to get out of my my head ( and my own way).

Channelled during the Harvest Moon, paying close attention to what I sow and reap. Our monsters bring vital lessons as we evolve and shift - we may be tempted to ignore them, hoping that they will just go away - but they are here to help us, so pay attention when they show themselves to you.

I do have a specific technique I use to get into channel that I learned from a teacher of mine, and it is one which I have used reliably for some time now. However, as I have said before, I believe everyone has the ability to channel and I don’t believe that there is only one way to connect to Spirit/Source/God/The Universe/(use the name that resonates with you here). I also believe that the right teacher (or teachers) will appear to you when you need them…and really good teachers will want you to become your own best guide. I am always happy to share the names of those who have taught me so much, but I will say that this is a deeply spiritual and personal decision and my advice will always be for you to first trust your intuition when you ask for your teacher to show up for you - they always do.

If you are here because you have seen my art and it stirred a response in you - be it positive, negative or some curious place in between the polarities - you are likely responding to a keycode of remembrance, a sigil or symbol which resonates with you, a calling and blessing for you on your path, or perhaps a mirror in which you see yourSelf. My channeled work is created to reach the eyes of those who are the addressee’s of a message from the Divine, to aid in a shift in consciousness and assist in the alchemical transformation of initiation and awakening. Of course, you may also just see it and like it, and that is great - but I invite you to look more closely and discover what kind of mystery is being revealed to you.

My drafting table (and altar) :: organized chaos

Fun With Creative Existential Crisis!

Oh, hello. You must have been lured in by my kicky title because you, like I, enjoy fun. That, or perhaps you have experienced - or are currently experiencing - creative existential crisis and this piqued your interest because of that. In either event, Welcome! Come sit next to me and let’s talk about fear of failure and all manner of scary shit!

It’s fun! (It’s not fun).

One of many abandoned snek drawings…

Around eighteen months ago I was standing at my drawing table, clutching a mechanical pencil, staring down at a drawing that I had started ages ago - back when I was too busy and stressed out to even think about drawing - and I was unable to move my pencil across the paper. This drawing featured two floating heads - each was the head of a woman, one woman had a snake coming out of her mouth and that same snake was coiling it’s body around the neck of the other woman. I could visualize this drawing perfectly in my mind’s eye and was so excited to finally have the freedom to return to this piece - but being able to see it completely finished in my head had rendered me totally unable to work on it. It wasn’t unusual for me to put things down and return to them at a later date - back when I was making art regularly I would have three or four different pieces going all at once. I would work on something, get bored or distracted and turn my focus to another project, and then return to the thing I had left when I felt refreshed by my distance from it. This was not the case in this instance. I could easily put this drawing down, after all I had done so for at least two, maybe even three years…it would have been alright to leave it completely. The thing that stood out to me about this time, was that I didn’t want to draw or paint ANYTHING.

A little background may be helpful. I’ve been making art since I was a small child, but I only really started seriously studying it when I was a junior in college. I graduated with a BA in Art and Art History and spent 5 years out of university working a myriad of service industry and retail jobs to maintain the art studio I was renting, before finally getting accepted into an MFA program in painting and drawing. By 2003 I had earned my Masters degree, but I lacked the artistic excellence, ambition (and willingness to relocate) to obtain the highly coveted and poorly paying part-time and adjunct teaching positions offered at that time, so moved my art studio at home and resumed my old standbys of retail and service industry employment.

I attempted to fit in or at least find a place with ‘The Art World’. For roughly 20 years I have consistently showed my work in solo and group exhibitions, I’ve attended one artist residency, been included in one museum collection, and have had my work published in print. I’ve been lucky enough at ‘art’ by the traditional standards by which success is measured - except financially, of course - but only just enough to keep me from giving up entirely, which I have been tempted to do many times over.

Motherhood and owning a small business gave me plenty of excuses to stop making art (or at least to make it only very sporadically), and it was in 2017 after selling my business and freeing myself to fully pursue making art that I was fully hit with what can only be called a Big, Honking, Motherfucker of A Creative Existential Crisis. For a start, I felt repulsed by the traditional, external processes by which art is made, exhibited and sold - and apparently me and my art were equally unappealing to these aspects of the art world. While that reality and change of heart was sinking in, the real shit show was brewing for me internally. It was when I returned to my abandoned drawing that I was initially so excited to bring to life - the women with the snake - that I realized I was experiencing something bigger than just ‘artist’s block’. I had started drawing the individual scales on the snake and this act of perfectly rendering a thing in pencil on paper shifted from being a skill that I enjoyed having access to, into something stifling and perfunctory. This thing which was so magical and alive in my imagination had transmogrified into a task of joyless tedium - just like folding sweaters or scooping ice cream or serving a tray of beers to a table of frat boys - and I didn’t want to do it anymore. I thought maybe it was the medium that I was sick of, or maybe it was the pressure I put on myself to render things realistically? My biggest fear was that I was just a dull person with no imagination or creativity, that I didn’t have any ideas that were unique or interesting enough to deserve being made manifest in art form.

I had invested so much of my personal identity in this label of ARTIST and I was really, really fucking scared to look at myself in an honest way and accept that I just wasn’t all that great at it. I would torture myself by thinking of my investment into this identity of ARTIST - the years spent honing my craft, the money spent on materials and education, and the cumulative fucks I had given to what my peers in art would think of me.

My first order of business was to stop investing in any notion of ‘my identity’ at all. Labels are extremely helpful when you need a shorthand way to describe something or someone, but it’s my personal experience-fed belief that they do more harm than good if you buy into them. My second task, which paired so nicely with the first, was to stop caring what other people thought about me. Easier said that done, of course, and it has taken years - but I am almost 100% embarrassment-proof now which (for anyone who knows me) an extremely high mark. A third thing I had to do, was release any expectation of obtaining money as an end result of my art making. This doesn’t mean that money isn’t welcome here, (not at all - money is welcome here!) but rather that my motivation for making art could not be about money.

Removing those blocks were crucial for me to get out of my own way and navigate through my creative K-Hole, which I am elated to disclose that I have done. I wish I had an easy-to-follow set of instructions to reveal about getting out of it, but It was a messy, intuitive, non-linear, and clownass kind of process - I couldn’t describe it even if you paid me - but I can share one thing that helped me get started. I had to make things that were just for me - not to be shared on social media for external validation, not to be shown to my peers or trusted loved ones. I had to make awful, ugly, embarrassing failures for myself, for the joy of making them and let any expectation of a positive outcome go. This was an incredibly freeing aspect of my process, and one which lead me to question my relationship to ART and everything about The Art World that had flummoxed and frustrated me for years (which is in itself a whole other topic of discussion, hooo boy).

While I chose to eliminate many of my outside, visual influences and distractions (Instagram), I did find that listening to podcasts about the creative process - and reading about it as well - was enormously helpful in breaking me out of my patterns and comfort zones. Much of my artistic paralysis was rooted in deeply ingrained habits which had become giant blindspots and technical crutches that hindered my imagination and creativity. I needed help to gain a clear perspective on my bullshit, to better see where I was coasting in complacency. Eventually my art work began to mirror my personal shadow work - I was channeling images from the Ether and Void, painting fairies and mermaids - things that would have gotten me laughed right the fuck out of grad school/residency programs/galleries - and this delighted me.



I don’t know what I’m doing with this work and I am 100% okay with that because I am creating from a place of authenticity and integrity. There is no redemptive finish to this post or even a victory lap, other than that I am writing it from a place of genuine acceptance and one which feels good in my bones, so there is that.

My seven year old self would be so psyched.

Recommended listening and reading for clawing your way out of the depths of existential despair:

~ The Starling Creative podcast ~ by creative hydra, artistic powerhouse and multidimensional wizard, Amy Markham - who is not only my dear friend, but also one of my greatest teachers.

~ “Bird by Bird, Some Instructions on Writing and Life” ~ by Anne Lamott

~ “The Creative Tarot: A Modern Guide to an Inspired Life” ~ by Jessa Crispin

Homework For Artist's Block

I was just talking to an artist friend of mine, Alessandra Dzuba (whose work rules), about artist's block. I had recently hit a slump and needed to take a break before attempting a new project, and was a little scared because I've had bouts of creative crisis before that lasted fucking years. She suggested that I look at an artist whose work I admired and then make a copy or study of one of their pieces - not to show or sell as my own work, but as a means to keep my hand and eye up while getting me out of my comfort zone. 

Interestingly, this is actually an exercise that I used to give my drawing students and I had totally forgotten about it! It's a fantastic way to try a new medium or explore subject matter/style that you don't normally work with.

After a ten year hiatus from working with ink, I definitely wanted to try it again, but I had cold feet....after years of working with forgiving (erasable!) graphite, I was super hesitant to pick up my pens. I knew this practice would be a gentle way to jump back in with no risk and the artist that I chose is Minka Sicklinger, whose work I absolutely love.

So far, I've made two drawings this week and I I am getting more comfortable with ink on paper - enough so that I may pick it up again for the next project. In the meantime, I'm posting the results of my homework assignment - and I highly recommend trying this yourself if you are hitting a block in your own work and want to explore something different!