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Join me on February 26th for a very special fundraising event in support of Tohoku survivors. If you would like to contribute art please contact us. I will be available all day to draw portraits. ¥3,000 for black and white and ¥10,000 for colored. Take a look at the various styles I use on the Genesis Art Workshop page here–

Intuitive art describes artists who create in a spontaneous manner, never really knowing what exactly will surface. And yet each intuitive artist finds their own path by entering worlds that only they know exist. I’m pleased to introduce some of these contemporary intuitive artists who are forging new paths and pioneering new techniques in the intuitive art world.

Introducing Japan’s Intuitive Artist Kei Yasaka

Beautiful Spirit (2005)

Kei Yasaka, 37, lives and works in Fukuoka, Kyushu, with his parents,
grandmother, and his own two elementary school age kids, Ao and Yoshika.
The tranquility that comes from Kei’s paintings against this lively
backdrop is almost hard to fathom. Where does this inner peace come
from? Kei’s studio is adjacent to the family home. This is where the
artist closes the door and opens up to the universe.

Beautiful Spirit (2005)

Artwork influenced by Papua New Guinean culture. In Japanese,
beautiful spirit, utsukushi seirei, sounds more fairylike than of a holy spirit.

This work shows the strong influence Papua New Guinea culture had on me.
This was my turning point. From 2003, the year I went to live there, I had done
abstract art as a graduate student at Tama Bijutsu Daigaku
(Tama Art University). It was the period I was struggling to make my own style,
but the teachers didn’t appreciate what I was doing.

I combined figures with abstract background. Then in Papua
New Guinea I deeply felt some vibration from the universe. I met people
with whom I could share my spiritual sensitivity and they understood
intuitively. Nature in Papua New Guinea is very strong — mountains,
winds, sunlight. I could feel this big power, or energy, change my style
and way of thinking. The elder people can still feel spiritual things
from nature. A statue, for instance, represents an animal spirit . . . .
so when I spent time there I started to get a similar feeling in my art.
The art was representing some spiritual energy that I couldn’t yet name.

2007 Tojitara Hiraku It will open when it is closed

This is one of the early works I painted with just intuition. This work was
the start of focusing on my own connection with existence.

If I reject all social influence or logic maybe the painting won’t start
or won’t finish, so in the beginning it’s like a call and response, or a
question and answer. The canvas is already the question, the call to the
universe. In the universe there is no rule about art that it must be
square or rectangular. But when we put a specific size of canvas in
front of us, we are saying please give me some answer to this size of
canvas.

Then if I put out too many questions this size of canvas can’t accept them
all so I just put very small lines or pale colors in the beginning. Just
this tiny sensitive touch is the beginning. This touch is artificial.
Its not intuition. Then I can accept whatever comes next as the response
from the universe.

2008 New Birth

For this work I got inspiration from the outskirts of Tokyo. Sunshine
from beautiful treetops, a small stream in the mountains. Through these
things I felt the universe is using me to draw out something important
about how we love. I can still feel something important in Tokyo.
Sometimes Japan can be very weak because of the artificial things but
sometimes its very pure, godlike.

But after my kids were born in Tokyo circumstances were pushing me to go
back to Fukuoka. I needed nature itself. Forest. Sunlight. Trees. Especially I
found these at Mount Aso in Kyushu, a 150 km drive from m home.
There is a huge and strong energy there. If I wanted to continue my artwork with nature I
realized that I had to live near there. So I decided to go back to
something familiar. If the universe had a human voice it would say keep
going with your artwork and go back to Fukuoka. You can paraphrase our
light through your art.

Posed to Fly 2011

If someone finds a figure of a bird or fountain I always let them feel
as they want.

When I finish a painting and find a figure of a bird I too think his
painting has an energy like flying. Or jumping to the next dimension. So
that figure must be a symbol or a signature or sign or communication
path to our consciousness. So the universe uses our memory to make us
feel more free or feel like the fluttering a bird.

2011 Rainbow days

My recent works are made with mixed media techniques.
Recently, I realized that when I took photographs, I am using a high
dimensional sense to catch spiritual energy. Photography can
easily distinguish between no spirit and high energy. I use
photographs and drawings and blend them in Photoshop software. Then I print on washi
paper with pigments from a specialty workshop in Tokushima, Shikoku.
They adjust the color with careful skill. They are kind of artisans.
Some works are painted again on the surface.

My daughter commented, ” I feel a rainbow breeze from imaginary another
world .” Obviously my kids come to my exhibitions and they feel that the
pictures are windows to the imaginary world, fushigi no kuni mitai.
Frequently my son Ao says my art looks like rainbows and my daughter
Yoshika calls what she sees ‘rainbow breathing.’

Working with color, I have to be careful. I have my own balance scale.
On one side I put pink and orange and the other side I put green and a
gold line, for example. Then I check this balance scale. Which feels
more like the vibration of love? If its artificial or logical the
frequency will be low. This balance scale is a very important tool for
the process of my paintings.

I don’t spend much time looking at my paintings between sessions. No,
completely no. I force myself to throw ‘me’ out of the
paintings. I don’t want Kei in the art. If I spend a long time looking
at my paintings so many logical things come up. I become critical. I
don’t want to critique my paintings or anyone else’s. I just want to
meet art through vibration and intuition.

# # #

Introducing Los-Angeles based, Russian-intuitive Artist Larisa Pilinsky

Intuitive paintings by Larisa (Lark) Pilinsky
By Liane Wakabayashi

Intuitive artist Lark usually doesn’t know ahead what she will paint. She is guided by her choice of palette and the movement she brings to her brushes. So when Lark created Movement shortly before the catastrophic 3/13 tsunami in Japan she was taken aback. She wondered why her usually peaceful waters had gone wild.
I do a really spontaneous movement with my hand and usually something wonderful happens. I was in the mood to paint an ocean, so I chose the colors from the beginning. The start is always important for me.

Sun-Spilled Gold 2010 I did a movement with the brush to make the arc of blue on top. Some say it looks like a dolphin jumping out of the water.

Lark’s paintings are journeys of the imagination that use nature as a metaphor for whatever is happening in her life unconsciously at the time. Usually they are safe and tame, as in Sun-Spilled Gold.
Lark describes Sun-Spilled Gold as the painting that flew out of her most effortlessly when a palette of ocean colors led her to hand movements in large horizontal strokes. I started painting with blue, gold yellow and somehow it spilled, creating a reflection of the sun. You see in the middle at the bottom where I started with the blue-green that became the ocean. My hands began moving like ocean from side to side.
Lark makes the painting process look effortless but she says she is always afraid to start a new canvas, especially a big one. I think what if I spoil this big beautiful white canvas?
She began painting about 15 years ago, arriving at her own intuitive approach under the influence of a group of Armenian abstract artists she had befriended in Los Angeles.
I was helping Kiki, an Armenian artist friend and leader of the Bunker Art abstract movemen, by making the base of his collages. I would glue, nail, and then bring these pieces to him and he would paint on top of them. I was fascinated with this approach. I didn’t know it was even possible to work in this manner. It was a discovery for me that I could just play with art materials this way. One day when I brought him a collage background he said he couldn’t paint over it. He called it my art work. Kiki encouraged me to continue improvising at home. In 1995 I was asked to join the 12 Bunker artists in an exhibition. The funny thing was that nobody’s works sold but mine.

John Lennon Collage for me was easy. Okay you move the papers back and forth. If you don’t like something, don’t glue it. Remove it. Just continue moving but painting it seemed to be you did it, you can’t erase it, especially with oil paint.

In Russia, where Lark was born and raised, she was spontaneously good in drawing but was torn between being a writer or an artist. “In the 8th grade I could go to art college but it was pedagogical art college. My mom asked me do you want to be a teacher?” No, I wanted to be an artist. If I had learned to draw professionally at art college I wouldn’t be who I am,
Lark went in the direction of journalism, drawing portraits as a hobby until shortly after she arrived in the USA and met Kiki and his Bunker Artists in LA. “Kiki doesn’t like representational art– and in the beginning I was very much influenced by him, so for me to go in another direction was to get out of the group. There with the Bunker Artists it was more safe in a way. When you start getting representational, you either do it great or you don’t do it. So for me, representational art is half hidden. It’s the struggle between the material and the technique.”

Now Tender

Once you do a really good painting you have to consciously tell yourself to just continue doing it. (Lark do you want to clarify this or is this okay?)

“Now Tender was the transitional piece from collage to painting. It was my first large canvas. I was afraid to paint. Before this I was doing collages.
My mother had been diagnosed with cancer and she was ready to go to another world. I started painting these lilac skies, transitional for her and for me. If you look at it there’s an empty chair, a sense of presence but also departure, a surrealistic feeling between worlds, On one side a landscape and the violet, it s a dark lilac. I was probably going through pain.
After I did this one, okay I thought, why don’t I continue? Now Tender gave me assurance that I could meditate with colors the same way I had been meditating with papers and found objects. By meditative quality, I mean I needed to be in a space of no mind. I wouldn’t think about anything or about time. It would be 3 in the morning.
Intuitive painting means that you don’t know what is going to come out of you. The work that was the absolute toughest to complete was one that I decided to do painting over paper. It’s a technique where you glue different papers, probably 2-3 layers at least, under the painting. Then I started painting and immediately something was interesting. I continued painting and the woman you see is a piece of the metal wire. I put the lace in spontaneously and it reminded me of my nephew and his new girlfriend. I really liked this figure and left it and at some point I put the net on the top. I gave it to my daughter and it was probably in her apartment for 5 years and she gave me the painting back when she moved house.
The struggle in combining collage and painting is in the invisible way the materials work together so the collage won’t stick out, so it will be harmonious. The piece of metal I chose to represent the body was big. I have this challenge when I have something like this is, to hide the obvious. After five years I had become interested in this sense of painting air so I painted over this net. I added more white and goldish from the right side. Finally I started doing the little cross movements with chalk and the next day an actress came to visit me and I was showing her all the paintings. She saw this one, fell in love and bought it as soon as I put the last cross of the chalk. She saw the goddess of love and beauty in this figure so we call it Aurora, the goddess of sunrise.

White Eagle Night is another painting Lark has special attachment to. It was sold immediately to the Japanese family with whom she stayed during a trip to Japan with her spiritual teacher, the Buddhist monk Cielo. “When I came home, I created this painting and this figure reminded me of an eagel. Then my Japanese friend told me that in classical Japanese painted doors placed between rooms, a Japanese eagles. often appears. I had this affinity for Japan but I had no idea about the eagles