Wings of Forgiveness: Rising From the Past Into Purpose

I’m at the easel teaching the night session of the Mastery Program, and while everyone is painting their small-scale realism lesson piece, I’m in the throes of a real drama with a 30x36” canvas.

I just finished one of the worst paintings I have made in the last year, and I’m still trying to get over it. I’m in the I’m-so-sick-of-my-tight-self stage and want to loosen up and paint something effortless yet powerful.

The last painting I created, which I just hate but was determined to finish, still haunts me. It looks like a bad illustration from a creepy gothic nursery rhyme. It appeared out of nowhere, did not progress easily, and of course felt overpainted. When I finished it, I thought, “What the heck was I thinking? Who would want this ridiculous painting?”

It bothered me. It struck my pride. I knew my reactions to it were not normal or logical. Why couldn't I just let it go? Why couldn't I just laugh it off and think, “Okay, that was interesting. Weird…let’s move on.” Why, instead, did it trigger some kind of identity crisis where I had to doubt even being an artist?

Trusting the Flow

Now here I am, in my own private turmoil, painting in front of the Mastery students, hoping to redeem myself and gain some confidence. I decide to start from an intuitive place—to shed the perfectionism and structure, delve clear outside of my comfort zone, and trust that what comes out of me, if I let go of my control, will be divinely whispered and heavenly touched.

I begin with abstract washes and no plan of any kind. I start with a general violet and ochre combo. Then I add some black and a little bit of transparent red oxide. I’m watching the fluid colors drip and blend together, creating unpredictable forms with the variations in value. I flick, scrape, and roll on some paint in a fast and semi-violent revolution.

I keep an eye on the students, who have all drifted into Right Brain Land, slowly developing their small realistic paintings. They are in a comfortable place and know what they are doing. They don't require too much from me.

John decided to take the Mastery Program and has been really enjoying it. He easily creates amazing pieces with every lesson, and it's nice to see him interact with the students while they admire his take on each assignment. Constantino, our son, is also in this class, and I’m loving the father-son bonding taking place.

I stand back from my abstract painting and try to engage my intuition. What does this painting want to be?

When Heaven Touches the Canvas

I immediately see a pegasus flying away into the depths of darkness. Like looking into a cloud, I clearly make out the back end of the horse’s form, along with the wing, shoulder, and head.

It's right there. There is no denying it. But I hate fantasy art and can’t stomach what I am seeing. I don't want to paint this mythical creature, AT ALL. I try to find something else within the washes of paint, but I can’t shake what I see.

At that moment, a student, Isaac, who is merely 16 years old, comes up to me and says, “You are painting a pegasus? Cool!”

I say, “You see it too? I don't want to paint a pegasus.”

“Why not? What’s so bad about a flying horse?” he says.

It’s true. Why don't I want to paint a pegasus? What’s all this resistance about? I’m just experimenting in the middle of my identity crisis. I should be open to anything. Isn't that what I teach others to do?

Ugh! I’m so sick of myself. Why do I always think I have to make some kind of masterpiece? That’s not freedom. That is just another mindset to hold me back and shrink my vision. Sometimes you just have to goof around and go with it.

“Thank you, Isaac. You are totally right. There is nothing wrong with a flying horse. I’m gonna do it.”

Isaac smiles big. “I can’t wait to see this progress. I hope you do it in class with us.”

I resign myself to the painting and allow it to become what it wants to become. I begin carving out the forms that I see and start to get a little stuck on the legs and the head. It's foreshortened a little bit, so I can’t visualize it in detail. I look for some sources and quickly combine three horses and add some wings. Now I have a framework of form to follow and feel more comfortable.

As I continue to work, I feel a tremendous release. John and I are both trying to find our own individual voices this year, since we stopped our collaboration, and to me, this feels like the beginning of a breakthrough.

I continue to work on my painting early in the morning before the daytime Mastery students arrive. Painting at 5am in the silence of my own thoughts and presence of what moves my hands, I begin to feel connected to something ancient yet eternal.

I feel an electric fire and know that I am standing on holy ground. As I paint, I want to cry, shout, sing, dance. I feel like I’m in communion with more than just me—maybe even a host of beings all connected to the source of that fire.

Flying to Freedom

The painting brings me back to memories of my dad from when I was a kid. I’m sitting in his lap and can smell the sweet tobacco from his pipe sitting in the pocket of his shirt. I hear his excited voice and see his giant hands moving as he describes the heroes and the gods of a people he says I came from. He’s telling me of another great myth about pegasus. I see myself on its back, flying through the night sky and touching the stars. I am free.

Standing in front of the easel, I begin to cry hot, thick tears that have built up for many years. I realize these stories of Greek mythology my dad told me nightly imprinted my soul with purpose and destiny. As early as five years old, I believed I was born of these heroes. These myths were my heritage. Perseus, Hercules, and Achilles were my ancestors.

My tears roll into repentance. My dad wasn't all bad. Yes, he often stomped around the house screaming like a cyclops. I wanted to disappear and prayed he would be blind to me in his rant. But he loved me as well and spent endless evenings reading to me and showing me countless pages of books with illustrations of creatures, brave warriors, and gods—all part of an epic adventure that made the earth shake. My dad prepared me for my destiny. He gave me my wings to fly.

At that moment, my heart turns toward forgiveness. I realize he did the best he could with what he had and what he knew. My bitterness and focus on his faults kept me closed to the internal myth that was asleep inside of me. But I can feel it bursting forth, spreading its wings across the sky. I know this painting is profound. It is bigger than me.

Bitterness to Breakthrough

Pegasus was a prophetic symbol of the years to come. Born from the neck of beheaded Medusa, Pegasus rises from death into life to serve in purpose and destiny. With a strike of his hoof, he creates the Hippocrene spring on Mount Helicon, a sacred source of poetic inspiration for the muses. He lives a life in triumph, empowered by his wings of forgiveness and freedom. He carries the thunderbolts of Zeus, powerfully changing the world with moments of impact.

I bring my nearly finished painting to the night Mastery class again, knowing what this prophetic symbol carries. I understand that the artists have wings. They too hold the thunderbolts within their art to shape culture and make change. With a strike of their brush, springs of poetic inspiration will flood forth.

Modern art has been beheaded, and the venomous snakes of dark, oppressive, despondent art have lost their source of life. From this death, the artists of today have been born to carry out the will of heaven for a better earth.

It is not an accident that this is the year that the Mastery Program goes online and begins to affect artists from every corner of the earth. I personally needed this shift. I needed to let go of the resentment and bitterness I unknowingly carried about my dad, to make room for new revelation.

It is this revelation that becomes the catalyst for a renewed mind—facilitating new thoughts, which produce new actions from which breakthrough, abundance, and blessing flow.

This personal journey is one of many to equip me for a new shift and for what would come later. It prepared me to lead better, bear more, and facilitate what God moves. I had to change. I couldn't remain the same, and neither could my art. My art prophesied the internal transformation that was necessary to grow and become my better self.

Without these changes and personal growth, we remain stagnant and unable to evolve. So let’s spread our wings of forgiveness and allow the winds of change to lift us to the stars that chart our destiny.

Rewriting the Story

Even eight years after this happened, I see more meaning and profound evidence that our art prophesies our future and manifests our destiny. The painting of the girl with the goose—the one that started this identity crisis—was me facing the nursery rhymes of my youth.

Old Mother Hubbard who had nothing in her cupboard; the woman who lived in a shoe and had so many children she didn't know what to do; and the most interesting of them all: "Goosey goosey gander, where shall I wander, upstairs and downstairs and in my lady's chamber. There met an old man who wouldn't say his prayers. I took him by the left leg and threw him down the stairs."

This painting was the uncomfortable confrontation of false lessons ingrained in me as my mother innocently and lovingly read me these “silly” rhyming stories with their slick sing-song deceptions.

They instilled fear in me that motherhood could lead to overwhelm and an inability to handle life. They taught me that lack and empty cupboards could be a reality. And finally, they taught me to justify seeing my father as a villain, a godless man, who was a foolish soul present in my life to make me feel worthless.

This lie blinded me to the truth that he actually spoke greatness and destiny into me and facilitated something profound that would affect hundreds of thousands of artists around the world.

This difficult and torturous painting was about me facing and confronting Goosey Goosey Gander and displacing him with the heroic Pegasus, flying with me through the sky toward my north star.

Have you ever had a moment where your art surprised you?

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