There are two subjects that have played a major role in my life: art and spiritual experience. Both have remained with me, growing in importance and frequency as the years have gone by. My first experiences between the ages of six and seven featured episodes of sleep paralysis, clairaudience, and clairsentience. I took an inquisitive interest into these strange experiences, and after school I would study at the local library, reading through books regarding the paranormal.
At the age of nine, I tragically lost my best friend and neighbour, and from that moment on we began experiencing unusual amounts of paranormal activity at home. Later in my teenage years, I began seeing spirit clearly, and over the decades I have spoken at length about the spirits I've encountered. There is never one kind, and they always appear in different ways, sometimes rather out of context.
In my twenties, I was invited into various private spiritual development groups by other established mediums that I had met. However, it was during my years at university that I was able to fully explore my past, and began combining it within my love for creating art. My art processes from childhood have expressed different styles of automatism, and over the years I have developed in my own unique approach and style, combining psychic mediumship with art production. My work expresses itself mainly through trance-based spiritual contact with the help of spirit guides. This technique I hid for many years under the guise of surrealism.
During my development, I have constantly pushed experimentation in my works, to disconnect them from myself and what I define as my ego conscious mind. This I believe has allowed the higher energies to more easily flow through me to express themselves. My spiritual drawings and automatic writings begin with my entering a trance-like state in which I allow words and faces to appear, emerging from those energies I sense that want to be heard and seen. The drawings themselves develop from automatic writing, and have an almost 3D depth to them, often including very detailed and delicate imagery that I begin to perceive within the automatic marks made. I have related these deep environments that spirit show themselves through as having dimensions and energies within them that we don't see or understand. My works are often mixed media, depending on my process as the automatist. Over time, I often re-visit my automatic drawings, and after some reflection, I may add to the works. Due to this process, I rarely refer to my works as having reached a definitive completion.
My automatism paintings are often created by igniting chemicals, and by doing this I have found that spirit imagery transpires. I reflect on the imagery, and work further details into the paintings with a grisaille technique. When drawing, I usually use traditional materials such as pencils, erasers and various paper weights. My process has refined and developed with my drawings and automatic writings in that I freely allow myself to be in a trance state, but never to the point of loss of self. I have recently been informed that the balance tends to be myself and the spirit working together on a 50/50 basis. I usually prefer to work in isolated locations, away from any distractions, but lately I have found I can fall into a receptive state almost anywhere, and at a rapid rate.
As for the future, my work with spirit continues to deepen, exploring ever more puzzling imagery. I feel that with each work I create, I am edging towards something ever more profound, and I sense that the progression of my works reflects this feeling. Spiritually, I meet different guides ever more clearly.
I recently had archived works on show at The College of Psychic Studies in London, an institute I am very grateful to be affiliated with and privileged to know the lovely people within. Walking around studying the archives of my predecessors, I find myself musing upon the lives of all the artistic and professional mediums that have come and gone throughout the years. All of them were on the same path as I, catching glimpses of the other side. And I reflect on the thought that I am just another peace in the jigsaw. Perhaps in another hundred years or so, another like myself will be reflecting on the creators of these archives, adding their own pieces to this beautiful puzzle.
