Angels and Meditative Thoughts

 

"Angel of the Timeless Garden" ©Mary Montague Sikes

Angels have always intrigued me. Over the years, I've been inspired to paint them, but I never knew quite how I wanted to portray these magical, celestial beings. Sometimes abstract elements attracted me, but the results didn't seem quite right. Then, I began making a Christmas card each year, using a newly created, realistic pastel drawing or watercolor/acrylic painting of my special angel.

For several years, I worked in mixed water media, often using Yupo for my ground and applying the beautiful and intense Robert Doak watercolors to it. Sometimes I put the paint on canvas instead. I have loved the results.

"Steadfast" watercolor ©Mary Montague Sikes

 When I read Conversations with Angels by Judith Marshall, it occurred to me that my paintings on Yupo make an important connection with the universe. With these paintings, one can become "locked into the universe". One can focus on meditations to connect with spirit guides and guardian angels. These paintings were the device I'd been seeking in my readings and in my art.

In her book, Marshall describes how to visualize for a meditation to meet your guardian angels. I like the idea of sitting in a quiet place and meditating in this manner. Except I put up one of my paintings on Yupo or I pick a page in my new Artful Angels little hard cover book for the coffee table.

This is the poem that came to me in my meditation vision for the World Healers Conference in 2013:

Charm is not a vision nor a feel.

It is music in the universal sky.

The night turns vivid green

And your journey is not far away.

 

Your travels aid knights of vision.

You heal with color and light.

Your thoughts are set to lure

So inside the beauty lingers.

 

I like to watch the sunlit sky

And by that means the truth does bind.

Follow close and follow hard

Hear the sounds of birds and flowers.

 

Animals touch the universal star

And lead you through the journey home.

Do not wait.

Touch it now!   

©Mary Montague Sikes                   

Much of what I see or hear in meditation is poetic. Try focusing on a painting and see if you have a poetic response to color and light.

My book, Artful Angels is available from Amazon.

 

 

Poetry to Treasure

Although I enjoy poetry and sometimes write it, I don't often pick up a book of poetry and read it. That's what makes The Embrace: Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo by Carolyn Kreiter-Foronda so special. I opened this book and discovered a treasure.

Kreiter-Foronda has put her heart and soul into this very special volume. She went to the museums in Mexico City where gigantic murals by Diego Rivera were on view and studied them. She then visited La Casa Azul, the house in Mexico City where Frida Kahlo was born. The flavor of the possessions she saw there fill the lines of her poems with emotion. Her words tremble, and the reader feels them.

The poetic connection with the paintings by these two famous artists is unforgettable. The tumultuous relationship between Rivera and Kahlo cries out from the poetry of this talented writer who was Poet Laureate of the Commonwealth of Virginia from 2006 to 2008.

Do you like poetry? Poetry and art combined? If so, please take a look at this book.

Connecting Maya Ruins Art and Writing

I love it when writers are inspired by art. Richard Raymond III created the Shakespearean sonnet below based on my paintings and what he remembers from Mayan history. You can see the imagery as you read.

Thank you, Richard!

ROMANCES AMONG THE RUINS *

"... And this our life, exempt from public haunt,
Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,
Sermons in stones, and good in everything."
– Shakespeare, "As You Like It"

THE FACE IN THE SERPENT’S JAWS

Quetzalcoatl, the Feathered Serpent-God
No "still unravish’d bride" is this stark stone,
No "foster-child of silence". Undulant,
For centuries lay dreaming, all alone
Amid the undergrowth and forest-plant
He lay with gaping maw, whence peered a face ...
(Of anguish? or, perhaps, of godly birth ...
Was it emerging, as the fount of a great race?
Or being swallowed, to increase the serpent’s girth?)
Only the sculptor knew, who seemed to mock
Divinity, disgorging living head,
Hewn by stone tools out of the living rock,
Where now remains no witness but the dead,
Not even ghosts to weep, betrayed, undone,
Upon these steps, the Temple of the Sun.

Copyright Richard Raymond III