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About Me
The subjects of my paintings are the things I want to focus on. I want to follow the magic pathways to divine consciousness, so I paint spiritual symbols. I want to think about things that lighten my own heart or make me laugh, so I paint people, places, and things that I enjoy. I want to feel love and joy, so I paint cats.
I love painting cats because I love cats. I love to watch how a cat enjoys being a cat, being in its body, living in the present, enjoying its now. When I paint a cat, my goal is to capture the sweetness and fun of catness. I like to run my attention across the cat’s features – the soft nose, the munchable ears, the funny tickle whiskers, the cute toe beans. What direction does the fur grow in that place? What angle do the eyes make when closed for a nap? How does the chin fit the kitty lips? Those cat places give me pleasure.
I am deeply spiritual and I love yoga, so spiritual symbols and sacred geometry naturally found their way into my artwork. The holy symbols resonate in a deep place in me. I feel like studying and painting them sets me on those well-worn pathways to spiritual connection.
The same symbol is often repeated across unrelated cultures, leading me to believe that these specific shapes must affect the human brain in a specific way. Meditation on these forms may generate neural firing in areas of our brain that one could interpret as spiritual experience. If I paint enough of these things, I might get enlightened.
Yes,
I paint other subjects that I love – people, flowers, landscapes. My creative
work simply refuses to be bound by a specific form of expression and specific
subject material. I feel responsible for the ideas as they want to flow through
my fingers, and I want to fulfill them in service to the power that gave them. My
job now is to listen and enjoy the journey to what comes next.
Artist Biography
I’ve been making art most of my life. When I was a kid, my mom managed the Art Show at The Eastern Montana Fair. Every August, I worked on the top floor of the big exhibition hall, organizing and hanging art, staffing the floor, and talking to the public. I even won some blue ribbons for my own artwork. It was a great gig for a creative kid. I majored in art in college for a while, but practicality and ambition won out and I earned a degree in Business. My mom advised me, “You can always use a business degree,” and she was right. As a result, I’ve had many interesting jobs and owned a few businesses myself. After graduating from Montana State University, I worked in production in the Film and Television industry in Los Angeles. I earned an MFA in Screenwriting from Loyola Marymount University and wrote a ton of screenplays, none of which sold.
I also fell in love with yoga, taught yoga and ran a yoga studio in Santa Monica for a decade. When life brought me back to Montana, I played with remodeling real estate -- giant creativity projects. My last career was in the marijuana business where I both owned a company and was active in the political evolution of the Montana cannabis industry. All the while, I have been making art.
Clay was my medium of choice for a long while and I was an avid potter and ceramics artist. I belonged to The Clayhouse in Santa Monica and the senior members were generous about sharing their knowledge and skills. But my left shoulder started complaining about the big lumps of clay spinning on the wheel and, frankly, I was getting bored with the bland color palate of high fire clay. A couple of trips to Paris and the vibrant colors of “flat art” (as I call it) in museums and galleries brought me back to drawing and painting.
On and off, depending on whatever business and schedule, I have been painting in my studio and screwing around with spray paint creations in the garage. It is my nature to have several projects going at once. So now I find myself with hundreds of paintings in my basement from those decades of work. I sold my last business and now have time to focus on my creative work. It is the harvest. And my paintings want to go out into the world. They want to be set free!
BALLERNIA MISTY
