The Oracle Paper Series

25 Abstract Mixed Media Pieces on 12 x 16 Arches Paper

June 2022

The Oracle Paper Series developed over a period of nine months while I shifted my focus from my art practice to my yoga practice. On October 15, 2021, I began my 200 Hour Yoga Teacher Training journey with Bliss Yoga Lounge. While I wasn’t taking on commissions over the holiday season, I still felt the natural urge to create in some form. This series grew out of small pen sketches in notebooks and playing with colour palettes and marks in procreate. Squeezing art in while I was in between classes, or on lunch breaks. This process, while on the back burner in my mind, slowly refined and informed the paper series you’re looking at today.

Through my yoga journey, I have found clarity and alignment - a knowing, a reconnection and trusting of my intuition. To know when to proceed and when to pause. Letting go and shedding of old programming and old narratives. On the other side of the 200 Hr Teacher Training, I found a new way to see the world, determined a new sense of my purpose and am actively working towards big shifts in my life to align with what I am meant to be doing, creating and connecting. I have learned to follow what lights me up, what excites me, and to let go of what no longer does. Life is too short to hold onto anything that is not serving you joy.

This nine month period was a formative time of unraveling, containment, blossoming, blooming. As a part of our teacher training, we were asked to develop a Sadhana, a daily spiritual practice. I chose to begin my day with burning sage and pulling oracle cards in the morning while I drank my coffee. This practice provided me with new programming to hear, it set the tone for the day. The cards do not predict the future, but in turn offer insight, direction, provide cues to shift thinking, slow down, breathe, consult nature.

Painted layer by layer in rotation in my studio over the course of a couple weekends, the process was incredibly meditative, from the priming of each page, to adding base layers and blending with water. Telling stories through soft pastel. Titles of each piece were lifted from the journal I filled during the course of those nine months. The playlist that follows are 25 songs that I will forever associate with this formative time.

A special thank you goes out to my yoga ladies whom I feel so honoured to have shared this incredible experience with. Bliss Yoga Lounge - Tara, Kelly and all the instructors who helped shape Journey To Essence with your own unique styles. Brennen, for putting up with the smell of incense in the house and supporting me in all my wild adventures. Also to Tiara and Nicole, for that one night we wandered the streets and were subjected to a lot of “property talk”.