I was called towards a lot of time spent painting during the year long deep retreat into myself after the horse accident. In 2016, many paintings began to emerge with a circular pattern of energy wanting to be expressed. The more I expressed it, the bigger this energy became. Eventually, in the Time To Go painting, I realized it was a portal.
Time To Go is 11-feet long, and I cannot express to you the joy it was to create such a large painting.
A year long journey of deep self-exploration, which included SoulCentric Painting, followed an accident that cracked my pelvic bone in three places. As I explored the energies wanting to become known, a swirling portal of energy became evident in a series of paintings (see previous post). It climaxed in wanting to face this portal, to go through it (or not). I felt tremendous time pressure towards the end and finished it all in a flurry of energy.
Nearing the finish of this 21-foot long circular painting, I’d fortunately walked through to the other side, before a big wind knocked over painting boards in my outside studio, tearing the painting. I could not live with the tears, so I stitched it up.
At the time of this Mid-Life Portal Painting, big decisions had begun to percolate to the surface, choices around my career paths, with options before me. At the conclusion of this painting (approximately one month) I had made a major life decision, to enter grad school for a PhD in Clinical Psychology, with a focus on somatic and creative work! My intention is to continue this thread of healing through creativity and expand my ability to teach others in institutional settings.
Passing Through the Mid-Life Moment Where Everything Gets Quiet
These past few months have been a long journey down, down, down. I keep wondering how much deeper down I can go, when a ravine will open up in a painting, plummeting me further down. Sometimes its a crack, sometimes much bigger. Either way I’ve now accepted the only way through this journey is to keep taking each portal down.
I’ve been finding important parts of myself along the way. Scary images appeared, hungry mouths, watchful eyes, lots of bones. A gold cage appeared, and it wasn’t until after the hand appeared in the cage that I found I’d reclaimed a missing part of myself, and began to write, in earnest. (The realization is almost always after the fact, not during. In fact it was a few weeks later that I realized what soul part I’d reclaimed – my youthful love of writing!)
Getting the Wild Beast out!! This painting happened before the three headed dog of the underworld emerged.
A message of slowing down, releasing the push and the drive, dropping deeper in to pay attention to that which has not yet taken shape. New motifs appeared in this painting.
