story behind the exhibition

 

The Art of Awakening began long before I knew I was creating an exhibition.

 

It began during a period of my life markTheed by trauma, profound change, and challenges with my health. Those experiences forced me to turn inward—to look at myself, my life, and the world around me differently. What began as a search for healing slowly became a spiritual awakening, and eventually, a remembering.

 

I began to wonder whether there are parts of ourselves that we have simply forgotten—abilities, sensitivities, and ways of perceiving that perhaps have always been within us.

 

As I became quieter inside, I also became increasingly aware of something I had overlooked before: the extraordinary hidden within the ordinary.

 

A reflection dancing across water. A bird arriving at precisely the right moment. Light moving across a surface. The feeling of unconditional love. A fleeting instant that would normally disappear unnoticed into the noise of a busy life.

 

These tiny moments began to feel enormous.

 

I started to see them not simply as beautiful things, but as invitations to pay attention. There can be profound meaning in a moment that lasts only seconds—if we are present enough to notice it. This awareness became part of my work and part of my connection to something much larger: nature, consciousness, the cosmos, and the mystery of our existence.

 

And then came the Shimmer.

 

The Shimmer is difficult to describe because nothing in my ordinary visual language seemed quite adequate for what I experienced. It appeared as an extraordinary presence of light and movement—as if the familiar world around me had momentarily revealed another layer.

 

There was luminosity, color, motion and intricate patterns that seemed almost alive. Light appeared to move and transform, creating forms and structures that felt at once organic and geometric. It was beautiful beyond anything I knew how to explain.

 

But what affected me most was not only what I saw.

 

It was what I felt.

 

For those moments, my perception of reality seemed to expand. There was an extraordinary sense of connection and wonder—as though the boundaries between myself and everything around me had become less certain. I wasn’t thinking about the past or worrying about what came next. I was simply there, completely present before something I could not explain.

 

I don’t claim to know exactly what the Shimmer was.

 

I only know that I experienced it—and it changed me.

 

It changed me profoundly, and for the better.

 

Afterward, I wanted desperately to see it again. Every day I searched for that extraordinary light. I looked outward, trying to find again what I had witnessed. I studied light, reflections, patterns, nature and the cosmos, attempting through paint to approach something that had seemed almost impossible to capture.

 

But somewhere within that search, something unexpected happened.

 

I began to find what I had been looking for within myself.

 

The paintings in The Art of Awakening grew from this journey. They are not intended to provide answers or tell anyone what to believe. They are my attempt to translate experiences, questions, moments of wonder, and states of consciousness into something visible.

 

Perhaps awakening is not about discovering something new.

 

Perhaps it is about remembering something we already knew.