An Inspired Dream Come to Life | Naming My Collection + Inspiration Board
Just like my body I want my art to breathe life. I want my space to breathe life. Art contains the energy of the artist as messenger and the collective energy of the world and the different tribes we connect with. Art IS Life.
I had no idea where I was going with this collection when I started out on it. I also had no idea that it would connect so much to the artist awakening that I had the summer of 2016.
I didn't quite realize the connection until I was answering some questions about my artist journey during an interview the other day.
The question I was asked was when I started painting and the interviewer was surprised to find out that it has only been a little over a year. I'm surprised myself! I never expected this.
I shared the name of the collection, Primal Dreams and the story that follows...
I believe that awakenings happen from incremental shifts over time.
Without a doubt, the last 10 years of serious healing energy I've put into taking care of myself was the largest precursor to my creative revival and awakening. Everything I have done has helped me lead me up to this point.
However, the specifics of that last summer are quite interesting and synchronous.
It had been over a year since I had completed my yoga teacher training and I was feeling like it was more difficult than ever to do yoga! My body felt like it weighed 2 tons and like I was wading through tar all the time.
I could barely do a forward fold without wanting to cry. And I couldn't cry! What an awful feeling!
It was during this time that I had an epiphany (built up from days and months and years of small moments).
It was that I needed to STOP. Completely.
Stop teaching, stop doing workshops...just do the bare necessity to support myself financially so I could take care of the true source of abundance (myself) and SURRENDER.
I took this message...seriously this time. Because there was nothing else I could do but listen. I'd tried every other way and I still felt like pick-your-word-on a stick.
Each day I would wake up in fatigue, pain, heavy body claustrophobia and just listen.
Starting from the ground up, I did restorative yoga and yin yoga. I took everything I'd learned over the years and gave it 100% completely to myself.
The attention, the presence, the intention.
I never left the floor really.
Instead of pushing my body through the heaviness and the pain, I opened up to it. I got curious about it. I validated it and saw clearly how it represented immense amounts of grief that were normal reactions to earlier experiences in my life.
It was extremely hard. Words can't really describe it.
As I listened, my body started to wake up ...through pain.
I intuitively knew that the muscles that were opening were connected to the fight/flight/freeze response in my body. I watched as it started from my legs and went all the way up to my head over months worth of time.
I remember feeling my back for the first time, feeling my legs activate like they hadn't in decades.
Then there were the muscle spasms through the night. Aching and pain during the day. Convulsions and cramping at night.
I was blown away by how much pain was coming up.
Yet simultaneously I wasn't fazed.
I knew I had been carrying muscle tension for decades and that I was just now starting to feel a lot of what that tension had been protecting me from.
I continued to do this day in and day out..it felt like it was going on forever!
And then one night, around 2am, I woke up around the standard time that my unconsciousness would throw me back into the room and reality to do some more yin poses.
After a lengthy hip opening pose, all of a sudden, I had a rush of creative inspiration pass through my entire body.
I felt imagery and impressions and a dreamlike state that surrounded my birth come through.
I was in a deeply meditative state and I felt tapped into my newborn self, appearing from the womb, greeting the world and feeling scared by it and confused.
I processed a lot of feelings that night about being in the womb and coming into life.
I didn't want to be born, I wanted to stay in the comfort of the soothing dark. The world felt harsh, bright, intense. People were staring at me, urgently waiting for me. It didn't feel easy or gentle. Childbirth rarely is.
I ended up scribbling lot's of doodles of this experience. Peeking through the sacred circle of the womb. Seeing round faces stare back at me. Fertility goddesses.
Then I fell back asleep.
From that day forward, the art and the creative inspiration hasn't stopped.
As I shared the name of my collection with the interviewer, I realized that this collection all started with a primal dream from that one summer's night. That my human life is the culmination of a primal dream. That this creative awakening is a rebirthing of my true self.
How funny that I was creating this collection from that nonverbal place and then read the language in the paint after!
It has never been more clear to me that I speak with energy and feeling and that the words often find themselves much later!
The primal and dreamlike aspects of this collection came through my hands and heart and now I can see that this relationship between myself and the canvas has been building for a long time.
That my journey is deeply connected to this work and that I am not in control or in charge of what I create when it is coming from this inspired place.
I also wasn't in charge of the awakening because I had so many starts and stops over the years and there was no forcing it!
I thought I'd share a few of the connections I made in free flow form to Primal Dreams:
I love organic marks and shapes because they are the same lines and movement that make mountains and flow water🎨
I love dancing, movement, free flowing.
A dream- a happy dream because I never thought I'd be doing this and feel this connected and joyful to my purpose
A dream because it's channeled through my perspective, my lens of the world.
A dream because it's representative of what my nighttime dreams feel like- ethereal, transparent yet slipping thru my fingers, edgy, soft, energized and full of emotion and passion
Representative of my daytime dreams, because my creativity, imagination and thoughts are where I've hung out for good and for bad.
The idea of a dream becoming a reality
Representative of my creative awakening. It happened at night around 3am in this dream like state
This collection uses a limited color palette, similar to primal and tribal art where our ancestors had limited access to the palette and tools they found in their environment.
The essence of mark making, using fingers, palms, impulsive and energetic movement couple with a grounded meditative state.
Real, raw, authentic, human dancing in the infinite capsule of spirit and in life.
Also, See below for a little inspiration board that I have created (again after the collection) that represents the modern dreams and imagery that inspire these pieces.
Thanks for listening in. I hope my story inspires you to listen deeply to yourself and to be patient with wherever you are. Something beautiful is unfolding!
Ofcourse, I can't wait to reveal the full collection to you! It releases Monday September 18th at 10am and on Sunday at 8pm for subscribers. Enter your email below to get on the list.