Performative Process and Leaps of Faith

Podcast

Jun 25

Welcome to the Psychic Artist Podcast

Sarah was recently featured on Michelle’s podcast, 11:11 Calling, where women share courageous stories of stepping into their power and following their calling. Sarah shares her adventures as a young artist in New York City in the 90’s, and how her search for personal truth led to her launching the Psychic Artist podcast. Artists mentioned in this episode are Hannah Wilke, Ana Mendieta, and Francesca Woodman.

Listen to the podcast here:

Performative Process and Leaps of Faith with Artist Sarah Rossiter - Interview by Michelle Haynes

In this episode, I'd like to share with you an interview I did on Michelle Haynes' podcast 11:11 Calling. I talked with her a little bit about my past as an artist and the things that have brought me this far. I'm so grateful for this opportunity, and I'd love to share it with you.

**About Michelle’s Podcast**

11:11 is a calling from the Divine to awaken to your higher self and your higher purpose. Sharing our unique individual gifts allows us to help and inspire each other as well as appreciate and learn from each other. **11:11 Calling** is a podcast that creates a space to share our stories of having the courage to step in the direction of that which is calling to us so we can be inspired and inspire others to do the same.

Welcome everybody. This is the 11:11 Calling podcast, and I am your host, Michelle Haynes. Today we'll be chatting with Sarah Rossiter. Sarah is an artist, a writer, and a teacher. Her artwork has been shown in contemporary art galleries and museums around the world. An artist since childhood, she makes paintings, sculpture, and photography. Her current works are colorful abstract paintings inspired by her surroundings in Hawaii. In addition, Sarah intuitively channels messages and paintings from artists who have crossed over to the other side, such as Georgia O'Keeffe. She is currently writing a book called "God Was Not Cool in Art School." In her new podcast, The Psychic Artist, Sarah integrates her spiritual and artistic interests, shares what it's like to be intuitive and creative, and how to access that place inside all of us that is supremely psychic. She also leads Reiki trainings and offer psychic readings for people and animals. You can find out more at sarahrossiter.com. Welcome Sarah.

Thank you so much for having me, Michelle. It's really awesome to be on your show.

I'm super excited to have you on here. I can't wait to learn more about you. I love your artwork. I haven't looked at all of it. Just your more recent stuff, which looks like watercolor. I love water color.

I work a lot with water, even though they're acrylic, watercolor, and different kinds of paints. I just can't help adding water to everything I do. I even once made an installation where I filled a warehouse with water and built a platform where you could walk around and be surrounded by water, and then the images were on the walls. I've always been inspired by water. So now that you remind me, the way I work with water color – and my daughter does this too, she'll sit down to paint with a cup of water, and the first thing she does is dump it all over the table and then start working. That's how I work quite often.

That's awesome. Well, being in Hawaii has gotta be a nice area for that, and you're surrounded by water and beautiful color all the time. So I could see why you'd be inspired being there.

It's really inspiring to be surrounded by this nature and that ocean.

I want to start with childhood for you. I always find it's interesting and can contribute and shape so much of who we are and how we start on our journey. I'm just curious what your childhood was like, where you grew up? I also want to know how you got involved with art at such a young age.

I grew up in upstate New York and my father was a pretty radical hippie dude who raised me pretty much solo, for part of the time. And he really just let me do whatever I wanted to do. So I was unsupervised most of the time and I had a table with art supplies and just got to go for it from a young age. I try to do that with my kids to just put the materials out and let them experiment. My mother was an artist. I was born when they were 17 and 18 in college. So she was in art school at Cornell. And that had a big effect on me. I think I chose to be born into a family with a lot of creativity. Her father was an artist, so I get it genetically and also just socially, it was accepted.

My father's mother, my grandmother also helped to raise me and she really respected artists and was very intellectually stimulated by art and constantly talking about art and literature and very in the world. She was married to a professor at Cornell and very involved in the academic, political, cultural, and social events of the time. But I feel like all of that instilled this great respect in me for artistic practice and the life of an artist. Whereas society might not have thought that was so great. My mom, when she graduated from high school and wanted to be an artist, it was not really encouraged, you know, but in my generation it was cool.

Yeah. And it sounds like you had a lot of support within the family and just your environment in general for that.

Yeah. I'm really grateful for that.

And did your dad do some art too?

He was a musician. He was a political scientist, musician, and worked with children. So there was a creative way of being that was part of my household. Kind of a free for all, like just do whatever you want to do.

Do what's calling to you, right.

And do it on your own. Nobody told me what to do at any point.

So growing up with that, when you were younger, what form of art or medium of art attracted to you the most?

I collected a lot of garbage from the dumpster. We lived upstairs in an apartment from a drug store and they would throw out all of their displays from the makeup and various displays in the store that might be selling objects and anything that was plastic or could be 10 feet tall and have all these pockets for pantyhose or something. And it would go in the dumpster and I would collect it and bring it into my room.

So I would say assemblage and sculpture. I started collecting like a collage artist, the materials, and creating worlds. At the time I didn't think of it as art, those were my play things. Then later in New York city, when I went to art school, I remember walking home at night and I would collect things from construction job sites on the way. A lot of my sculptural interests in collage and in 2D artworks came from collecting things I found. And I'd actually like to get back to that. I don't do so much of that anymore, but collage is really inspirational and transformative. You never know what you're going to get, you have to improvise with what you have, and I like working that way.

Very cool. And was it when you got into art school in college that you learned some other mediums like photography or had you dabbled in that prior?

I did photography quite young. I lived in DC by that time when I was in early high school and I went to the Corcoran museum and took classes when I was 14 to 15 and learned photography there with some professors in a program that was meant for young adults or younger artists. I excelled in photography and printmaking and was always painting on my own. Then I decided to go to an arts high school in 10th grade in D.C. It was called Duke Ellington School of the Arts, it was a public school, but if you auditioned and got in, you could go. I loved it because the academics were just the morning until noon, and then from after lunch until five o'clock every day, it was art programs.

They had good photography, painting, sculpture, and ceramics programs. I did all of that stuff and really enjoyed it. It was great community of awesome creative students. It was sort of like the movie fame, with the art school in New York City. I was surrounded by people that were musicians, opera singers, amazing pianists, Dave Chappelle – all kinds of creative people were in my high school.

That sounds super cool. I would have loved it.

Yeah, you would have. It was a little intense though, I couldn't really hang out in the cafeteria because it was a little intimidating. People would literally get on the tables and start dancing and singing.

Oh my goodness. That would be a really incredible environment to be in at that age, especially as a creative spirit. To have all that inspiration as well as the permission and freedom to explore your artistic sides, no matter whether it's music, or anything that would fall under that blanket of creatives.

It's really a privilege actually. I was aware of this acutely at the time because D.C. is mostly African-American and I was one of the very few white students in any of the public schools I went to. Especially at Duke Ellington, I was in a minority, and it was a very important opportunity for a lot of these kids. They were being bused from all over the city and from really poor neighborhoods to do their creative work – and they were incredibly talented. Most of them more talented than I was. And they struggled, a lot of them, to get to college from that place. Just like a football scholarship is sometimes the only way that poor kids can get to college, an art scholarship was another way. So I felt really privileged to be in a situation to benefit from that education as well, and to go to college on a full scholarship, so that I could follow my artistic dream. Even if that wasn't exactly what my dad had in mind for me. I think he wanted me to be a writer and go to a fancy Ivy League school, but I ended up going to New York city and really benefiting from all of the art school environments that I found myself in, and the cities, and the diversity and the complexity. I learned so much from those years.

So which school in New York did you go to?

Cooper Union. It's in the East Village. I'm not sure if it's free now, but it was founded as a free art school.

Tell me how you go from being an art student in college to showing art all over the world.

I was in New York City and Cooper union is a really awesome prestigious program. So once you get in, you're exposed to a lot of awesome artists who come, both the teachers and the visiting professors were really well connected in the art world. We would participate sometimes in exhibits that were at galleries. And this was a time in New York City, I graduated in 1993, that was really intense and exciting. In Soho, groups of us would go to openings every night or every week.

During my school years, I was already interning and working at art galleries that I was interested in, and I really used the art world as a library. I would go into galleries and dig in and ask to see their archives and ask to learn more about any artists that I was interested in. I was just like a sponge. I started to make friends with the people who worked at the art galleries, and then eventually I would ask if they had any jobs, I might be offered a job to be an assistant to a really successful artist, and I would learn how she did it. Or I worked as an assistant to the gallery and learned how they did it. So I just saw it from all different sides.

That really helped me to connect with things, but I was not doing it from so much of the perspective of wanting to get a show, so much as I was really in a deep learning mode of absorbing everything that I saw and heard. It's a really interesting time in art.

As a younger person, I lived in DC, so I went to all of the art museums regularly. That was something my dad made a priority, to force me to go to art museums as a teenager. So I was really steeped in older art history, but contemporary art history was just immense. There was so much to learn, especially arriving in New York, with the recent art history from the sixties, seventies and eighties on. Each one being so full of radical change and developments and creative people. I had a lot to absorb and learn, and I felt like the, the galleries in Soho at that time, and then later in Chelsea, were really a resource for me. That that's how I viewed it, and then as a result, I made contacts that respected me in that way, and we had great conversations.

In addition, I've always been extremely blessed with magical circumstances and the right people showing up at the right time. Some really famous people took me under their wing and really were kind to me, or at least we had interesting interactions. I was able to see myself going much further more quickly.

I feel like the universe meets you. So the more you put out and move in the direction of something that interests you or is calling to you, then the universe meets you there. So you both are chipping into the journey. You sounded very motivated, driven, learning, and wanting to absorb a lot. At that time with so many inspiring artists, who were some of your top artists that inspired you or opened up your mind?

This is a funny thing. A lot of the artists that I was inspired by were dead. And they were mostly women. Hannah Wilke was one. She was a photographer and sculptor and she had died of cancer after documenting her demise, or her her experience, with photography. She had also been a radical feminist performer in the seventies in New York in the art scene.

I identified a lot with feminist artists that were doing very personal work and would sometimes be judged harshly by the art world around them for being too personal. Yet they were speaking this incredible universal truth about being a viewer or a voyeur, or being an object, being objectified, having a voice, speaking out, taking back your voice, expressing things that are important to you, even if at that time they were not respected.

A lot of that women, artists I was drawn to were very introspective. Another one was Ana Mendieta, who was also doing performative and photography work. She had passed away – unclear exactly if she was killed by her partner, Carl Andre, or if she committed suicide. But in any case, that was quite a dramatic death. Another was Francesca Woodman, who was also a photographer. She killed herself quite a young age. She made photographs that were very introspective and beautiful environmental investigations, where she would go into an empty room or live in an apartment that was a bit decrepit and photograph her naked body with the wallpaper falling off onto her. Incredibly beautiful emotive images from each of these artists – they were using their bodies and their introspection to tell a bigger story.

In none of these cases, was it particularly self portraiture. That really resonated with me, and at the time that's what I found myself to be doing – using my body as the vehicle of communicating ideas.

I felt I didn't want to use anyone else's body because that was a big responsibility. I felt like that was something not quite right, maybe karmically, I just knew that I shouldn't use other people to model my ideas. In addition, I didn't want to use clothing and things that were of this era. I wanted to have a more universal message. I was also photographing myself naked a lot during that time and doing studio work. It was a bit performative. I started a lot of my work before I discovered some of these artists, but my school had an awesome library and my teachers say "You need to go see Francesca Woodman's work."

I would dig in and think, "Oh wow, we are doing similar things." I felt like I was having a conversation with a lot of dead artists. I look back now and find that kind of interesting given my current interests and my current abilities. It was almost like I was connecting with spirits that weren't living anymore, but I felt like we were in dialogue. It wasn't so that I wanted to emulate them, but more that we were talking about the same thing. They just happen to not be there physically.

Yeah.

And the conversation still needs to be had in the art world. At that time in particular, and still now there was a lot of sexism. Even my professors, sometimes the male professors would say "Why are you taking pictures of yourself naked, you're just trying to flirt with us." There was a misunderstanding every step of the way and a lot of extra work needed to be done to explain what the work was about and to try and break through some of those sexist or misinformed ideas. Also, the comment "You're naked, it must be sexual." As opposed to investigating the human form or questioning one's presence in this body.

Yeah. It could be just another canvas or a piece of paper to tell your story, or it's just another medium in which to convey a message. It doesn't always have to be sexual. Interesting how that always tends to be the first thing. It really has nothing to do with that, you know?

Yeah. In fact, as I look back the impetus for me taking my clothes off to take photographs that age, which would be early twenties, and for many years until my thirties I photographed myself – was almost like a spiritual quest to get to the bottom of who I am. What are these hands? Where did they come from?

I was trying to express a deep emotional narrative from inside. It was a process, a performative process. I called them performative photographs and I didn't always know what would happen. Now that I look back, it does seem a bit like channeling energy, because I would get an image in my mind of something that I had to go do. And then I would go and execute it.

Sometimes later on, it was outside in nature. I moved to California and I was running around in the mountains of Marin outside of San Francisco, and I would find a tree and I'd think "Ok, I have to take off my clothes, and have to stand this way, and I have to photograph this image." There was such a intense drive to complete these images. And I couldn't tell you why, I just had to do them.

I even took a trip to Hawaii in 2000, by myself. I went to the volcano, and I'm walking along the path and I have my camera and it's a little square format Rolleiflex film camera, and I have a tripod. I just had to take a certain photo, I knew that I had to do this. So I put the camera on the tripod and I look around and nobody's there, and I'm actually quite shy, I don't really feel like an exhibitionist at all. I take off all my clothes. I lie down on the ground. I take this amazing image. I'm also really sensitive to light and composition. In two seconds, I've got the light and the composition just the way I want it. I jump out there. I wrap myself around a tree, I'm laying on the ground. I had an extension cable, I press the shutter release, "Click." (I took all the images myself and I felt that was also important.) Then I jump up, put on my clothes, and then this Japanese family of tourists walks by. I was surprised, thinking good timing. That image is really magical, very still and looks like a Renaissance painting. I'll have to send that to you.

I would love to see it.

I don't have any of my older work on my website at the moment, simply because I'm starting a new phase, but at some I'm point going to put back all the things that I've had online for so many years. That's a very large format photograph. It has these still moments, beautiful light on my cheek, this twig that's poking into my body, and this connection between the earth, the tree, my body and the volcano behind me.

It's a very mystical practice, and I am still looking back 20 years later, wondering what caused me to make that image?

There's so much here going through my mind right now that I want to touch on. One is, at that point 20 years ago, where were you on your spiritual journey? You have mentioned that you, for the longest time, tried to keep your artist self and your spiritual self separate. But yet that sounds to me like it was one and the same, even at that moment. So what was that looking like at the time? Did you realize that they were kind of one in the same, or playing a role within each other?

I did not at that time. In 2002 I had a spiritual awakening and from that point on I was conscious. But before that I was remotely interested in yoga. I wrote about this a bit on my website trying to trace my spiritual development.

In 1997, I had a motorcycle accident in Brooklyn, headed to New York City, and I almost died. That was a pivotal moment of choosing to live. From that point on, as I was healing, I started down a new path.

A friend of mine took me to an Integral Yoga studio in New York, and I saw pictures of spiritual beings and thought "Oh, people do yoga." That was an introduction for me of any kind of spiritual practice. I used it to heal and maybe learned to meditate or ground myself.

But I was very much in a mentality of an atheistic worldview. I was very politically active, I was in a group called the Lesbian Avengers. I had done a lot of political protest. I was suspicious of any kind of spirituality as being a part of the establishment that we were all busy revolting against. Because I viewed it as a religious thing. Although quite young, when I was like in my teens, I did have a very strong sort of Christian interest, and an awareness of God. I tried maybe 15 different churches in D.C. by myself, like raging from Southern Baptist to uptight Episcopal and more. There were so many different kinds of religions, I wanted to go check them all out. And none of them really resonated for me.

I did have an interest in God until I got to art school. And then my very post-modern, critical, angry teacher kind of slapped that out of me. She said, "If you're a feminist, you can't believe in God." Not sure why I believed that idea...

But I grew up in a very polemical way of thinking, it was either/or. So I made a lot of mistakes along the way, just misunderstandings, based on these assumptions of you can either be this or that. That changed a lot of the art that I was making, changed a lot of the interests I would have pursued. I came into art school a more open thinker. I was making sculptures that had a lot of sewing, I was cutting up canvases and sewing them back together, really interested in material and exploring things, more like I am now.

But then it got really harsh and the introduction of this idea of critique really cut me down. Also at the same time, I attached myself to it because it seemed really empowering. Like you could criticize anyone and you could be the better, and you could know more. I got seduced by that sort of intellectual criticism that was so prevalent, and really interested in the identity politics of the time. Because I had grown up in D.C., I was also really drawn to black identity politics and so much was being written at the time that was simultaneously liberating and putting people in boxes. So I was super inspired, but also disempowered to be my own come from my own true interest. It's fascinating to look back at, and I don't regret any of it. But I would say that spiritual was not a word that was in my lexicon when I took that photograph in Hawaii in 2000.

But I did feel for the first time during that trip a sort of energetic awareness. I flew to the big island and I remember feeling very uncomfortable and disjointed. There was a weird vibration. It felt really unpleasant, and I recognized that as being something to do with the lava and the newness of the island, being super sharp and jagged. So I cut my trip short, but I went to Kaua'i for two days to check it out, before going back to California. And on Kaua'i, as the plane landed, I went from being really agitated to being so calm and so peaceful and mellow. I made some photographs there that were so different and were deeply connected to a mother earth feeling, and beautiful golden yellow colors.

Interestingly enough, I am actually moving there in three weeks, to Kaua'i. I feel drawn, from Maui where I am now, to that island for the same reason – this recognition that the energy is more aligned for me. It feels good. More creativity. More expansion.

It's interesting how, even though I didn't really have a spiritual lexicon, I felt it in my body. I've always been a tactile learner. Sometimes I have to have the message given to me in a very physical way to get it.

I want to digress just for a second, because reading through your website, I know you have moved a lot frequently. I am so curious, how have you been able to do that with family and everything going on? Are you just called to do it and you just trust it or...? I'm like, "Wow, you move a lot." And there's no judgment to that. It's not typically easy to do, especially with kids and a partner, with work and different things. So how have you been able to make that work?

I think it started when I was child, because my dad moved every year I would say. Various circumstances, we didn't have a lot of money. He did have access to money, but he refused it. We would move from apartment to apartment as his job changed or based on where he was working. I got used to that rhythm. I think the longest I lived in a place was four or five years and otherwise it was every year that we would move. I was used to that and it continued through college. Through adulthood, maybe I would stay one or two years, but that's always been an impetus. When I moved to LA in 2006 and my husband and I were married in '08, we tried to stay longer. He grew up overseas, also moving quite often with his parents.

So we were conscious of that and we tried to force ourselves to stay in one place for several years. We built a house in LA that we helped to design, and he was also the general contractor and helped to build it. We tried to stay there as long as we could. I think it was four years. I think he would have stayed longer, but I'm always looking for the place where I am meant to be, I'm following the energy of where am I supposed to go? And in the last two years, I have had more psychic tools to help me do that. So I got an intuitive hit even before I started being conscious of being intuitive or studying any psychic work. I knew that I needed to move back to New York.

I think it was also because an acquaintance of mine had passed away from cancer, and she was a mother. And I felt a self assessment, "What do I want to do if I only have one year to live? Did I do everything I wanted to do? Did I impart the information that I needed to my children? Did I follow through on my dreams?" I felt that I had left some work undone in New York City when I left in 2000. And I did, I walked away from all my contacts. It just felt like I couldn't make work in New York. It became too harsh and intense and too critical. My work was getting squished and I was losing my ability to be creative. So even though I was very successful in New York and I had a lot of opportunities and connections in the art world, I really did walk away from it to move to California. Where in turn, I did learn how to get connected, become spiritual, meditate, learn yoga, and all the stereotypical California things that you might need in life.

Then I felt like I was coming back to New York with this new awareness of who I am. Almost as if I needed to go somewhere else and grow up so that I could come back and really do my work rather than get distracted by the energy.

So when I left New York, after having only just moved there in September of 2019, I left because of COVID. We were in an apartment and we just couldn't stay. It became this hunt for "Where should we go?" I went Upstate, and I got a reading from an angel communicator. She said that I really needed to be in nature in order to do my work. At the time I was like, "No, that's not going to work. I'm going back to New York. I'm definitely going back to New York."

So there was some encouragement. I worked with many different healers and guides along the way, in that year. They were helping me to learn how to clear spaces, energetically, because we were moving from space to space. It wasn't actually a choice, if I could have moved to a single place and stayed, I would've. But these were short-term rentals that weren't available much longer. At each place we tried to settle in and it wouldn't align. The person would say, "Yeah, you can stay for the year." And then, "Oops, I've decided to sell the building."

That's craziness.

So at each point we were moved to the next place, and I would learn something at each location. Then I had a meditation that showed me to move to Maui. So I followed that. Even though another intuitive person I worked with said, "No, that's not aligned."

Two people told me not to move to Maui, but I felt deep in my heart that it was the right move creatively and spiritually. And so I did, having never been here, and then I really took off and really opened up to my abilities. So it's with that same impetus that I'm considering my next move. It's about listening to the guidance even when you're not sure why.

Yeah, I think that's huge. Often it needs to make sense to us, and that's not really how it works. Usually it doesn't all make sense. You just have to trust that inner calling or that whatever is calling out to you and kind of pulling you in that direction. I think learning to trust that is huge, and not needing to know fully what it's leading to, but just trusting that there's something there for you. That's a big part of why I am doing this podcast, because I think it takes a lot of courage to listen to that. The unknown is scary, but there's usually something there. Even if it's just the first step in a long series of steps to get to some something else that is aligned with your soul's purpose. It's wonderful that you have that support of your family and that you all are able to move through this process together. I think that's wonderful, and what a gift.

So in hindsight, you can look back and see the ways that you had psychic abilities and that your intuition was trying to guide you, but maybe you didn't see it at the time. Was it when you moved to Maui that it became more apparent? Or when, in this timeline, did you really start to recognize that you have some psychic ability, and that you can learn how to utilize that?

I'd say about three months ago, it hit me fully. I realized, "Oh, this is real." I've been using my intuition my whole life. And I've been conscious that I was slightly different from most people for my whole life. But I just thought it was my special skill. People would say, "It's cool talking to you because you always finish my sentences." Or some people don't like it because I would interrupt, because I know what they're thinking. This last intense year of surrender to a divine, or to source...

I think COVID was a great gift for me in that way. It really scared the hell out of me in the beginning. And then I had to dig my way out of that intense fear and make choices about how do I want to live? How do I want to teach my children? How do I want to express myself in this world?

It felt like everything got taken away. I moved to New York to make art again in that context. I was on the verge of signing a lease for a studio, I was on the verge of making really big work, and having studio visits. I had all these plans. Then literally the day I was going to sign the lease, it became clear that we couldn't even leave the house it was so dangerous. 5,000 people passed away and within a month in my zip code, not talking the rest of Brooklyn, just my neighborhood. So it wasn't even safe to go to that studio. It wasn't safe for us to get on the bus, to walk down the street. It was so dangerous in that moment – and also there was so much unknown.

I road on that fear for a little while, but then once I was safe and Upstate, it was more of a reassessment. "Well, we may have no income from that source..."

It felt like I was on a train and the train got stopped – and I had to reinvent myself. What I noticed was that I saw the work I was going to make in New York, in that studio. It flashed before my eyes, when I was in the studio, even though I didn't sign the lease. I saw it on the wall and it was almost like I had done. It existed. And I felt a sense of completion. I didn't get to share it with the world, but I did what I needed to do, and now it's time to move on.

I was getting so much intuitive guidance every step of the way, and becoming more aware of my surroundings every step of the way, that it was a Summer of learning. And by the time I got to Maui... Also, looking at apartments non-stop for two years, and houses and places to move, before any of these moves to New York, I spent a year looking for a place to live. I would tune into them psychically, also with the people I've worked with, and ask, "Is this aligned?" I was learning through my process and that helped me to get a lot of skills. I've been doing about two years of actual psychic development training, using my life as the subject. And I would say only about three months ago did I think, "Wow, that's incredible that I just did a reading for someone and it was all spot on and helped them."

So when you were developing your psychic training, did you know that's what you were doing? Or were you just tuning into your intuition?

No, I was trying to make the right decision.

I was trying to have a better life by seeing problems before they showed up. For example, "Is this house infested with ghosts? Okay. I don't want to live there." Or, "I chose an apartment. I signed a lease and we moved into a place that did have a lot of spirit activity and super negative energy. What do I do now? And how do I clear that?"

I worked with a variety of people to learn about that. That was huge. First of all, I didn't even know that sort of thing existed. Second of all, now I'm working on clearing that. I was learning on a whole different level, a metaphysical level. Also I was becoming aware of people's energies and whether things are aligned or not aligned. Then I realized I was really empathic and that explained to me why I have a hard time functioning in large groups or busy places or on a bus in New York. And so it helped me to understand why moving to the middle of the ocean might be really beneficial.

It kind of makes sense in hindsight, right?

Yeah. And I wanted to mention one other thing when you asked about my family, which is that my consciousness really affects my family, especially my children. So as I took more ownership of my connection to source and making choices from that guidance, they fell in with that as well. I try wherever we go to make myself their home. So, having the same rituals every night, teaching them the practices I'm learning, sharing with them clearing and energetic healing techniques and meditations, and helping them to feel grounded, and recognizing their struggles.

But also just holding that space, "You're safe, we're safe, no matter where we are." Almost instilling a belief that location and physical surroundings are not the primary place in which we judge our sense of self and safety in the world.

Sure.

So without realizing it, I was developing this other resilience. In some ways I felt I was forced to do that by circumstances, but in other ways, what a beautiful thing that they now have. And as we're preparing for our next move, I have some anxiety about that for them, and turns out they're both totally on board and ready to go and excited.

Excellent.

So they're more resilient than the adults usually.

Yeah, isn't that the truth with children. That seems to be the case. And as you were in Maui, it sounds like that was an aha moment or the light went off. Like "I have this ability," and not only do you want to utilize it for your highest good, but the highest good of others. And then also to kind of allow that art and the healing modalities to be spoken about together and to show others that they can be utilized together. And that seems to be what the podcast is about, yes?

Yeah, this understanding of intuition and creativity being so linked. I had never talked about it in that way and really conceived of it. Also this awareness that a lot of times artists feel they just have to do what they're good at, but they don't realize all these things that you could do to make yourself even better at it by protecting your energy or getting grounded or feeling free to talk about spirituality out loud in this context where it's not always considered very cool. I had really kept my spiritual interests and development, especially from 2000 on completely secret. I didn't know how to integrate that into my art world mentality. And then I got the message here that it was really important to do that. And boy, was that hard to do.

It's was like coming out of the closet. I felt like, "I have to force myself." So I took down my whole website, which was an archive of all my work, my CV, my bio. It was just a different version of me. I just started again with, "I'm offering readings, I'm offering Reiki, I do animal communication, and I paint. And guess what, I'm channeling messages from artists." My practice is still... My real purpose is to make art, but I also found that I'm a teacher of sorts in this realm. I can share with people that are creative, how to integrate their connection to the divine or connection to source, the thing that brings the inspiration through to them, that it's okay to expand upon your understanding of that. And it can inform all parts of your life.

The word psychic is not a bad word actually. It's totally cool and empowering that you can see what's coming, look at your past, understand karmic patterns, and you can channel things in your artwork. You have so many more choices and we're operating on so many more levels than we're often conscious of. I'm trying to bring consciousness to those activities.

I think you're doing that in a beautiful way. How you describe that, it really conveys what that is in a beautiful way. It's letting divine energy, or universal energy, come through you in various ways and forms. Nothing's too small and nothing's too grand, that it's all for a purpose. To be open to that and not have it be taboo, or so black and white, or separated. I've always had a feeling that art world in New York, for whatever reason, it's this high art and very judgy, which is weird to me because art itself and the creation of art to me is the opposite of that. It's just an expression through you of something, and I've never understood good art or bad art. I've always thought you can't judge it. It speaks to somebody, even if it's one person. That's the whole point is that it has a purpose in its form.

I could see why that would feel very vulnerable to step outside of that paradigm that you lived in for so long, and functioned, painted, and created your different works of art. To be able to put it together so beautifully, and the courage that it would take to do that. That had to have felt scary when you took down that one website and you started working on the new one, and you're like, "Here I am. This is me right now." How did you move through that fear? Or was there much fear about it? Did you feel really comfortable and confident?

I guess I'm still a little polemical because once I figure out that something is the right thing to do, I will do it no matter how uncomfortable it is. That is how I've always been. And that's why I took those photographs of myself naked in college. I did not want to be seen naked, it was really unpleasant, but I knew it was the right thing to do. So it was following this inner inspiration, this guidance, this push. This, I don't know why, but I must. That is what propelled me. I did have a lot of guidance and support from people, particularly Laura Powers, helping me with the directions from angels and guides. They said, “You can do this. This is who you are. You have so much to offer, and why hide, why pretend?” I was fearful, but once I heard the message, I was like, "Gotta do it. I know it's unpleasant, but just hold your breath and jump."

In doing it, there's sort of a excitement too. "I know that if I take this leap of faith, I'm opening myself up to so much more, I don't know what it is." And then I realized that it's not like I'm leaving my art career to do this, I'm actually finally fully being myself in a context that is meaningful to me. And the other context which may be the art world or the art career would certainly come around if what I'm doing is of value, interesting, and speaks to people. Then I really have something to offer.

There were some situations where I had the opportunity to show in really good art galleries. And I didn't take up the offer at a younger age because I didn't know what I had to say. I wasn't willing to just have a show with a famous art dealer and flop, or make art that I didn't respect, even if other people liked it. I've always had that inner knowing that what I have to share is really important and I need to be sharing from the heart, it has to be authentic, and it has to be helpful. Otherwise I'm not going to let myself fully speak out. So I've always had a hard time fully shining, because I didn't have the tools to speak from the heart. Now, that's what carries me through, is that connection to that inner knowing that what I'm doing is aligned for me, even though it's uncomfortable for some of the things that I've learned and the identity that I've taken on, and probably my family.

A lot of the people I know might be like, "She's totally nuts," but at least I offered my service in the deepest most truthful way that I could think of at this time.

Yeah.

And what else is there? Also the funny thing was, how did I do before when I wasn't authentically myself? Not so great. I wasn't happy. I never got the recognition that I deserved or wanted. I wasn't connecting with people that I really respected and it wasn't surrounded by art that inspired me. Now that I'm feeling more authentic, I feel so much more empowered to go and discover. I imagine myself traveling the world to meet other brilliant teachers of consciousness and make art along the way. And that sounds way more fun to me than going to an art fair, where I'm trying to get someone to look at my work by going to have a drink or something boring.

I think it sounds absolutely exciting. I can feel your excitement and it's wonderful. A couple of words that popped into my head were authentic and integrity and vulnerable, and those are all great things. To have that all coming together, of course it feels exciting and I'm super excited for you.

Thank you.

I also want to ask you about your writing. It's so funny because prior to our meeting today I was thinking, "I feel like she's going to write a book," and then giving your bio and I though, "Yep, there it is. There's the book." So tell me more about that.

I think the book is going to be called "God Was Not Cool in Art School." I got to write it as a reflection of that time in my life. What we started to talk about at the beginning, there's so much there. There's nothing to leave behind. There were so many amazing lessons, amazing artwork, amazing experiences, but it was a time when I wasn't conscious of my gifts and my special guidance that I get, and that I get brought to these special places. I knew that amazing things would happen to me wherever I go. I just had to show up and something awesome would happen. But I wasn't fully aware of how to harness all of it.

It's sort of an autobiography of that period of my life, about going to school in New York, in the late eighties, early nineties – what came out of it and the ways in which I turned off my intuition and my inner knowing with the pursuit of intellectual and conceptual art development.

Maybe the undercurrent is more deeply, not just the stories of what literally happened, but how creativity, inspiration, and intellectual rigor in our society has gotten separated from a more intuitive spiritual way of being.

There's so many layers to this... Separated from the inner knowing and being cool with being interested in something called God or universal energy or consciousness. Like you said, they're completely linked. It's absurd to think that they're not, everybody knows they are.

And yet our current state in terms of talking about art is to be cold and analytical and critical of anything that might be intuitive or crafty or emotive. There's this love/hate. This, "Amazing abstract expressionist painter," but "We're really critical." I just need to come to terms with that. And through writing the book, I will be able to connect and not throw out the baby with the bath water, not leave behind any of the amazing people and moments and things that I learned.

I would ultimately like to work with a lot of artists living artists, in this way, like helping artists or doing readings for artists or connecting with them.

I'm sure there are many artists who are successful, creative, intellectual, and spiritual – and have this great understanding of consciousness.

You know, when you look back at history and read someone's biography, you learn a lot about that side of them. A lot of artists today don't get to talk about that. So I'd like to create a space for that.

That's great and needed. Sadly a lot of people are very disconnected from their intuition. They don't recognize it or they don't give it any value. That's incredibly detrimental to humanity. Through your work, as well as a lot of other people's work, hopefully it'll bring people to that connection within themselves to that gift that is intuition. To really serve their life and the lives of others in a positive way.

For sure.

That intuition arrived because I was an artist. I was able to learn about it and get better at it, through art making, the actual practice of art making. That's where I learned it first, and then I was able to expand and transfer it into other parts of my life in the world. So that's my access point, and that's why I feel like I should work with artists and creative people.

That's awesome. I love that. I can't wait to see your book too, as well as some of your archived art. Once that's up and out again, I look forward to seeing it. Is there anything else you want to share about your journey right now?

I'm just extremely grateful for all of the people that have helped me along the way. Even though we let go of a lot of people as we move and we progress, I can see the different ways in which even the hardships have helped me. Even though I'm not in touch with a lot of people now, and I don't particularly want to be, I'm also grateful for what I learned from that. I just want to send blessings forwards and backwards in time. I'm learning to have really good boundaries, and to be able to operate as a super empathic person in the world is challenging. I feel a lot of compassion for things and people that I've interacted with, or I may write about, that don't feel aligned anymore. I still really value that knowledge, experience, and interaction.

Absolutely. I think that's important. There's such a resistance to being grateful for something or someone or a time that was painful or challenging or difficult. And I'm a firm believer that it, it all has purpose for us and there are gifts within that. It's good and okay to say you're good with it. It doesn't mean you have to still be a part of it or have it celebrated in your life life daily or anything like that.

I'm super glad not to be suffering in this moment, but I look back at the last year and a half and I think, "Wow, that was an awesome journey." And thank goodness that I got help along the way and was able to dig myself out of it, for example.

Because of that, I feel that strength and I'm able to take the next step. "Okay, I'm doing this thing. I have no idea what's going to happen. But look at the last six months, look how great it worked out when I did this repeatedly." It's that repetition of taking that leap of faith and trusting and always opening up to that next potential miracle or amazing thing that might happen to you if you're willing to let it manifest.

And so I'm really trying to learn how to do that now more consciously.

That's excellent. Thank you. I really appreciate you sharing your story and where you're at and what's coming next. I can't wait to see, I'm excited for you, Sarah, and I appreciate you sharing such an inspirational story. I'm sure your words and your purpose will connect with a lot of our listeners.

So thanks so much.

You're welcome. I look forward to all the wonderful things that are going to come.

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