The first inspiration for The Illumination of Gaia left me stumped. I knew the look I wanted for the painting, but lacked a model for Gaia herself. A few days later a Peruvian healer friend of mine dropped by the house for a visit. I had not seen her in some time, but quickly realized she would be an excellent model for my new painting. A woman of striking appearance, she carries a great earthy energy.

I asked her to pose for me and not only did she agree, but she delighted me further by not freezing up or becoming self conscious. Some people immediately turn into awkward sticks of wood, so this ease in modeling is not to be taken lightly!

That let me proceed with the painting I had visualized. I did not particularly paint a portrait of my friend, but used her features to create an image of a wild earthy goddess. I wanted her face illuminated with the strong beauty of a divine feminine vision.

I initially intended to paint the orb of the Earth with night time lights. However, I spontaneously painted the inside of the Earth instead, adding several alchemical symbols that deal with the transformative process.

The theme of this painting reflects my own contemplation of the upcoming Earth Healing Retreat February 19-23, 2011. I will be teaching an exciting new Earth Healing CCT class along with a watercolor workshop. In the watercolor workshop we apply the creative processes of Earth Healing to unleash creativity in a powerful way. More information can be found at my Art Energies site.

The painting is done in acrylics on canvas, 30" wide by 40" high. The original and limited edition prints areavailable at RiverStone Gallery.

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Shrill arguments rise about the rhetoric of violence, arguments trying to dodge taking responsibility for what has been said, deliberately blurring the crucial distinction between dissent and violence itself.

I suggest listening instead to K.D. Lang sing this song. The lyrics speak of bafflement, pain, anguish, and the broken heart. We as a nation feel all those things as we seek a different state of being than the one we experience today.

The voice of K.D. Lang takes us beyond the lyrics of the song and into the soaring of the human spirit. We always have the option of going through the pain to an awakening of our greater spirit. May we as a nation choose to find this soaring of the human spirit and bring it into direct action in our lives.

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Here is the perfect painting for the grinch in your life! Gunslinger, the rooster, has an unmistakable attitude that would make me hesitate to meet him in a dark alley. He is a great protector indeed.

I had great fun painting this rooster study in acrylics on canvas. The piece is only 18” by 24” so it will fit nearly anywhere. At least anywhere you want a commanding presence in a small space.

My artist husband said it has about as much oomph you can get in that size painting.

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Contact RiverStone Gallery for the original painting or limited edition giclee prints.

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I had an idea brewing for a large tiger painting, so I did this quick little 20” square sketch of a painting. After I painted the eyes, I became loose and playful with the acrylics. Using two pairs of complementary colors added visual impact.

Tigers are intense predators, but gentle and playful among their family members. My intention was for the painting to carry the spirit of tiger.

To my surprise, I sold this piece before I had even cleaned my brushes. That undoubtedly means I should soon paint the large version I see in mind’s eye!

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David Sandum, an artist living in Moss, Norway, organized a Twitter Art Show to benefit the library. Since Twitter uses 140 characters in each tweet, he decided to ask 140 Twitter artists to participate. Each painting is the size of a 5″ x 7″ postcard and should produce a delightful and varied show of works from many different countries.

The backlit poppy silhouette shown here is my contribution to the show, a mixed media work. The poppy is painted in watercolor and the black and gold in acrylics. I varnished the piece to make it easier for handling when they display the works in the library.

I am happy to participate in such a worthy and interesting project!

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An Awakening Fire is a visual translation of the past two years of my life, shown in the form of a shamanic dismemberment. Actually, this may also be a visual translation of the enormous changes the Earth herself is experiencing at this time.

For those of you who have not experienced a shamanic dismemberment, it occurs during a shamanic journey when the power animals and others suddenly shred you to pieces. If received without resistance it is not painful and when you discover yourself reassembled, you have been purified in unexpected ways.

I wish I could say that the real life equivalent was as easy as a shamanic dismemberment, but that, alas, has not been the case for me or for many of the rest of you.

In fact, creating the painting was itself a drastic event, due to the powerful energies it evoked in such a highly compressed manner. Five feet wide, the painting engulfed me for weeks.

The eyes of the hawk have the intense focus of a being on a great mission. After all, delivering the fire to ignite awakening instead of burning destruction requires a precisely coordinated use of power.

The painting allows you to move backwards and forwards in time. The flaming hawk has clearly just flown through the fragmenting figure ignited into an explosion of light near the center. At the same time you can see the flaming hawk flying straight for your own heart and you know you will soon be that exploding figure yourself.

Poppies, especially Shirley poppies, for me always represent transformation at the deepest levels. Ethereal, ephemeral, and yet stubbornly enduring, they are a beautiful expression of the transformative powers of light.

The leaf dressed in fall colors exemplifies the old falling away, a necessary part of any transformation. Another beauty and grace finds expression in the leaf.

And what shall I say of the eye? Is it the eye of the fragmenting figure, startled awake? Is it the eye of the observer, watching all that unfolds?

The Earth has been caught up in the process as well, or perhaps the Earth has caused it. After all, how can we live on a transforming planet without feeling the same impact ourselves?

A shimmering crystalline pattern descends on the left. Perhaps it is the web of life connecting all life. Perhaps it is the crystalline grid that allows change to process more rapidly and easily than our electro-magnetic systems have been able to manage.

So the golden music sings to us, opens our hearts to a greater vision, a new receptivity to divine harmony. After I finished this painting, I slept, dreaming of myriad layers of information in the painting.

I woke at 3 a.m. For the one and only time in my entire life my biological mind had stopped its incessant chatter. Suspended in an unmeasured time of divine harmony, an exquisite stillness was my only awareness. May you find your way there too.

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Artist’s Note: Contact RiverStone Gallery for information about the original acrylic painting and limited edition giclee prints.

Copyright © Lexi Sundell 2010. All Rights Reserved.

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Paintings can be complete surprises and this one certainly maxed out in that category. It started with a headache. Not an ordinary headache but a completely head-busting blinger of a headache that went on all night.

I got up in the morning and it eased slightly, but not a lot. A great white light was in the center of my head, surrounded by pain. I could see it was a major energy shift happening, but it was going far too slowly to suit me.

I wondered what would happen if I put my awareness in the white light in the center of my head instead of just watching it. When I did so, I saw this image and immediately wanted to paint it. I thought the process of painting it could move me through this latest shift more rapidly. My aching head liked that idea a lot!

I went into the studio and started hunting for a stretched canvas I could use, but none were the right height/width proportion for the image I had seen. I started sorting through a stack of panels leaned against the wall and found one that looked like the right shape. When I pulled it out and turned it around, it had one of my canvas giclees laminated on it. I had not yet gotten around to hand embellishing the print.

That poor print was doomed. I put it on the easel and painted it white with my acrylics. While it dried, I laid out tracing paper on the table and drew the outlines of the image I had seen. By the time I was done, the paint was still wet.

Annoyed, I got out the heat gun and played it across the paint. I am happy to say I did not set it on fire. The paint hastily dried and I took it to the table. A sheet of graphite paper let me trace the outline onto the canvas and I soon was painting.

My head still ached horribly, but somehow I was really enjoying painting. I kept at it like a woman possessed and the headache gradually eased. The last of it finally disappeared by 3 p.m. I finished the painting at 6 p.m. and was just cleaning my brushes when my artist husband came in the door.

I asked him to go down to the studio to see something. He assumed I was going to show him my progress on When A Flower Dreams, a painting I was in the midst of creating. When he saw this unexpected abstract on the easel his immediate response was, “Where in the hell did that come from?”

As he looked at it I explained how the painting came to be. He said I should have headaches more often and that he wished he had painted it. He likes most of my work but I have never heard him say that about any of my other paintings.

I had not told him the title was Metamorphosis. So I was delighted when he said, “If there was anywhere to put it, which there is not, but if there was and if it was me, I would paint a butterfly in it.” Abstract or not, it had clearly communicated to him.

That, along with the fact my headache was completely gone, was quite enough for me.

Copyright © Lexi Sundell 2010. All Rights Reserved.

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In the bad news of the day BP stands tarred in condemnation for the horrendous crime against nature their incompetence has unleashed. The bad news does not stop there. It is not just BP. This is an issue for all of humanity and none of us can dodge it, disclaim our responsibilities, or ignore it.

Only one issue in this matter is of any significance. Are you as a human being aligned with your soul in service to the divine so that you live every day in reverence for the life of all beings and the earth herself? This is a question both for the individual and for humanity as whole.

The primary purpose of humanity is to master free will and choice. Two main paths lead to this mastery. One is the often traveled road of self destruction. By ignoring our connection to the divine we can focus on our own unbalanced emotional needs or mentally driven ideas that spin out of control without the vital surrender to the divine. Greed, war, excessive self-indulgence, and other atrocities mark this path.

The far less common path is that of choosing to surrender to the divine which leads to the joyful acceptance of all the life on this planet. This path usually gets scant attention, which is reason enough for our predicament in the Gulf of Mexico oil spill.

Mastering the art of free will and choice by massive self-destruction is a gruesome and painful way to learn the consequences of our choices, but the mass consciousness of humanity has mired itself in that path.

I have witnessed a wide range of responses and reactions to the oil spill. I saw a comment online by someone complaining his vacation to Florida was being spoiled and he wished the oil spill had been delayed a few days. How small minded and self interested is that?

Others have reacted with anger or emotional pain at the huge destruction to the ecosystem. Still others are left wondering how to survive with their livelihoods damaged or destroyed. And then there are those who discuss using a nuclear bomb to seal the oil leak.

Blaming BP is epidemic. BP is, of course, far from blameless, but their acts are only the tip of this particular iceberg in human consciousness.

No one doubts that this is a time of massive upheaval and change. The havoc in global financial conditions is unmistakable, even to those who usually keep their minds buried in their television sets. Other changes even more unpredictable loom on the horizon.

So what on earth is going on? That is indeed the question.

Great transformational energies are moving through our entire solar system, our planet, our own individual beings. This is not a tidy process. Everything mired in outmoded patterns is getting thrown out in the cosmic house cleaning. New patterns we do not understand are replacing them, in a great stew of chaos.

The earth has her own deep transformation moving with inexorable power. For untold eons this planet has been a refuge for those of us who came to hide, to struggle with our wounds from unknown battles. The earth has been a sanctuary, although not often recognized in that role.

Now the earth sets a new course as her own transformation unfolds. She is no longer holding the sanctuary but is moving into some new role of her own choosing. That profound shift has been like an earthquake in human consciousness, just as though our anthill had taken a huge kick.

Without pause, another change enters the world with the BP oil spill. The earth is choosing not to tolerate the misuse of humans she has endured for so long. The choice to master free will and choice by self-destruction will be accelerated now, even as the choice to master free will and choice by service to the divine will also be accelerated.

The division is wrenchingly deep as humanity tries to make its own evolutionary leap in this chaotic flux of energies. Unfortunately even some of those who cry out against the destruction in the oil spill are still doing so out of self interest.

I love the beauty of this planet and the way I have experienced it in my life. I do not want to let that beauty go.

However, I have to ask why should the earth hold back from choosing a cycle in which she is loved and respected by all who live here? Does she deserve to be plundered and despoiled? Do any of us deserve to be plundered and despoiled?

The answer seems obvious enough to me. If I am serious about my choice to align my soul with the divine, I must surrender to this process. I do not understand it all and I do not know how the transformation will complete. As humans we may not be part of the picture anymore if too many hold to the path of self-destruction.

I do know the choice that I find worthwhile and trust that path for myself. And I ask for a blessing for the earth in her new cycle as she shakes off the old patterns, the old ways of being.

So what choice do you make at this crossroads for humanity?

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In Jonathan Fields recent brief post he asked if creativity is an addiction. He had a couple of other questions as well, but the bulk of his post was a quote by Pearl S. Buck who said:

The truly creative mind in any field is no more than this: A human creature born abnormally, inhumanely sensitive. To them… a touch is a blow, a sound is a noise, a misfortune is a tragedy, a joy is an ecstasy, a friend is a lover, a lover is a god, and failure is death.

Add to this cruelly delicate organism the overpowering necessity to create, create, create — so that without the creating of music or poetry or books or buildings or something of meaning, their very breath is cut off…

They must create, must pour out creation. By some strange, unknown, inward urgency they are not really alive unless they are creating.

Pearl S. Buck plainly did not distinguish between empathy and creativity, which are two entirely different processes. She simply described unbalanced empathy with a dose of creativity added. This was not much of an exploration or definition of creativity, so using her words to leap into a discussion of creativity as addiction was a leap into greater error yet.

The fact of the matter is that human beings are inherently creative, so it is not an abnormality at all. School often enough stamps most of those creative impulses into dormancy so many adults do not even realize they are creative beings. If you are one of these adults, just try going through an entire day glaring angrily and snapping at everyone around you and see what you have created by the end of the day. That should leave no doubt that in myriad unnoticed ways we are endlessly creative in our lives.

It is entirely possible to be creative without being particularly empathetic. Creativity is a way of combining elements or concepts to come up with something new, probably something a bit unexpected. To use art as an example, most people respond to art that tickles at the edge of their normal way of perceiving, because that is what they experience as innovative and exciting. If it goes too far past what they perceive as normal, they do not connect to it all, and if it falls short of their boundaries it bores them. This spectrum of innovation and excitement is characteristic of creativity and does not have anything directly to do with empathy unless empathy itself is being explored in the process.

Empathy is a warmly human quality which can be experienced in a variety of ways, just as creativity can be. Overly sensitive people are often overwhelmed by their unbalanced empathy, but this is a distortion of what should be a normal process. Empathy can accompany a drive to creative expression, but should not be mistaken for creativity itself, as Pearl S. Buck did.

Her description speaks more clearly about distorted empathy than healthy creative expression. When one opens the gates within oneself to that divine source of inspiration, it does lead to great outpourings of creation. Since I believe that our human purpose is to clearly express that amazing divine essence that lies in each of us, I do agree it can be fairly said that none of us are really alive unless we are creating, each of us in our own unique ways.

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If the competition still existed I would easily have it nailed for this month. When I am tired and confronted with more than I can accomplish, sometimes I choose spontaneous shortcuts. Usually this is ok. But last week I tripped over one particular annoying bucket one too many times and I solved the problem, sort of.

This bucket held some leftover seed starting mix, and a couple of years ago an astonishingly diligent mouse piled a bunch of cilantro seeds on top of the mix. Carefully removing cilantro seeds was low on my priority list and the bucket has been uselessly in the way ever since. I finally got fed up with it.

I dumped the whole thing into the muck tub that holds the recycled potting mix from the poor plants I never got planted last year when I got sick. I figured I already have cilantro self-seeding all over the place so weeding a few more would be no big deal. Then I continued mixing the recycled mix half and half with fresh potting mix as I pot things up this year.

Well. The mouse had apparently also collected a lot of sunflower seeds and peas. It looked like quite a lot of them as I churned it into the rest of the stuff in the tub. As I used the moistened mix the next few days I found sprouting peas, which I have plopped into little pots. Like about two dozen of them so far.

The sunflowers I simply uprooted until the warm days made everything start germinating. Including all the bazillions of grass seeds I had not even seen. I now start each morning by weeding wee sprigs of grass from the most recently potted plants. Otherwise I would end up growing little pots of sod.

This is the most nonsensical thing I have done in a long time. Perplexed at how to deal with the remaining mix that is now a tangle of sprouts, I threw it in the bottom of the big pots I put tomatoes in last night, announcing to them, “Have some salad!” Then I put non-seedy mix on top of that, deep enough it should be the end of the problem.

I wryly informed my husband I should put up a sign where I pot the plants, “Never underestimate human stupidity.” He laughed and said I should put up a sign, “Never underestimate a mouse.”

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