The story of the lighthouse:  How my painting knew deeper than I did

The story of the lighthouse: How my painting knew deeper than I did

I want to share something personal with you.

About 20 years ago, I was at Rutgers University studying art.

I remember one specific moment when the creative process took over completely. I sat outside on the ground in front of my dorm and painted a lighthouse with a flock of birds. I didn't understand what it was or why I was doing it.

Something just took over and made that picture.

Fast forward five years.

I had transferred to the Art Institute of Chicago, majoring in ceramics. A woman I met at a festival told me about a visionary artist coming to Chicago to lead a five-day painting workshop.

I just knew I had to be there, so I asked my parents for $300 as a birthday gift. I learned an ancient Venetian technique called painting with light, and it's one of the major techniques we learn together in Soul Journey.

This is when I painted "Visions of the Inner Eye," the painting that changed everything for me.

You see, when you're a person with so many ideas exploding through you, you need a vessel to hold them. My paintings had so many ideas but no depth. Amanda Sage taught me how to build real depth.

And as you can see, in the beams of light coming from the eyes of this self portrait, the lighthouse came back.

Fast forward another 10 years.

I did a four-hour meditation journey with an incredible facilitator, Dr. Tali. The kind of journey where you feel so safe and so guided that you go to places you didn't know you could reach.

And in that journey, with my eyes closed, images came.

An ocean.
A lighthouse.

Shapes that looked almost exactly like what I had painted years before, without knowing why.

There was a girl there. Lost, cold, barely alive. And I brought her to shore. I brought her back to life. And I let her go.

To this day, when I tell this story, I feel shivers up and down my whole body. That's how I know something is real at the core.

The next day I looked at that painting I had made years earlier. And I realized: the painting already knew. It was telling that story long before I had the words, or the awareness, or the courage to look at it.

That's what painting does.
It's more than making art.
It's telling a story.

A language that goes where words can't. A reflection of deeper parts of ourselves we didn't know how to look at.

I've been painting for 30 years and I'm still learning what my paintings know about my soul's journey.

That's what I want to give you in Soul Journey. Not just technique. The real thing: the layers, the depth, the story only you can tell.

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