Category: Spirit Whispers

Creating With the Trees: My Internal Landscape (Guest Post by Mckella Sawyer)

*Note: Nature has for centuries been a source of sustenance and healing, providing a paragon of art to artists and a source of inspiration to poets. In today’s guest post, the wonderful artist and write, Mckella Sawyer, shares how her connection with nature inspired some of her creative pursuits, as well as some of her incredible artwork. 

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Creating With the Trees: My Internal Landscape (Guest Post by Mckella Sawyer)

When I was a kid, I was in love with two things: being creative and being outside. Two tall cottonwood tree stood in my backyard and I spend many summer afternoons high in the canopy with a book or just starting into the branches to think, my bare feet dangling down on either side of a thick branch.

All year I looked forward to our summer camping trips when I could wander into the woods and listen to the soft hush of the breeze in the leaves of the quaking aspen. I’d wander for hours or sit on a rock and just listen, sometimes with a notebook for inspiration and sometimes without.

Nature is where I work things out in my head, where I imagine. If I want to feel close to God and hear the whisperings of my own spirit, I head outside. This wide-open Utah landscape with its stark lonely trees and distant mountains is the stage for my imagination, and it shows in my art. I used to watch those open spaces pass by outside my car window as we drove to visit family in southern Utah, and I’d spend those long hours in the car mulling over my problems and making up stories. I used to imagine myself out in those landscapes, running or dancing in the colors of the sunset.

Those landscapes dominate my art. My childhood fantasies materialize on the canvas and my lifelong love of trees is obvious. I haven’t painted one thing in the past three years that didn’t feature at least one tree. The figures in my paintings blend with the trees, as much a part of the landscape as the trees themselves. They’ve become my own internal landscape where my imagination runs wild, a visual metaphor for my mental and emotional processes as I navigate this life. Whether I’m struggling with body love, relationship, the puzzle of my soul purpose, or an anxious episode, the trees are always there.

Whenever I crave stillness so I can hear the rhythm of my own soul, I go outside. When I’m ready to share that joy with others, I go to my studio and paint what I feel when I’m out with the trees.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

McKella Sawyer is a Utah artist, writer, wife, and soul explorer who dreams of helping women create beautiful lives in which they can thrive! Her art is available in her Etsy shop and she blogs regularly at McKellaSawyer.com about creativity, art, and soul-exploration. When she isn’t creating or doing soul work, she loves going for walks, doing yoga, being outside, reading, and eating unladylike amounts of dark chocolate.

Nature is An Oracle

There is a gracefulness in the way that a feather floats through the air as it drift to the Earth. At times it seems almost as though it appears suddenly out of the ethers like a trace of an unseen messenger. The meaning attached to its timely arrival is nothing less than significant to me.

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This is what I love about Nature. She is laden with so many aspects that could appear ordinary if you choose to see them that way. But when you look instead with your spiritual eyes through the wise lenses of your intuition, you begin to understand that this Great Mother is a living oracle.

Gaia is constantly interacting with our energy field, teaching you her healing language and inviting you to read her metaphors, signs, omens and messages just as you would read your favourite deck of Angel Oracle or Tarot cards. She is the embodiment of the Goddess and delivering wisdom and healing in partnership with Divine Spirit.

When you accept her invitation and interpret the deeply spiritual symbolic language of the Earth, a simple feather is transformed into the sign that you’ve been waiting for, a message from your Angels, a blessing from the fairies and guidance for you soul’s journey revealing the next step on your path.  

Flowers can grow anywhere – and So Can YOU

Guided by the hand of Universe, seeds fall in weird and wonderful places. When growing in nutrient rich soils of gardens, meadows and forests they thrive, grow and bloom in beauty. But they can’t always control the environment that they land up in. Sometimes they don’t always have the best chances of survival. However, within each seed lies a strong will to anchor roots as deep into Mother Earth as it can and then stretch for the Father Sky to touch the sun. Determined little flowers can grow and blossom anywhere – in fertile loamy dirt, in rocky crevices of icy mountain tops, on pavements, cracks in walls or tar, in deserts and in snow. Sometimes even with just the tiniest bit of soil, water and sunlight is enough. 

Your Spirit is just as strong and resilient. Our lives are shaped and bent by various circumstances and life experiences. Sometimes we are blessed enough to live incredible lives in a nurturing environment and make our dreams a reality with ease. Other times, life throws us curve balls that turn things upside down. It is important to remember that these things, as hard as they can be to bear, don’t define us. 

You have the ability to survive hardship, overcome crises and live through difficult challenges. You are a resourceful creature. You were designed to handle anything that comes your way. You always have the power to change circumstances that do not nurture and serve your highest good.