Shamanic painting original and print: Altar

I love to find altars in nature, as if Gaia herself were making little rituals of beach logs and salal twigs where I can sit in wonder and meditate on the play of light and shadow in patterns of wood grain.

Sometimes I see that other than human creatures emerge in the shadow play of these altars in nature.  Here a child climbs toward me, there someone calls out strongly.

In my shamanic paintings of nature, I paint to remember each part, and every part between the parts.  I want there to be no past indifferent moment, no forgotten place.

ALTAR
fine art original of acrylic on matte board
fine art print


For more information about purchasing my art go to my web store

Celebrating Summer Solstice in Art of the Desert

When planning ways to celebrate summer solstice, find a place where the sun can easily attend.  My understanding is that summer solstice is the Sun's wedding day, and so of course He will want to be there.  If you do not live in the desert--choose a location with a big view, or mountain or massive stone;  choose a place that has the Sun in its majesty and scale already present.

Bring gifts to the creatures whose homes you are disturbing with your wedding festivities. The animals, birds and insects will likely feel better about you descending on their neighborhood if you come with shiny colorful objects and feast foods just for them.

Invite the spirits of place in their sacred plant forms to sit with you to honor the Sun.  Bring special handmade offerings, food and incense.  Spirits are attracted to our effort, and want to taste a little bit of the bounty we create at this summer solstice time.

Leave something precious for the place to enjoy after you go.  At this time of year a cup of water may have great value. So might also a song given to the wind, who could play with the vibration and keep flowing your breath long after you depart.

Leave spirit in place when your festivities for summer solstice are complete.  Leave every small deliciously attractive natural object in its true home.  When we take what is not freely given we leave a hole in the spirit of place, and this in turn leaves a tear in the fabric of our obligation to the other-than-human-creatures, forms and forces that share this earth with us.  

Happy Solstice from the Journey Oracle.  May you find yourself  dancing at the Wedding Feast, and may you remember the taste of the Groom's cake long after the Sun has left the party. 

This series of 6 works in watercolor pencil are from the desert near

Ojo Caliente, New Mexico 

made while I was studying with Martin Prechtel.  

For more information about purchasing these fine art prints

individually or as a set

contact Kristen at journeyoracle@gmail.com

Shamanic painting original and fine art print: Praying for Rain

This chalk pastel painting is the image of a true story of a ritual made to pray for rain.  Many years ago on Cortes Island the rains did not come and the salmon were circling and circling in the sea, waiting to come into the rivers to spawn, but there was not enough water to bring them home.

Myself and two other women spent a day pounding on an ancient stone on the Cortes shore, calling the rain to come and help the salmon.  Earlier I had been given a Heron's wing by someone who just left it in my living room, with no note of explanation.  Since I understand that the Heron is the sentinel of well being in these waters--we burned the wing so that its breath could rise to the clouds and call the rain.

We danced in the smoke and cinders until two porpoise came close to the shore and in their spouting breaths we understood that our call would be answered.  And a few days later, the rains came.  

There are lots of ways to be of service.  And many forms for an Oracle speaking.  I am just now reading Memories, Dreams, Reflections, the autobiography of C.G. Jung.  He describes how we can ultimately only tell our personal myth.  "Whether or not the stories are 'true' is not the problem.  The only question is whether what I tell is my fable, my truth."  This story of  my inner, invisible life with spirit--and how it irrupts into ordinary reality--is for me, the only art worth making.

PRAYING FOR RAIN

Original Chalk Pastel on Matte Board

 70 cm x 54 cm framed…$1,500.00

Custom fine art print on acid free velvet art paper

with archival inks

17” x 11” (43 cm x 27 cm) unmatted….$190.00

shrink wrapped on foam core for shipping

shipping included

For more information contact Kristen at journeyoracle@gmail.com

See more shamanic art originals and prints at 

www.journeyoracle.com

Shamanic painting and print: Ode to Stones that Speak

I am preparing to give a workshop in Edmonton on Speaking with Stones and find myself reflecting on this chalk pastel drawing I created titled: Ode to Stones that Speak.  This is one of those mysterious shamanic paintings that keeps its full meaning hidden even from me.

For many years I have been able to receive messages from stones--not in images but as vibrations that translate into Yes and No, and also into phrases that have the potency of poetry.  I first had this experience after attending a workshop with a student of Michael Harner who had attended sessions at the Foundation for Shamanic Studies.  We were supposed to receive images from the stone surface to translate into answers to questions we posed, yet I kept feeling a vibrating presence in the stone, and also hearing syllables that joined together to become phrases of archaic formality and beauty.  I have courted this stone speech for many decades, and sometimes honor the presence I feel by creating art inspired by my experience.

This shamanic art of chalk pastel is a visual song to the mystery of stones that speak to me. While I cannot explain why things appear as they do--I am delighted and emboldened knowing that a stone knows that fish and whales can soar in water filled with the flight of birds, and that moss grows with a human face.

ODE TO STONES THAT SPEAK

Original Chalk Pastel on Matte Board
or fine art print

For more information about purchasing my art go to my web store.

Fine art print of a shamanic story

The subject for this chalk pastel is a literal scene taken from shamanic work I have done with my students.  The client of this work was a herd of buffalo spirits of place in Buffalo Lake, Alberta.  In dreams and forms of divination we were shown that the buffalo were still part of the nature of the place, even though now the lake edge was massed with summer cottages, boat ramps and recreational vehicles.  Their presence was strong in winter, when all the human toys were stored away and the lake edge whispered with the dry rattle of bare branches.  We understood the buffalo were starving because no one was feeding them by remembering the beauty of their living there.  And of course as spirits, they could not die, but could continue to starve.

In one of those synchronistic moments of inspiration before leaving for Edmonton, I asked my partner to make us some little arrows of wood, plus I cut some pieces of doweling and drilled holes to fit the two together—knowing not what the little boats were for.

Upon arriving and settling in our guest house on the lake , my students and I realized that the winter birds could carry our prayers as food to the buffalo, and so we set about building boats full of seeds for the birds, that they would look kindly on our request for their help.  In order not to build competition or jealous comparison into our project, which would not taste good to birds or buffalo, we passed each boat to the next woman at each next stage of its construction.

When all the boats were built and filled by everyone, we took them to every kind of terrain we could find so our prayers would fly in all the voices of the land.  From high on hills, and in the tangle of sedge and willow, and along the lake edge—we sailed our boats to feed the birds who could carry our prayers of remembering to the buffalo. And later, it did seem like everything moving among the empty, silent summer cabins that night was warm and well, and had full bellies.

FEEDING THE HOMELESS

Custom fine art print on acid free velvet art paper

with archival inks

17” x 11” (43 cm x 27 cm) unmatted….$190.00

shrink wrapped on foam core for shipping

shipping included

To order contact Kristen at journeyoracle@gmail.com

See more shamanic art originals and prints at 

www.journeyoracle.com

Shamanic Art Original and Fine Art Print

This original chalk pastel is titled “Lunch in the Garden” and captures the intense vibrancy of sitting in a still cool July morning, enjoying a cuppa and looking out at the extravagant ornateness of summer blooms. ..while perhaps wearing a fish hat.

As a visual artist who has taught many years of middle school and university level art students, as well as given hours of painting workshops to adults, I love to surprise my student’s creative process by creating images in unusual ways.  This pastel probably wins the prize for the most peculiar source for an art image that I’ve ever suggested.

My students and I sat in a circle with all manner of almost used up art materials on a table in the center.  Amid much laughter and increasing little kid messiness, we passed a breakfast cereal box around and around; each one of us selecting a tube of paint, crayon, pen, ink brush—anything that would make a mark—and covered the inside of the box without peeking inside.  When we had as much color smeared on ourselves as we imagined was smeared inside, we opened the box to dry flat.  What a riot of color and pattern!  Such a wild story of shapes and textures could never be told by planning the effects or checking on progress.

When the art materials were dry, we used strips of white paper taped into a small picture “frame” and moved these around the cardboard until we found forms that spoke back to our wandering gaze.

Once we had located an area and taped our frame over it, this was cut out and became the source image for our painting.  We then had the good fun and visual challenge of trying to replicate exactly the different materials and marks to a scale that ‘jumped up’ into art.

LUNCH IN THE GARDEN

Original Chalk Pastel on Matte Board

20”(w) x 13”(h) (51 cm x 33 cm) unframed…$500.00

Matted to fit 26.5” x 20” frame

shrink wrapped on foam core for shipping

shipping included

Custom fine art print on acid free velvet art paper

with archival inks

17” x 11” (43 cm x 27 cm) unmatted….$150.00

shrink wrapped on foam core for shipping

shipping included

To order contact Kristen at journeyoracle@gmail.com

See more shamanic art originals and prints at 

www.journeyoracle.com

Shamanic painting and print: Touching Trees

In 2004 the 80 acre piece of forested land across the road from our property on Cortes Island went on the market. Although my friends and neighbors joined me in ceremonies to call a buyer who would respect the elemental big forces that lived there, no one answered but the loggers.

When the wreckage subsided, I climbed over the broken forest to a large cedar still standing by a small stream almost gone underground from the silt-covered drifts of branched across its flow. I asked, “What do you need that I can do?” and saw with my inner eye the jumbled remains of tree stumps stretching into the distance, and also a small jar of red paint. I understood to touch every tree, and spent a year climbing over branches and falling through brambles, touching my finger into a jar of red ochre and then touching every tree stump.

At the very beginning of my impossible task, I found a small chip of wood with a beautiful burled patterning on its reverse, and I kept this with the ochre in the pocket of my old coat. Each time I would complete my struggle for the day, I would wipe my finger clean on the cut side of the wood. One year later at the end of my not quite so impossible task I decided to create a shamanic painting of the clear cut to honor all the tiny shoots of green pushing up to soften the haul roads and cat tracks.

When I paint I begin along the upper edge and paint, finished as I go, to the bottom edge. The painting in progress looks like a completed work with a white film over portions of the image that is slowly being peeled off a few inches a day. After I had completed about 1/3 of the portrait of the clear cut, I became bored with where it might be going.

I remembered the little piece of wood still in my old coat, and when I spent time gazing into its ochre-stained surface—this is who I saw. I do not know who she is and what she is holding, but if you take some moments to meet her gaze, she might tell you.

Custom fine art print on acid free velvet art paper

with archival inks

17” x 11” (43 cm x 27 cm) unmatted….$300.00

sealed on acid free foam core for shipping

shipping included

To purchase email Kristen at journeyoracle@gmail.com

See more shamanic paintings at www.journeyoracle.com