Julia Watkins, Art that Brings Your Spirit Home

The Creation Tree - Create Your Reality

I don't know what it is, but I feel something when I look at paintings by Julia Watkins. I don't just mean an abstract sense of the sublime that certain art objects carry; I actually FEEL something in my gut. This isn't an intellectual, conceptual thing; it's visceral. And many others feel the same. Take a look at The Creation Tree,one of my favorites, above and see if you agree.

Julia Watkins is considered to be the founder of the Energism Art Movement. Energist artists seek to imbue their work with spiritual energy and thereby assist the viewer in connecting to its healing powers.

Of her process, Julia says:

The very first step is being able to feel the energy. I find that meditation, reiki and tai chi are good practices that help with channeling energy. However, strong prayer, trying to feel god's energy flowing through you and in all things around you works very well too. 

Transferring that feeling to an art object is the hardest part of the creation process. At first, you will probably find yourself analyzing every part of the composition and will come up with something highly illustrative or a literal interpretation. The trick is to let yourself go to the energy without thought. You need to let it guide your hand. When you do this you will find that a lot of time passes without you knowing it, and at times the experience will be so intense that it stands out in your mind as a feeling rather than a memory.

Are you a blocked writer or artist? Do you think you could let yourself go to the energy without thought? Could you let it guide your hand?

Here are some more paintings and poetry by Julia Watkins, set to lovely music. A nice twelve minute meditation on her art.

And here is Julia in an Art-ONTV interview (although the interviewer seems a little out of her depth). One of my pet peeves are interviewers who are out of their depth with the person they are interviewing, like this video interview with my favorite musician Leonard Cohen.

But first, watch Julia. She's pretty awesome. See how her eyes light up when she tells the story of how she started painting in this new way.

 

Practicing an art is a way to make your soul grow

“Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven’s sake. Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem. Do it as well as you possibly can. You will get an enormous reward. You will have created something.”  — Kurt Vonnegut, A Man Without a Country

How Do You Find Your Creative Genius? Elizabeth Gilbert Weighs In

"Everyone is a genius but if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree it will spend its whole life believing it is stupid." Einstein

Is genius something that only a few people have? Or is it, as Einstein's quote would suggest, something that has more to do with a personal mode of expression than a permanent state?

Watch Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love muse on the impossible things we expect from artists and geniuses -- and share the radical idea that, instead of the rare person "being" a genius, all of us "have" a genius.