The ideas for the paintings in my books all sort of materialize the moment I sit down to paint. I believe in making a space and then allowing energy to flow into it. My task is to channel the expression as directly as possible from some unconscious region inside me onto the paper. In this painting as I was connecting with a certain kind of emotional space, a very clear image came to me. Most often the shapes and figures in my painting are totally brand new creations in the moment, crystallizing an internal feeling. This time as I began to paint, I remembered a very powerful experience I had about a year earlier, doing a Native American ritual called “Vision Quest”. I was fortunate to find a wise teacher who was of the Lakota tribe and I had been participating in a number of ceremonies he directed over the years. The orange house you s! ee in the painting represents a small structure called a “sweat lodge” in which a ceremony is performed that involves bringing rocks that have been heated in a fire into the structure and placed in a small pit in the center. People sit on the ground around the pit in the dark and listen to the prayers of the leader and join in singing and offering their own prayers in the hot dark steamy space. The leader pours water on the hot rocks at special moments in the ceremony and this intensifies the heat. The feeling you get inside is of being purified and of being very close to Mother earth. Possibly you are pushed to let go of fear or discomfort and to reach out to a greater power to guide or protect you.
In my case we performed a sweat lodge ceremony before I began my vision quest. A vision quest is simple. It is basically a period of time where a person stays out alone in the wilderness and “cries for a vision” to the “Great Spirit”. The Vision Quest is a time when an individual clarifies what is important in their life and seeks guidance from a higher power to know which way to go. In my case I was in a forest in Minnesota , it could also be done in a desert or in the mountains. I stayed for two days, during which I fasted and only drank water. Actually my stay was kind of short compared to others which ! last up to ten days, but my health wasn’t so stable at that time. During the Vision Quest I prayed and hiked and meditated. After the second night I was singing at the edge of a lake that was surrounded by trees and hills. I had the feeling of being enclosed in a magical space, a natural cathedral and I felt my voice echoing with a power that was much bigger than my own singular small voice. I felt myself opening and then overflowing with grief, touching a place that cried out, “I don’t want to be alone”. It was a moment of deep understanding and realization about what was important and necessary in my life. The Native Americans believe that the “Great Spirit will provide you with what you need” and a few moments later I got a chance to test the depth of my commitment to my new understanding. The area I was staying was very remote and I was told it was very unlikely that I would see anyone during my time there. However as I! made my way back to the sweat lodge where I has slept the last two nights, a very funny looking guy with a big dog on a long rope came awkwardly into the area. My first reaction was to be a little mad because his dog running all over an area where people had made special preparations and considered to be sacred, also I had expected to be by myself. However I remembered my prayer of about thirty minutes earlier and stopped myself from being short tempered and instead was kind and patient with his questions. Actually it felt quite good to be nice to him and he didn’t stay long before continuing on his hike. After he left I reflected that this was the lesson that the universe or Great Spirit had to teach me, that if you don’t want to be alone then you have to make a space where others can meet you. You have to be willing to let them in. The Native Americans and many other spiritual traditions that are open to the mysterious aspects of spiritual understanding believe that th! ese kind of “synchronicities” or specially timed experiences and coin! cidences happen at just the right moment when they can teach you something. They also believe that such events are a sign that you are on the right path and “doing exactly what you should be doing in exactly the right place” in regard to your spiritual learning process.
My painting came from a moment about a year later when I sat down to paint and connected with that magical mysterious experience. The man between the trees, the lake the sweat lodge and the mysterious image in the sky are my expressions to describe the feeling of awe I had in that place. After completing the painting I felt grateful to revisit the experience. Making the painting helped me to go deeper into the feelings and realizations and remember them again in the present.
