Every painting is an opportunity to say hello

Art is one of my favorite ways to say hello to the spirit within myself and others.

‘Bird Storm’ ©Kris Cahill 2024, acrylic on wood, 10” x 10”. Purchase the original here.

Whether or not you intend for your creations to say hello, they do. Even if the person being said hello to is you, that is hello.

As a psychic and psychic teacher, I think about this often. Early on in my psychic training, I was taught that saying hello to myself and to my body is one of the most powerful ways to facilitate and create space for healing to happen.

I experienced this deeply as I began to practice it, and I realized that I already did this as an artist. I’ve stood weeping in front of paintings that triggered something mysterious within me. Having been transformed and healed by the experience of being in the presence of art more times than I can count, I realized that art has always felt like a hello to me.

One of my favorite memories is seeing the work of Gerhard Richter for the first time, in a big show of his work at Chicago’s MCA in 1988. I was not yet painting, though I’d longed to do so for years, and standing in front of the giant abstract works of Richter triggered a deep and fierce longing within me to make abstract paintings. Walking through that show, I felt my whole body responding to the power of these paintings, especially the wild colorful abstracts. I didn’t expect nor did I understand the emotions welling up within me, but I do now. One of those emotions was grief - I wanted to paint and I wasn’t. My body’s response to that show was a dead giveaway, I couldn’t ignore it any longer. Within a couple of years I started painting.

Think of a film or book or art that you saw that felt like a healing, a deep awakening or even a hello. It was likely one of many that has affected you and how you live your life. Perhaps experiencing this particular creation made by someone else helped you see yourself more clearly, or know something true in a deeper way.

Art is necessary for us all, it is no mere luxury. Creativity is for everyone, not just a few.

Anytime you create an expression from within you, you're sharing a communication to the world.

I often realize after completing a piece, as I look at it again and again, that it was inspired and driven by the energy I was experiencing at the time I made the painting. Also that there was communication of one kind or other coming through me while creating the piece.

Painting is a very present moment experience: I want to work with these colors, and suddenly that shape speaks out, and now I want some texture over there. Meanwhile, whether I’m conscious of it or not, there’s a background hum of energy, spirit. I’m thinking about this or that, feeling my way through in a way, responding to whatever impulses or desires are moving through me in this moment. All of this will never be repeated exactly the same way, just as any day you have will never be exactly the same as any other, though sometimes they feel like they are. Because feelings are another part of this.

No two paintings will ever be alike, not even painted by the same artist.

I cannot reproduce any painting I’ve created, though many are similar, no two are the same. The same can be said for everything created by human hands, hearts, and minds - there is a spirit that comes through each of us in the moment we create, that is only available in that moment. A live performance will never be exactly the same as another live performance by the same person, and still retain its spirit. When we try to copy what we’ve done before in the same way we did it then, we lose our ability to be here in this moment and create what there is to create today.

Like a passing mood, we feel what we feel now, and it’s the job of the artist to work with that. This doesn’t mean we cannot be consistent in many ways, actors remember their lines and direction from performance to performance, musicians know how to play the music they’re playing, having practiced it for many hours. But the magic is in the spirit, the sparkle that can only come through in this moment, at this time, for this performer.

All of this is also affected by the events of the day, what is happening all around us. The Patti Smith concert I attended in late October 2016, weeks before a contentious presidential election in the US, had a different vibration than any other time I’ve seen Patti Smith perform. Patti’s rendition of ‘People Have the Power’ held a different emotional meaning that evening than it did on other occasions. I love this video of Patti Smith and a chorus of 200 singers singing this song together, in 2019. So healing!