You can’t find Magick, and you can’t lose it…
– Dancing the Dream, Jamie Sams
I was born in New Orleans, that steamy, dreamy Crescent City that lies below the level of the sea – a city in love with the Gulf and the River in those lazy decades before Katrina when I was growing up. My own early loves were art and science. And I began college as a physics major, but eventually graduated from Louisiana State University with a Bachelor of Fine Arts. I had hoped to incorporate within my art insights gained from the realm of quantum physics, yet found I had no clear vision of how this might be done. Perhaps that is why I fell so easily into a decades-long detour as a novelist. There was regret in my abandonment of the visual arts, but I seemed to know better what I wanted to write than what I wanted to paint. I enjoyed writing and believed I would remain a novelist. But that was before I began to visit Arizona.
(Photo credit: Tara Marie Photography)
Never could I have imagined my response to the Southwestern desert and to the red rocks of Sedona in particular. I had always felt blessed to have been born and nurtured in the cultural cradle of New Orleans, but what I experienced in the desert was of a much higher order. Sedona, I discovered, was the home of my heart. And that home, once discovered, was not to be denied. My comings and goings out West became my spiritual journey. And somewhere along the way – and before I had any name or any real knowledge of them – Crow Mother and other native spirits began to appear in dreams and visions. One result of these experiences was my return to the visual arts. I had found in American Indian spirituality a bridge to the artistic vision I had sought.
You can’t find Magick, and you can’t lose it. I love that Sams quote. I had always as a child been acutely aware of a realm beyond the physical, but had shied away in fear of its intensity. But older and wiser, and as my Arizona experiences began to mount, I made the decision to fling open the doors of perception. And oh, what beauty and riches flooded in. Magick, for me, lies in the places where the realms of spiritual and physical touch and blend. I believe such doors are everywhere, has one the will to see. It is my wish that my paintings be such portals.
My studio name, Spirit in the Sky, refers to the raven, the traditional messenger carrying magick from the sacred void into the physical world. The ravens of Sedona have been such messengers for me.
The image that serves as part of my signature is a petroglyph found in San Cristobal, New Mexico. Two ravens face each other, their shape suggesting the “S” of both my first and maiden names, as well as the double “S” of Spirit in the Sky. The raven bodies together form the “W” of my surname.