Major Arcana Tarot Show notes

The day I began to study Tarot in the forest I wrote in my sketchbook regarding the major Arcana cards: "My goal is to depict visually the state of consciousness each archetype portrays. This requires study of the Trumps and their meanings, rather than to just interpret artistically the names of each archetype."

I saw the deck in a full vision, then I went deeper into each card as I studied it, channelling more information and visual details. I took extensive notes, but didn't stop there. As I began to sketch out all the paintings and paint them, the channelling continued during the work itself, and the tarot began to study me.

Painting each one was intensely meditative.


I've always had a great respect for the tarot. Whenever I think of it, I feel a particular hum, a frequency, and I feel the antiquity and the seriousness of it. Even more than that, I feel the presences who created it, whom I call the "Council" .

Because I can feel the presences and sometimes see them, (though all those years ago I didn't realize I could communicate with them and feel their emotions and discern their personalities yet..so) the tarot used to scare me. I could sense the Council who watch over the cards, the creators of the system.



I believe, as with many esoteric systems, Tarot was passed down as a legacy and given to humans. Much in the way other magicians throughout history were given magickal rites systems in visions from the archangels...or healers were given "remembrance" of a system during a vision quest, etc. These systems are far too complicated and deep for them to have been created by one person. I believe they are so so much older than we can imagine.



I've wanted to paint a Tarot deck for more than 15 years, but I hadn't felt ready until recently.
I felt it wasn't right to start until they felt I was ready. And so..my Guides have taken my hand and are leading me through.

In fact, with this deck, I'm having to paint many things I've not painted before and don't really know how; water, for example. I painted these paintings in 2.5 months (building the canvases from scratch to painting all of them), and that's an amazing accomplishment for me, using oil paints. I don' tuse turpentine or any thinners, just walnut oil...although on the final layers I did use some alkyd to speed the drying time. It took me 15 hours a day of painting..and usually one day a week I crashed. if I had to go get groceries, I'd make sure to jog there. When painting something I didn't know how to I'd just hear "keep the brush on the canvas, we'll work it out for you."

In terms of deciding what images to include within each card, my focus was to, instead of hiding meanings in obscure or outdated symbols and images, to bring forth the essence of each personality (which the major arcana is: the Archetypes) within the Figure of each card which we travel through on our path. Since the figures themselves mirror back to us certain personality traits and their strengths and weaknesses, I felt it was important to make those traits very present.



Natural elements I've reserved for the pip cards, since that is their domain. While a spirit/personality moves through growth cycles of the majot arcana, the pip cards affect her journey elementally, spiritually, mentally, and physically...
choosing which ones of these influences should be imbedded within amajor aracana card so depends on the time and place interpretation of the reader, I felt to make this deck more concentrated within each card's essence...rather than clutter with symbols that might not pertain to the actual reading. Perhaps this is because my ability to read (as a clairvoyant/clairsentient/clairaudient) began with no tools, so I'm coming from a different place..but I believe in studying the structure and procedures proper of a system. Being so visual though, I find that many decks' visual vocabularies actually give me an unrelated or confusing image of the archetype at hand many times...or takes me on a vocabulary journey : attaching an image to a word, then to another word, then to an adjective..to finally find out what the original images mean.


Clairvoyants, for example, use a particular system to "see", but each clarivoyant "sees" in a language that is their own, which also speaks and uses the language of the readee of the moment. Yet each clairvoyant has a "master" language that they see and visually speak from a place of neutrality, and this langauge can speak/see/interpret with any other person's language.

and so in the tarot also, there is a clairvoyant lanugage depicted in imagery. A "master tabluea" if you will, upon which a reader will meet with their own master language. Together these will communicate and build a bridge of communication with a readee. The Tarot is the teacher here, the reader is the medium/channel for the readee.


I wanted to search deeply into Tarot...and I knew as I did the tarot would see deeply into me!






The photos here are of me outside Sacred Rose Tattoo in Berkeley, CA, where I presented my Tarot show for the month of October. SR2 Gallery is located inside.