Patience
100x100cm, mixed media on canvas, 2004-2022
AVAILABLE
Some people say that it can be a natural part of a human life to become fragmented. To shatter. (Levine, p. 21)
Soul whispered: At those times you can refuse to find premature solutions. Instead, you can practice surrender to the unknown. To not knowing. You’re still on your way.
You can practice trusting the quiet inner voice, in the face of all the pretty cookie cutter solutions that you are offered, all the well rounded hearts, the guys and the girls, the shapely stars.
You can trust the tatters that you create your true life from. The one where purpose breathes, where you keep going, even when the going is hard.
Your heart has wings.
They embrace your whole life.
Longing
90x90cm, mixed media on canvas, 2023
AVAILABLE
Longing, my friend. A burning searchlight inside. You drive me forward, death on my shoulder, reminding me of the preciousness of this moment. Point me toward the root of all the phenomena in my life. Through the information overflow of the world, you show me the essence. I look for the things that keep coming back.
And they bring with them the clarion call: YES! Come! This way! Come, come.
Surrender to your heart's longing. Allow its movement through you, stay awake to how you change with it. Fear is part of it, as are mistakes.
What do you long for? What awakens the burning searchlight in your heart?
Heart
100x100cm, mixed media on canvas, 2023
AVAILABLE
Soul whispered: It is now time to turn toward your heart.
Your heart space is always available. Here you can ask for anything that you need or long for. You can ask your heart to show you the people and circumstances of you life, to see them in a new way.
You can let all your actions flow through your heart, and let yourself feel everything that comes up. Your heart can help you see everything in a new way, and get to the essence of them.
Keep turning toward your heart, again and again.
Clarity
140x150cm, acrylic on canvas, 2022
AVAILABLE
My soul whispered: Welcome to this moment. Again.
Soul continued, so very gently: Have you noticed that you are in the same relationship, over and over? Although the faces change, the pattern remains the same. You can choose. Do you want to continue? Try again with someone else. Maybe it will be different this time?
Or might you be ready?
To look at your own patterns.
Turn inside.
To consciously experience the burn of yearning, what happens in your body, to explore what happens within you, when you are in a relationship?
What is this longing, this gnawing hunger inside of you? This emptiness that you fear to fall into, in case it is endless? What is this craving for admiration/acceptance/celebration/safety/goodness of man that keeps you in this cycle of torment? How long are you going to continue?
Would you dare step into Baba Yaga's house in the dark forest? In the midst of your fear, do you still want to understand how this pattern is built? Would you be ready to sit, like Vasalisa, in front of the big pile of hay and dirt, and pick out the precious kernels of insight, one at a time?
So you could live and love freely.
So you could care for yourself and then others.
So you could see betrayal clearly, and choose something else.
So you could be your own parent.
So you could be you in this world.
Would you be ready for this journey of gentle unveiling and clear seeing? Invited my soul.
Yes, I said. No more of this. I'm ready.
Move on bravely, human. Whispered my heart.
Forest
140x150cm, mixed media on canvas, 2023
AVAILABLE
Soul whispered: Welcome into the dark woods, into the encounter with yourself. Maybe you came here yourself. Maybe you followed someone else, and when they left you, you found yourself here. Even though you may feel lost, you have arrived right on time.
This is the turning point. A new start. This is your path. Walk bravely. Welcome into your inner sanctum.
Welcome home. This is for you and for nobody else. You don't have to let others in here. You are allowed to keep this only to yourself. Here you have time and space to grow, develop and incubate.
You may repair, build, tear down and regrow what is essential and needed.
You are not transparent. You may grow and develop at your own pace, in peace. You are allowed to be you.
Cycle-breaker
160x130cm, mixed media on canvas, 2023
AVAILABLE
Soul whispered: Are you one of them who says: This stops with me.
Even though the worst goes before you, when you finally see clearly, you will not do to another what was done to you. When you make mistakes, you let remorse work on you and form you. Turn toward your pain and follow it to its root. Ask for help when you need it. Every time. Don't let shame stop you, even when you feel very frightened.
You strive to understand your vehement emotions, your strong impulses and their flow. Why your nervous system reacts so strongly. How to befriend it. Why it is hard to set boundaries. Why the same thing keeps coming up on this spiral of growth that sometimes feels endless. You follow the spiral into the heart of innocence and let it change what you see and how you see it.
You will meet many on this path. Those who admonish you that it is time to let go, that you dwell on your pain, that you should focus only on light and also those who will be very angry with you. Keep trusting your body and what it shows you, let others walk freely on their own paths.
At some point you learn your own limits. You did your best and it did not suffice. Maybe you sense it already. This is part of being human. You are just one thread in a whole tapestry. An important part of a greater whole. This is good. This is good enough.
Your ancestral lines thank you. The work you do is real and essential. Your courage is appreciated. May this be a blessing to you. It is one to those whose shoulders you stand on, and to those who come after you.
Onward.
Mercy
190x151cm, mixed media on canvas, 2021
AVAILABLE
Soul whispered: There is no edge to fall off. You are surrounded by mercy.
Do you feel the air in your lungs? The beat of your heart? The temperature of your skin?
You are embraced by mercy. You walk on it and breathe it. It is around you every moment. Each time you cry, each cry of pain and each exclamation of joy is filled by mercy. The warm gaze that falls on you, how nourishment feels in your body, that you get up in the morning. Mercy, all of it.
Mercy melts shame. It responds to your heartfelt question: Am I allowed to exist as I am? Yes. Yes you are. Because you are you. Because you are here.
When it feels hard, could you lean in a bit? Relax just an inkling? Mercy is just behind you, closer than your skin, an embrace waiting to hold you, console you, support and warm you.
This is for you. For you and nobody else. You do not need to do anything but lean in and breathe. Lean in, and breathe. This is for you. If you do not receive it, nobody gets it.
This is for you.
Remorse
150x100cm, acrylic color on canvas, 2019
AVAILABLE
Soul whispered: Please stop here. Breathe for a while. You are safe.
When chronic, toxic shame melts, remorse becomes possible. You can feel its warmth. Its bright light that shows you what you have done. You can stand it. Remorse makes change possible. Very softly. Allow it to move.
You could not see larger view before you were ready.
Now that you are ready, you can turn like a flower toward the sun, and let your heart open. Old choices loose their magnetism. It becomes possible to choose something new. You hold the pressure of old impulses gently, and turn in a new direction instead. Step by step, and layer by layer.
Remorse softens the layers of the heart, smooths out creases, releases bitterness into grief at long last. It becomes easier to breathe. To allow feelings to move in your body. To turn toward another. To grieve together, perhaps. When the moment opens, allow yourself to melt. Allow remorse to gently guide you forward.
Invitation to Love
220x153cm, acrylic color on canvas, 2023
AVAILABLE
Soul whispered: My love. Beloved.
I am here. I have always been here. I will always be here. This invitation stands. Forever.
I will not compel you. Ever. I am just here. I choose you. Can you hear my invitation?
Again and again. As many times as it happens. Here I am. My love for you does not end. Ever. I am you. You are me.
Closer. Always closer. Here I am. And you. You are free. This is my greatest offering of love for you. You are free.
Free to choose. Free to live, try, explore, fail, try again, adventure, free to suffer, free to find your joy.
I call to you. The world is blooming with my invitation to love. You hear my love in beauty, in joy, in pleasure, in the midst of suffering, in the depths of grief and in the rapture of music. I call to you on the mountains, in the oceans and in the bluest sky.
You can feel my love in the warmth of the sun on your skin, in the scent of a warm cinnamon bun, in the taste of coffee on your tongue and in the sweet ache of a kiss. You feel me when you gaze into the starlit sky, in the yearning you feel when you walk home an icy cold evening and in the middle of the night when you can not sleep and the cosmos sings.
I am here. When you turn toward me, when you lean into me.
How do you answer my call?
Now?
And now?
I love you. Always.
Nervous System
240x153cm, mixed media on canvas, 2023
AVAILABLE
Soul whispered: Welcome to the world of your nervous system. The language here is different.
Communication is built on sensation. Bubbling, buzzing, stinging, grating, warmth, melting, opening and closing down. Your nervous system is constantly telling you what is going on.
When you start to tune in, and feel into what your nervous system is sharing with you, things start to make sense. Unbearable states, the intensity that arises with another, disproportionate feelings and their eruptions start to show how they are built and the foundation they grow from. Your burning questions start to get answers that sing truth. Your truth.
You get intimate with your survival states: fight, flight, freeze, fawn, flop and many many more. When you can not bring yourself to say no, your nervous system knows why. When you rage and stomp all over somebody, your nervous system can explain what happened.
Slowly you get to know your inner parts in their different ages, and you can tell when a body memory hijacks you. When you slow down and listen, you start to understand what they need and how you can care for them. More than anything else, you start to understand the necessity of them. They, each and all, helped you survive.
Now. Now you know how to survive. Now it is time to grieve, so you do not repeat. When you grieve what it took to survive, and what you had to survive, little by little, grief washes clean your ancestral lines. You are set free to live your own, precious life.
Now you can care for your inner diversity. You can heal, nurture, shelter, cherish and guide. While you do that, mercy solidifies and becomes tangible. You start to understand behavior. Your own and that belonging to others.
Goodies and baddies start to melt away. You start to see humans trying to survive. You start to see what is your responsibility, what belongs to others and what you can not change. Your boundaries start to appear. Where you start and end.
Merging or fusing with another starts to look less appealing, and no longer seems safe. If you do that, who is left to contact? Nobody. Participation becomes easier when you only feel your own feelings. You respond from your inner diversity, coherent in your care, and from a regulated nervous system that allows clear thinking.
Do not give up. Everything is turned topsy turvy before you learn this new way of relating, yes. With time, you will find true stability. This is a strength that will not desert you, or leave you in the dark woods. The heart of this strength is the sensitivity that once so challenged you.
Welcome home.
Anger
90x120cm, acrylic on canvas, 2024
AVAILABLE
Soul whispered: It is time. Time to befriend your anger. Do you feel its fire? Can you allow this space for this dimension in yourself?
If you allow, let the fire rise from your pelvis, through your body and the top of your head, spread around you. Feel its power. It is yours and it is for you. Not to pour on others, or to boil under a lid of repression, nor to oppress yourself with. It is for you - to support and strengthen - the fire of life.
Allow it to rise and protect you. Its power brightens and clears. You find the stamina to ask, to stop, to turn around and to leave. To come away from what does not work.
Healthy anger brings freedom. Freedom to be, to arrive and to leave. Be fully, brightly you.
Anger looks good on you. Maybe you hear blame, disgust, contempt and bitterness knocking? Not for the faint of heart, but oh so necessary when they do. Would you allow them in, would you tend to them with your awareness and listen to them?
When you follow the paths of these emotions, and attune to their sensations in your body, with support, you open up to their gifts. Allow anger to reorganize events, and push what never belonged to you outside of your boundaries.
Invite in healthy remorse, shame and guilt to help you own what is yours, does belong to you and is your responsibility. And if you have to start by wading through toxic, chronic shame and toxic guilt from having been emotionally blackmailed, so be it. Let us start here, with compassion, support and mercy. We will start where ever you are.
With time and support you can start to lean into your anger. You can use it to amplify your voice, set boundaries and leave when necessary. You learn to see what your contempt is protecting, what lies behind it. You let your disgust illuminate violations, and you let blame end overresponsibility.
You let your bitterness show you your wounds, as they line up to be healed and grieved.
Yes, this is stinky and sweaty hard work. Uncomfortable and humbling, often. The smell of survival sweat and the honest encounter of the marks that your life has left on you. We'll draw up the curtains and look truth straight in the eye, surrounded by mercy and compassion. Let your pain guide you, as the anchor chain into the abyss of your love hunger.
When you grow able to hold your need to be admired and cherished, your fear of being judged and disapproved of, the pain of abandonment, the terror of loneliness and failure, the anguish of being smothered, you see how it all lead you to abandon yourself.
You become able to take a step back, back into yourself and into your body. You believe your experience. When you remain aware of what happens in you, you become free to act decisively.
You understand that the feelings of others are theirs to carry. The behavior of another and its consequences belong to them. As yours belong to you.
Anger looks good on you. Let it brighten your path. You are not alone.
Permission to Love
224x151cm, akrylic color on canvas, 2019
SOLD.
Soul whispered: You have permission to love. Allow yourself to love you as well.
You no longer need to project your hunger for love on another, or project all of your beauty on them. There is no need to make them the source of love or the judge of your worth. You can start to treat yourself as the most important person in your life. Understand, that in your life, your wellbeing is your responsibility. You are now your own parent, the person who cares for you.
You are allowed to listen to who you feel good around. With whom does your nervous system rest? Who is with you because you are you, not because of what you give, or how you are willing to mold yourself according to their needs.
Here is the secret behind this veil: It may be easier for you to see your hidden needs in another, and take care of them, than to slow down and face yourself. To fuse together around a shared need and resonance is intoxicating. For a while. Now you already see where this path leads.
So take a risk. Face yourself. What do you need? What do your younger parts need? How could you practice noticing these needs and spending time with them? When the connection to another breaks down, you can still always stay connected with yourself. Listen to your own, true experience. Take your responsibility, and yours only.
When you learn to care for yourself, more and more, you start to notice when it is truly time for you to be there for another, to listen and to care for them. You learn to discern the sound of your heart from the programs of the past, the need to survive.
You no longer need to chase acceptance, approval, admiration or affirmation, driven by love hunger. Especially not if it demands that you abandon yourself or are thrown around by chaos. Allow yourself to receive when you are given, but don't let blind need urge you on. If there are only ashes and arid ground between you and another, let it be so.
Learn to hold the multitude of things. Because you are at home in yourself, more and more day by day, you can let both love and lovelessness be there simultaneously between people.
You have permission to explore all the meanings of love, for you. Leave behind the general definitions and try it out yourself. Embrace all the contradictions and explore freely. Dive deep and befriend every crevice of your heart.
Remember, when you let the burning of your heart lead you further and deeper into contact with yourself and the All, you start to notice that love does not disappear. Only that which was never love is brought to the light. You choose what you want to do, from your strength. You are allowed to love from afar or not to love at all.
The most important thing is that you choose yourself.
The Real that Remains
150x170cm, mixed media on canvas, 2022
AVAILABLE
Soul whispered: What is real never disappears. That which disappears, was never real. This is strong medicine.
Loss invites you into a liminal space. What was is no more, and there is no going back to it. Instead there is this trembling, powerless state. The future you were headed toward seems snatched away. The present moment feels so tender. Filled with the cutting softness of grief. There are no reference points left.
It would seem efficient to adhere to the pace set by the world, to process grief on an outer timeline. Judge the incessant waves of the death and rebirth process. Deny the void, or at least hide it from others.
Would it be possible to let everyday life and the overwhelm of grief walk side by side? To not try to fix, explain, transform or pray away the pain of loss of something that was so deeply meaningful? Would it be possible to admit that your heart breaks a little or a lot every moment - and it hurts.
As you grieve - on the street, in the library and in the forest - you are bound together with humanity. Life breaks your hearts, relentlessly. Each time your heart breaks, it opens to the unknown a little more.
Can you let yourself believe that this moment is true and valid as it is?
With time, you will see the real that remains. What is true for you.
You do not yet see who you are becoming. Loss makes you into something new. Turn bravely toward it and feel all of your feelings. Face your fears and return again and again to what is true for you.
After loss, what is essential shines brightly. You have the courage to see what is true.
What remains is you. Beloved you, who survived. You are allowed to stay, to go, to change your mind, to say yes and to say no. You are free in yoursel and free to choose your next step. You know how to grieve, and how to let grief transform you. Your love does not fade. You are free to live.
Time for something new
170x145cm, mixed media on canvas, 2023
AVAILABLE
Soul whispered: It is time for something new.
Take the sapling of your dream, and surround it with gentle fire. Although the Unknown can seem so scary and difficult to navigate, the warmth of your life force energy can sustain and nourish the new that is being born. All of your past has brought you here, you can lean on it.
It is time to let this newness grow. It can become something surprising and original.
You don't know the form of the future. Nourish and tend to this sapling with the glow of your heartfire. Open to the new, as the sapling turns to the light.
What would you like to feel and experience in your new future? Trust in growth and in your ability to recognize the next step.
You will weather this. You are free to trust, be courageous and thrive.
Boundaries
190x151cm, mixed media on canvas
AVAILABLE
Soul whispered: Boundaries give you space to be who you really are.
Your life force energy is not to be given to others. It is for you. When you fill yourself up and nourish your heart, you can give to others from the overflow. By being you and by doing what there is to do.
Your boundaries do not control others. Instead, they bring your focus back to you, to your center and to your power. You are in charge and responsible for your own wellbeing. You can take charge and sometimes that means that you ask for help.
Your boundaries tell you what you do and do not like. They show what you tolerate, and what is not okay for you. They give direction and make you visible.
Boundaries bring you back to yourself. You do not abandon yourself anymore, or define yourself through the eyes of another.
This also means that it is time to care for allthe feelings that come up when you set boundaries. Fear of loss. Feelings of worthlessness. Shame. Fear, guilt and obligation. How difficult it can be to have your own back. Or maintain your own energy and stand discomfort.
This is your chance to befriend yourself. What do you need? What are your values?
How is it to be in your body? How does your own energy feel? What are you feeling?
Practice bringing your focus back to you. From your own center, it is natural to feel curiosity and interest in another, to feel compassion. When you are present in yourself, it is easier to be present for another.
From this connection, you are there for others. They have the space to feel their own feelings, and make their own decisions.
I know you are scared. Love does not disappear. It does not vanish.
Relationships live. They come closer and they go farther away. They begin and they end. Love is always there, as the sun behind the clouds. When your boundaries are in place, it is safe to walk the world with your heart open.
Safe in your own being.
151x190cm, mixed media on canvas, 2023
AVAILABLE
Soul whispered: Welcome to this moment.
The past is over. What if you were to live in this moment, as if there were no tomorrow? You are so in touch with uncertainty, that you are now truly present. The change of circumstance has woken you up from from your slumber.
Cherish this awareness. You can lean into it. Your breath helps, and a morning walk.
You can open up to newness now. Could the future be all new? Could its form surprise you? Be allowed to be a surprise?
What if your task now is to be fully present? Take each step into the unknown. That is all new. Again.
Do what you can. Keep the focus of your thought and emotions steady.
Courage, human, this is adventure!