‘The Goddess Journey’ by Mona M. de Crinis

        She waits in a small studio in Desert Hot Springs. The interviewer is running late, but she remains calm, unaffected, preparing herbal tea for her tardy guest. When the journalist gets there, she smiles, waving away the apologies that spit out of her visitor’s mouth like so many useless watermelon seeds. Her serenity envelopes the room, a room alive with her paintings and the works of some of her peers. Her peaceful, intuitive presence reaches out to the interviewer, stroking a psyche in sore need of a rejuvenating hug of calm. Her guest breathes in deeply and lets out a sigh upon which travels the burden and stress of life in this new millennium.

The artist, Shaktima, however, seems to take the 21^st century in stride. It is as though, she has learned how to harness her boundless energy, allowing it to burst forth in creative explosions rather than exasperation. The work found in her studio is wild, untamed, inspired, and delightfully raw, kind of like the emotions that fuel her desire to create.

“My art comes from the need to engage in a metaphorical journey into greater awareness,” she asserts.

“All the emotions of fear, anger, guilt and love have to be expressed. In the beginning, painting was a form of catharsis, which led to questioning and meditation. I needed to realize the essence and life force energy that inhabit human beings.”

Shaktima is an artist, writer and teacher who developed “The Goddess Journey,” a body of work consisting of 33 paintings, as an adventure into the feminine essence (intuition, psyche, soul and everlasting renewal). Her paintings are acrylic on canvas, single panels and triptychs. “With triptychs,” she adds, I create sacred spaces which sometimes include altars. Many of the images and symbols used are designed to reveal the subtle realms of consciousness, when body, mind and spirit reunite.”

Shaktima a.k.a. Brien was born in Montreal, Canada. She graduated from the University of Quebec with a degree in communications. Although she possesses no formal education in art, Shaktima chose to follow her heard regardless: “I am a shaman-artist. I channel the spirit for the people to see what is beyond what we see with our physical eyes. I decided to follow my dream or the light at the end of the tunnel, and that led me to California, where I started to paint on floors and walls my encounters with the Unknown, what society ignores – the Essence – and that led me to the discovery and revelations of the great Goddess, the great forgotten Cosmic Mother.”

From Gaea to the Black Madonna to the Mary, the Godmother, Shaktima finds in Goddess dreams, visions and images – reflections of the Feminine spirit, soul, psyche and sexuality.

Striving to free herself, and break through the fears and taboos of current society, Shaktima’s desire is “to reclaim her natural power, role and responsibility as matriarch.”

“Breaking through means to realize myself totally : body, mind, spirit, sex and psyche; to know and experience everything you want to; to develop your sexuality, your spirituality; to not get married (if you don’t want to), not have children, travel alone, be an artist, a writer… whatever,” she says. “If you know what you are doing, you are repeating yourself.”

Her work is broad and holistic. With a deep interest in spiritual nature, Shaktima’s Goddess is negative space or a container (matrix) offering continuous transformation in order to achieve ecological, global and individual balance.

“When I refer to Goddess as negative space, I’m referring to what we don’t see, the dark, what we are afraid of. The unknown is only frightening when we travel without light.”

Through her work, she hopes to emphasize the importance of restoring the spirit, the sexual and the consciousness that, she believes is at the heart of all we do.

“My paintings come from revelations. They are images that surge from different states of awareness; harmony, order and balance within and without. Painting, for me, is channeling.”

The Process

        Although an intuitive artist, Shaktima admits she enjoys certain rituals when she paints.

“To keep balance and sanity in my life, I close my door to the world, put the phone away and unwind by doing nothing. This is what I call “reaching the void to receive inspiration (information).”

“I usually put on some music to tune into alpha-theta waves and go through the moods of the hour – joy, confusion or sadness. It is important to feel where I am at. As the state of the soul surfaces, I go with the flow and let it be…

“I may suddenly feel the need to play with yellows, so I sort out all the yellow hues I have and pour them onto the canvas according to an inner rhythm that takes over my being; it is a pleasurable dance. Red! Yes, I add some red for its sensuality as my pulse increases. A feverish trance takes over my will. No more mind, only vibrations.

“As I walk around and on the canvas, I play with colors and shapes. New spaces and moods that don’t necessarily belong to me, but to the unconscious collective, go through me.

“And I take breaks. Lots of breaks!”

“Basically I feel good when I paint. This is how I celebrate life.”

“Goddess Art demands the conscious participation of the viewer to reveal its meaning. If you look at cave art, you may only see a buffalo, but if you become the buffalo, you become the shaman, the celebrant. There is nobody between you and the experience of being a buffalo. You know the intimate nature of what you observe when you become one with it.”

There is far too much attention paid to art as pure decoration, Shaktima believes. “You need to engage in the experience of the meaning, not look at it and say ‘Oh! I like it’ or ‘I don’t like it.’

“Shaman and Goddess art are spiritual experiences. The vision transforms you,” she says, adding that her art is like a journey in which she discovers all that society told her didn't exist. “I could only intuit that it really existed.”

Is there hope for Creativity?

        “It is not a matter of hope anymore,” Shaktima responds passionately. “Art and creativity are flourishing in the Coachella Valley, on the Internet, and on networks like MTV and HBO.

“After participating in the Arts and You Symposium in La Quinta a few weeks ago, I realized that what I had always dreamed of is happening here and now. The valley’s visionaries, artists, government, CEO’s, business, art and educational organizations are finally meeting to share their programs, projects and ideas for the development and the future [of art].

“It is happening right before our very eyes.”

For more information about Shaktima’s art

Conscious art work by Shaktima 

My continuous work theme is the awakening of human consciousness.

I am mainly interested in exploring the consciousness at this moment of time, when humanity is entering the stage of “global brain” or “universal consciousness.”

I choose to work in California because it is where the most advanced researches are made in art, science, spirit, ecology and technology. Artists, scientists, ecologists, teachers, searchers and visionaries from all over the world are meeting here to develop projects that bring about new dimensions and paradigms for a better future.

Immersed in this creative laboratory, where inspiration and realization feed each other at light speed, new languages take shape.

Lawrens S. Harris, a Canadian painter, said, “All that exist is inextricably inter-dependent in the great cosmic movement of becoming. Art is a vessel to travel at the center of this powerful electric light, creative vital energy of which human being is made of: the power to choose and to create a better reality.”

Life, death and the soul are intimately linked in my art and writing.

For the survival of the species, it is of the highest importance to free the creativity inside each human being. This will not only save us from our own destruction, but accelerate our blossoming into God+dess-like beings.

Looking forward to rally humanity in radical  changes, I come to the conclusion that it is through art and writing, images and words and storytelling that we can best transmit wisdom.

Desert Post Weekly – Thursday, November 23, 2000