Magical Maui

 

This painting was inspired by my return to the Hawaiian Islands after growing up there in the  ‘50s and ‘60s.  The sun, air, water and flowers all affected me radically on this trip and I fell in love with the Islands all over again.  I was regenerated by the experience of love and aloha spirit which permeates the air and I understood how profoundly I had been affected by the energies as a young and impressionable person.  I was still carrying that energy and understand in an unmistakable way that I have a responsibility for perpetuating that love and spirit to myself and all of those with whom I come into contact. It was truly a gift to be given.  The dolphins represent joy and community, as well as emotional contact and communication. The dolphin as a totem is a powerful bridge to the power of the breath in transformative processes.

The Message:  The primal Divine Feminine holds the power of love, beauty, color and light in her hands. It is her responsibility to use these gifts to shift the forces of darkness, destruction and pain into the Light.  Love, about all else, carries the potential of healing for self, community and the planet.

Infinite Compassion

 

This mandala arrived quite spontaneously on a retreat to Maui to process the loss of my sister, Nancy. The retreat location supported my goals in turning inward to gain more awareness of the meaning of our relationship. This descent was a powerful one and during my retreat there I met a woman, Isabela, with whom I discussed the necessity of expanding one’s heart to contain the pain and sorrow of loss – any kind of loss. This expansion often transforms pain into compassion and takes an incredible amount of patience and self-compassion to sustain. It becomes a practice if one has the devotion and commitment to the process.

We agreed that the capacity to take this path can provide a paradigm for healing – self, society and planet. We dedicated ourselves to this process at a sacred heiau on Maui and vowed to follow this path. My sister Nancy practiced unconditional love for most of her interesting  life and was a true model of maintaining this stance through very challenging life situations. I showed this mandala to Lama Gyaltsen at the Maui Dharma Center and he asked me to name it, dedicate and show it to as many people as I could as a vehicle for healing. The mandala is dedicated to my sister Nancy.

Mt. Shasta Mandala

 

This mandala was the second one I did on Maui. It was to honor the Sacred Mountain that I have such a connection with. I had been making a necklace that was inspired by a conversation I had with an angel I met at Castle Lake in the Shasta area. The necklace was inspired by my understanding that the radiance of the heart needed to be protected in healers who often have open hearts in a culture that does not “see” this. I started to make a breastplate out of one thousand crystal beads, planning to include the shape of a pink heart fashioned by pink crystals in the center of it. This necklace is represented in this mandala by the inner circle of white dots. The snakes encircling the inner circle symbolize transformation and the red feather represents the passionate commitment of the activated heart.

The whole mandala is set on a background of cosmic stars and the central star represents radiance and light, the most healing energy of the cosmos and a key element in our current healing crisis. The necklace can be seen in the near future on our sacred jewelry section of this website. The mandala is dedicated to the Angel whose name I do not know.

The Butterfly Mandala

 

After creating primarily geometric shapes in the mandalas I was doing, I began to feel the need for more organic, living symbols. Having worked with animal medicine for years, I decided to start with the butterfly, an ancient symbol of transformation as well as transmutation. Changing shapes is a powerful and important skill in the shamanic world and the butterfly can be an important reminder of this capacity in all of us.

In creating this mandala, the butterfly started to take shape and led to a wonderful process of spontaneously developing the shapes surrounding her. The wave shapes in the Circle were hand drawn and represent light waves in motion interspersed with jewels of light. Later, the diamond shapes presented themselves and lastly the Circle and the Star of David. This mandala was dedicated to my friend Isabela whose friendship inspired this artistic opening for me.

The Passion Flower

 

While painting in my studio to the strains of Beethoven’s music from the “Immortal Beloved”, I was suddenly struck by the power of the music as well as the subject matter which was this beautiful flower called the Passion Flower. Suddenly, I experienced the synergy of the erotic, the beautiful and the cosmic. Combining these three sources is the basis of the state of grace. I felt like a momentary midwife to this energy and was in a state of awe and appreciation to have experienced this synergy firsthand.

The message: Surrendering to one’s inner passions gives one the opportunity to acquire the state of grace. It is the process of putting passion into a form that is the pathway to this state.

The Spirit Dancer

 

This painting was a spontaneous response to having issues of money arrive in my consciousness while I was in my studio just fooling around one day. The painting initially started with the spherical image and the dollar signs.  Later in the evening this little creature arrived. Part of my process is erasing images out of a background color and revealing images I do not expect.  Upon doing some research I found that this image was related to Native American mythology and was known as the  “Spirit Dancer”. I then realized that this was the energy framework that would bring abundance to me.  The coyote was also part of the trickster, a good omen for doing business.

The message: The flow of authentic energy, represented by money in our culture, is most powerful when linked with Spirit!

The Shamanka and Her Raven (Dialogica)

 

This painting honors the role of the Divine Feminine in healing the planet.  The Shamanka is the Feminine Wounded Healer and she can travel between the worlds, gathering information from the healing forces of the Invisible realm.  The raven is one such messenger informing us about the importance of the soul and its purpose within each of us. The tipi represents the respect that is shown by the Native American culture for all of life in all its forms.

The message:  The immediate and unequivocal activation of the feminine healing energies is an absolute necessity for the healing of our planet. We are each responsible for manifesting, from our soul, some hidden, but important, part of planetary and individual evolution o consciousness. We, who live on this continent, are bound by a sacred covenant to help this process for the entire plant.