I do this because of a dream

Sometimes I watch my dogs while they’re sleeping.

They kick their legs and make little barking sounds because in the dream world, they are chasing something.

Their dream world isn’t any less real than this physical world. In the dream world, they are running.

I’ve always been fascinated by dreams and have kept a dream journal since I was a teenager.

Back then, my dreams were often jarring, even violent.

I’m genetically predisposed to sleep disturbances. My grandmother and her siblings experienced shared dreams when they were children, and my grandmother was a frequent sleepwalker. She used to go from the second floor of her house all the way down to the basement and stoke the stove with coal while she was asleep.

Growing up, I frequently experienced night terrors and sleep paralysis and vivid dreams.

Because I’ve kept detailed journals and done a lot of dream analysis, I’ve come to believe there are different types of dreams.

There are dreams that feel to me like toxic purge - like I’m just processing junk from the day, and there are dreams that feel like distinct messages from spirit (I have dreams of literal signs;) there are dreams that feel like visitations to other realms; there are dreams that feel like maps; there are dreams that feel like conversations.

We can ask for a dream of guidance on any issue that is facing us, and when we’re lucky the dream can take us out of the boxes of the everyday mind’s approach to that theme. - Robert Moss

It was about eight years ago that I decided to come back to painting after many years away.

Instead of art-making according to rules, this was intuitive art-making - organic and free.

I began to paint images of the sacred feminine. It was like pulling myself out of one phase of life into the next. It was soul retrieval - like journeying out in time and finding pieces of myself that I’d left or lost, and bringing them back in.

Painting again was emotional and transformational and it wasn’t long after I began it that I had the dream.

In the dream someone spoke to me and said, “You’re going to make medicine paintings.”

My painting process was a meditation process. I wrote my prayers on my canvas then painted a portal for the image to come through, then painted the image, then listened for what the painting wanted to say.

In the dream, the someone told me I would be engaging this process on behalf of other people.

It sounded scary - sort of impossible.

How could I possibly do this for another person? I had no way of knowing what a finished painting was going to look like. What if someone purchased a painting from me and then hated it?

But the dream was vivid and clear.

It wasn’t a question.

It was guidance.

Now, I would never use the phrase medicine painting when describing my work because I am not Native American, and it sounds a little too much like appropriation, but I understood the message.

I understood that the dream someone was telling me there was a healing energy present in the painting process, in the paintings themselves.

Just like Reiki - or energy healing - this wasn’t because there was anything special about me.

Prayer Painting was a way of communing with the divine, and I could do this on behalf of the others, the same way I could walk into a chapel and light a candle, the same way I offered spoken prayer for the welfare of others.

Even though embarking on this journey of creating Personal Prayer Paintings for other people felt like a risky thing to do, when I said yes to the dream guidance and put the offer out into the world, there was an instant response.

You showed up and shared your prayers with me and received your paintings with love.

I knew I was on the right path because the road unfolded easily before me.

Painting prayers is mysterious and fulfilling and life-affirming.

I am consistently surprised by what shows up on my canvas and how the paintings speak to their people. It is the best thing, just the best thing, when I send a painting then hear back that the colors, the symbols, the images make deep soul sense to the recipient. I love, so much, to hear the stories of resonance.

It is the rule, rather than the exception, that someone will say something like, “I couldn’t believe there was an owl in my painting - I’ve been seeing them lately around my house,” or “How did you know I have a tattoo of a Celtic cross on my arm?”

Time and time again I’ve been shown that the spiritual connection that happens in a Prayer Painting is a real and healing connection.

And I’m grateful.

I never could have imagined this work for myself. I’m so grateful for the guidance of that dream and I’m going to keep dreaming.

I’m going to keep on showing up, unguarded, in the dreaming world, and I’m going to keep on trusting the guidance that meets me there.