Forty years have passed since a new chapter of my life began, one that brought me back to the United States from Paris. After a year of drawing and painting in Spain, I was awarded a painting and living studio at La Cité Internationale des Arts in the heart of Paris, which was vibrant with musicians, composers, sculptors and painters from many different countries. It was an exhilarating time and I was soon asked to participate in art exhibitions, both in and outside of Paris. In the years that followed, I proceeded to paint my personal world of images. Having been married to a musician at the time, I enjoyed being exposed to the musical life of Paris, as well.
After a number of years, changing events in my life drew me out into the world. I began working as an art consultant with museums, private collectors and art dealers. Eventually, I would move back to California where I continued as an art consultant and opened an art gallery in Los Angeles, debuting with a retrospective of my friend Wallace Berman’s innovative work. Berman has been called the "father of assemblage art” and a "crucial figure in the history of post- war California art.”
During the last years living in Paris, an inordinate number of coincidences began occurring almost daily, a phenomenon that continued after I moved back to the United States. I found myself invaded by positive types of inexplicable happenings that couldn’t be logically explained by my atheist upbringing and rational mind. In spite of myself, I was led into an inner journey of spiritual experiences and studies. As I became increasingly involved in an emerging experiential personal growth seminar, I decided to close my art gallery and began facilitating some of these seminars.
Along the way, I had met a spiritual teacher and wayshower, John-Roger, who profoundly affected my life. Through him, I opened up more to inner realities and a consciousness of loving. This led to many years of travel and service work in many countries with him and, to this day, I continue following this inner journey.
Asked often how could I have given up painting, the question got answered when I realized that working with people was another form of creativity. I still saw life as a collage of realities, forms and spaces, as I had done from as far back as I can remember.
After forty years the serendipity of life brought me back to expressing my creativity through painting. In a class that had to do with spiritual masters, we were asked to select one to study in depth before giving a presentation. I selected someone so far back in time that very little was known about him. Thus, learning about him would have to be largely an internal process rather than fact
based. When I delved inside, specific images came to me and, too my surprise, I found that I was compelled to paint these images. Reluctantly, I bought paints, canvas and even an easel. Part of my kitchen/dining room soon turned into a studio; one painting led to another and a joyous visual inner dialogue began.
Going beyond the reluctance, I became absorbed in the process once again. I did two paintings for the class, but after the class I felt that I needed to express one of the paintings on a considerably larger scale so that the painting would become an even greater expression of energy I was experiencing. For the next few months I worked on a six-foot by three-foot painting until I captured the dominant color blue with the exact quality I had pictured inwardly.
When I looked further into what had been written about the master that I had chosen to research, I found that written words related to him corresponded to what I had been painting; I felt “on track.”
Another painting followed and I realized that it belonged with the first and, in fact, there was a need for a third. What surprised me the most were the bold colors that came to me and the way they related to each other. The paintings worked individually, but when seen as a triptych they played off one another by creating a different quality of energy and augmented the experience.
Eventually four sets of triptychs evolved. Each set used different materials and styles of expression, yet they were all linked by creating forms of energy and vibration. Most significantly is that they all related to the number three and the energy of three. I started visualizing them in a gallery space, and this vision stayed with me. People have inquired about purchasing the paintings, yet I feel that they should be seen together before they might go their separate ways.
Other paintings have followed, all having to do with energy, vibration, color, time, and space. There are some that involve “form” juxtaposed to “the formless.”
I could say more about my paintings and my inner process, yet perhaps it is better that you have your own experience.
Thanks for visiting my world. I am loving sharing this journey with you.
Timothea Stewart
In our life there is a single color, as on an artist’s palette, which provides the meaning of life and art. It is the color of love.
Marc Chagall