About the 'Archangel' painting

Can a painting heal another painting? I don’t know… but to be honest, that was the intention behind the painting I ended up titling ‘Archangel’ on its completion in June 2019. Here is my sacred art journey story around its creation:

I was working on another painting in the late summer and fall of 2018.  The intention behind this other painting was around healing the issue of betrayal – but not just betrayal of some specific personal kind- this was more around healing betrayal as a remnant of imprinting from multi-generational traumatic events.  I was doing a lot of ancestral healing work in my writing and it was spilling over into my dreams and my art practice.  The painting on my easel that late summer/fall of 2018 became my painting titled ‘Land of Look Behind.’ But there was a point where I felt stuck in the process of finishing it even though I felt it was progressing.  And so I started another painting.  I wanted a painting that would be a healing support: a healing painting for the ancestral healing painting.  In my art journal on Dec 15, 2018 I wrote that the new healing painting, would be an ‘angel of hope’ to support the ancestral figures in the ‘Land of Look Behind’ painting.  I was able to complete the ‘Land of Look Behind’ shortly after the healing painting was started.

On February 1, 2019, I returned to working on the angel/healing painting.  It was a sacred day in the calendar which I noted in my art journal, Happy Imbolc and Feast Day of St. Brighid.  In my writing over the past couple of months I had been feeling into the trauma of ancestors who suffered for various reasons, and in fact, that same month I was traveling to Jamaica partly as a research project to visit the place where some of my ancestors arrived and lived in Jamaica in the 1860s. I was feeling tears that day of Feb 1. I wrote make me strong, I am strong, I am strong in chalk on the painting.

And then the serendipity happened.  I almost always paint to music in my studio and right then as I was adding paint to the painting, a Burt Bacharach song came on: God, give me strength … spread your wings and you are gone … blue bird, fly away …. Take a message to Michael, a message to Michael . .

What was significant in it for me is I have always felt a connection with Archangel Michael. The painting and the serendipity with the song coming on right at that time, was a healing miracle sacred art journey for me, particularly since the painting had been invoked and started with a clear intention for bringing in an angel of hope for support and healing for my ancestors.

I am honored and delighted to have ‘Archangel’ seen in the December 2021 issue of Conde Nast Traveller Magazine. It is a very special painting.  

© Kathy Stanley

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