A Year of Listening to My Paintings
Over the past year, I've completed eight Intuition Paintings. Each one has taken me somewhere different, but when I look back at them together, I notice something fascinating: certain images keep returning—flames, roots, hands, swirls and light. But they don't always seem to mean the same thing.
They seem to evolve as I evolve.
When I attended my first Intuition Painting retreat in Joshua Tree a year ago, I really had no idea what to expect. I had been making art in one form or another for much of my life, but I wanted to feel freer when I created. I wanted to get away from worrying about whether something looked good or whether I was doing it "right." I hoped Intuition Painting might help me with that.
It did—but not quite in the way I expected.
The First Painting: Learning to Let Go
My first Intuition Painting, Joshua Tree, October 2025.
I started my first painting with my fingers, and I loved the freedom and playfulness of it. But it didn't take long before my inner critic showed up:
“Why did you put those colors together? What are you actually painting?”
And, of course, that's exactly what I wasn't supposed to know.
Eventually, I began to let go. Swirls appeared. Sunlight. Flames. A lotus flower emerged. At one point I became tired and developed a headache, and I really wanted to stop. Instead, I stayed with the painting. Resistance often happens right before a break though, I was told.
Eventually the painting wanted to be changed. I rearranged and rotated sections of it, giving the flames more room to grow.
When I embodied the painting at the end of the process, I understood that the flames represented my passion and creativity. They wanted more even more space. Roots appeared in the painting too, but it was revealed they didn't feel deep enough yet. The hand that appeared to come from Source, gently protected the lotus and the flames.
I had begun the retreat wanting to feel freer creatively. My very first painting seemed to be asking me: How much room are you actually willing to give your creativity?
Six Months Later: The Painting Knows More Than I Do
Opening Retreat of my Intuition Painting Facilitator Training, Joshua Tree, April 2026.
By the time I returned to Joshua Tree six months later to begin my Intuition Painting Facilitator Training, something had already changed.
It had become easier to begin painting without knowing.
Again, I started with my hands and fingers. Large, colorful swirls filled the paper. Eventually a figure appeared, with flames coming from her mouth and a heart inside her body. As I continued painting, the figure seemed to be giving birth. A baby emerged.
The baby wanted to be held, so loving arms appeared. Then legs. Roots grew deeper beneath her.
Something else happened in this painting that has stayed with me.
Earlier, I had tried to make a swirl with a brush and ended up with a shape I didn't like. My immediate reaction was that I had made a mistake. But two of the mantras of Intuition Painting are try not to try and there are no mistakes, so I left it alone.
Later, I suddenly saw it.
It was a butterfly wing.
That wing eventually became connected by a thread to the heart inside the figure.
I could never have planned that. And that was exactly the point.
Through the embodiment process, the baby revealed that she wanted deep roots and to feel safe, loved and protected.
And there they were again—flames, roots, hands and swirls—but they were different now.
In my first painting, the flames wanted more room to grow. This time they didn't need anything more from me. The roots felt deeper and stronger. And the hands had changed too. This time they belonged to the mother figure herself, gently holding and protecting her baby.
I was beginning to understand something about this process.
The same images may return, but the conversation may change.
Returning to Joshua Tree: Letting Go of What Was Holding Me Back
My painting from the closing retreat of my facilitator training, Joshua Tree, April 2026
Several months and several paintings later, I returned to Joshua Tree, this time for the closing retreat of my facilitator training.
By now, staring at a blank canvas no longer felt intimidating. In fact, it was exciting to wonder what might appear. Again, I started with my hands and fingers, filling the paper without needing to know where it was going.
Eventually, a face appeared. Then a small, seemingly unrelated figure. I quickly outlined it and left it alone. I didn't need to figure out what it was. I trusted that if it was important, it would reveal itself in time.
As the painting developed, a snake appeared, coming from the figure's mouth and wrapping itself around a pole that seemed to be holding her head. Through embodiment, the snake came to represent something that felt as though it had been gripping me internally.
I was able to release it.
What was interesting was that the snake didn't need to disappear from the painting. It remained, but it was no longer wrapped around the figure. It could still be part of the painting without continuing to grip her.
As I continued, the main figure became stronger. She wanted a body and a strong stance. Flames appeared from her hands and above her head, and her message felt very clear:
I'm here. I'm putting my passion into the world. The things that have been holding me back have been released.
The small figure that had appeared at the very beginning eventually found its place in the painting too. It became clear that there was something else I was ready to let go of. I didn't need to completely understand it or where it came from. I simply knew it no longer needed to be there.
This painting reminded me that release doesn't always require understanding or erasing the past. Something can remain part of our story without continuing to hold us.
And sometimes we can let something go without needing to know exactly why it was there in the first place.
One Week Later: The Painting Gave Me Refuge
The next week, while assisting an Intuition Painting retreat in Joshua Tree.
The next week, I began another painting.
After the intensity of the previous painting, I might have expected more obstacles to show up in my painting. Instead, my body—or perhaps the painting itself—seemed to know I needed something entirely different.
This painting felt calming almost from the beginning.
After the initial finger painting and familiar swirls, first a face, and then an entire figure of a woman emerged, sitting cross-legged and naked, surrounded by light. She talked to me throughout the process and wanted to show her light brightly and be adorned with jewelry. Through embodiment, I came to understand her as my higher self and as a connection to Source—or perhaps to something larger, a kind of collective consciousness.
A circle of light emanated around her, while the space beyond it became dark and cosmic.
But she didn't want to float there. She also wanted to be grounded.
So earth appeared beneath her and flowers grew upward around her.
During a week that was sometimes stressful and demanding, returning to this painting became my refuge.
After experiencing paintings that had asked me to confront resistance, anger, fear, unworthiness and things I was ready to release, I think part of me had begun to associate "going deep" with uncovering something difficult.
But this painting reminded me that depth doesn't always have to look like struggle.
Maybe what I needed at his time wasn't another thing to work through.
Maybe I simply needed somewhere to rest.
And somehow the painting knew that before I did.
A Year of Paintings
When I reflect on my paintings throughout the last year, I'm struck by the conversation that seems to have been taking place among them.
Flames return. Roots return. Hands, swirls and light return. But there isn’t a fixed meaning for any of them. Their meaning seems to depend on the painting, the moment—and who I am when I meet them.
That may be one of the things I love most about Intuition Painting. The process meets you exactly where you are.
I've learned that I don't have to know where a painting is going in order to follow it. I can trust that the next intuitive hit will come. I can trust that something I initially see as a mistake may become a butterfly wing. I can trust that an image I don't understand may reveal itself when it's ready.
I can even allow something to release from me without needing to understand what it was exactly, or reliving the experience that created it.
And I'm learning not to decide ahead of time what kind of experience I need to have.
Sometimes the painting asks me to stay with something difficult.
Sometimes it asks me to let something go.
Sometimes it reminds me of my passion, my roots or my connection to something larger than myself.
And sometimes it simply gives me a place to rest.
A year ago, I began Intuition Painting because I wanted to feel freer when I made art.
Eight paintings later, I'm beginning to understand that the freedom I was looking for wasn't really about what I put on the paper.
It was about learning to trust and honor what appears.
A note about the paintings: In Intuition Painting®, each painting is considered a sacred and deeply personal visual journey. Part of honoring the process is allowing the painter to discover their own meaning without interpretation or feedback from others. What one person sees in an image may be completely different from what the painter experiences.
I warmly welcome your questions, comments and conversations about Intuition Painting and the process I've shared here. I simply ask that you refrain from interpreting or commenting on what you see in the paintings themselves. Thank you for helping me honor the spirit of this practice.