The Making of “Visionary” – the Painting

Enjoy this 23-minute video (click above) of the making of “Visionary”, a 24″x24″ intuitive painting based on a vision received during the COVID-19 pandemic. Its creation took a week in April 2020.

In this video, you’ll witness the co-creative process behind its 15 layers of intention, energy, paint, and textured gels. As usual, the process itself informed what the painting was to become.

The original is sold, but prints are available in your choice of size & medium.

About one month into the COVID-19 pandemic, I received a vision that reappeared periodically during times of meditation or contemplation.

It consisted of a female face with an Earth globe left eye (linked to the Right intuitive feminine receptive brain) and a right eye (linked to the Left masculine action-oriented analytical brain) covered by a sweeping bang.

I stared at my blank canvas for a week before making a basic compositional decision. Usually, I don’t even bother with that until the background layers get me deeper into the co-creative process.

I know this delay was partly due to nervousness. To get the Earth eye big enough to notice, I’d have to only focus on the face, not the full or partial figure.

Painting faces make me nervous. I still haven’t found my own unique way of expressing faces with paint, despite my focus on sketching figures during my last trimester at the Vienna Academy of Visionary Art back in 2013/14.

So I wanted to get a basic idea down on paper before I started.

Luckily, there are no mistakes in the intuitive painting process. Every layer becomes part of the overall energy & texture of the final piece.

That’s why I never mind covering up much of those initial soothing, flowing, cheerful, and chaotic layers of colours and shapes.

They not only add depth and interest to the background, they represent the rich full-bodied life experience of the Visionary.

I’ll admit though, I felt rather silly (just for a few minutes) when I realized that I’d based my face’s dimensions on a 20″ x 20″ composition before grasping that my canvas was actually a 24″ x 24″. Oops.

You see, I’d uncharacteristically decided to use a photo to map out the face instead of improvising.

Basing myself on one of the portraits that Christine Radnich took of me in the Chalice Well Gardens in Glastonbury last summer, I zoomed in to the face and adjusted the levels so I could more clearly see where the highlights and shadows were.

Then, I created a grid of 1-inch squares to base myself on for the composition.

It was only after I’d painted the eyes and the nose that I realized that my memory had played tricks on me. I’d bought a 24″x 24″, not a 20″x20″ stretched canvas. My dimensions were all “wrong”!

Once I let go of the woulda, coulda, shouldas, however, I embraced the mystery of what this would inspire.

The eyes were easy to correct – I went back to my original vision, covering up the right action-oriented eye with strands of golden mica – creating a filtering energy of love & compassion inherent to this mineral. So far, so good.

As I danced on my mini-trampoline contemplating my improvised bottom half of the face, I decided that the painting needed additional layers.

I asked my Team of Divine Helpers to inspire me as I pondered the evolving COVID-19 situation from a visionary point of view.

A visionary not only sees visions, as I often describe my clairvoyant process. A visionary uses wise foresight and imagination to envision a better brighter future. 

From this point of view, I tuned into the Spirit of Transformation that is enveloping the planet.

Like the caterpillar protected in its chrysalis sack, our worldwide isolation and forced slow-down is pushing us towards radical transformation.

Our way of being is disappearing, bit by bit, opening us up to emerging from our cocoons in a much more expansive way, aligned with our Truth, aligned with Divine Oneness.

It’s an exciting time! We’re not meant to come out of this as caterpillars. We don’t want to go back to the old normal!

It’s time to spread our wings and be the butterflies we were always meant to be.

After my meditative dance session, I was back in the zone, moved moment-by-moment as to what to design and which materials & colours to use.

The butterfly’s highly-textured granular wings fuelled by love & compassion are filled with the passionate fiery energy of transformation.

It was only once these were completed that I was shown the butterfly’s body as a goddess with her arms up in the air, emulating antennae. This gave her a stance of balance, opening, celebration, and appreciation for this new world vision.

As has become my custom, I filled the butterfly wings with dots, each one a prayer, an intention or thanks for all those making a difference in these transformational times.

We need them. We need you.

We’re all contributing to our evolving Reality with our allowing, inspired actions, prayers, imagination, focus, and more.

What kind of world are you envisioning?

What new ways of being and doing would you like to see continue or emerge after the crisis is over?

Please comment below so that together we can shape our future in the Spirit of Transformation and with wings of change.

Thank you.

P.S. “Visionary”- (24″ x 24″) – mixed media on gallery-wrapped canvas – SOLD. Prints available in your choice of medium & size.