Join Dr. Jo Bowers PhD, in Episode 4 of The Artist’s Journey - as we explore the hidden connections between creativity, emotion, and the soul. 

Discover how the mind’s canvas and the heart’s palette shape your artistic identity, and learn practical ways to unlock your creative power through emotional alchemy and self-discovery.

In this episode:

• The role of emotion in creativity and art

• How to channel your feelings for deeper self-expression

• Stories of healing and transformation through art

• Insights from art therapy, business leadership, and personal growth

• Reflections on spirituality, intuition, and the creative process

Whether you’re an artist, creative, or seeker of personal growth, this episode will inspire you to embrace your unique journey and connect more deeply with your inner self.

🌐 Join our community: https://OzFineArt.au

🖼️ Explore our art: https://OzFineArt.au/artworks

📰 Sign up for our periodical: https://OzFineArt.au/periodical

Timestamps: 00:00 – Introduction: Mind as Canvas, Heart as Palette 01:03 – About The Artist’s Journey & Community 02:00 – The Alchemy of Artistic Living 09:44 – Emotional Alchemy & Creative Source 17:36 – Art, Intuition, and Self-Discovery 18:49 – The Story of “Cathedral” 19:57 – The Story of “Black Opal” 21:22 – Art Appreciation & Personal Growth 25:34 – Community Reflections & Sharing 26:16 – How to Reconnect with Art and Self 26:57 – Subscribe & Share 27:08 – The Artist as Cartographer of the Soul 38:31 – Mysticism, Spirituality, and Creativity 49:54 – Closing Thoughts & Community Invitation ✨ Sponsored by OzFineArt.Au – Explore, collect, and connect with art that inspires transformation. 

#Longevity #Wellbeing #TheArtistsJourney #JoBowers #OzFineArt

Transcript for

Unlocking Secrets of Creativity: Artful Alchemy of Soul - The Artist’s Journey E4 with Jo Bowers PhD

[00:00:00] In our last episode, we talked about the mind as a canvas. What about the heart? What about the heart? In our modern world, we just assume, and we’re brought up to think that our emotions have to be controlled all the time and contained. What if it was the case that our emotions were meant to be expressed?

[00:00:28] If the mind. Is a canvas. The heart is a palette. The heart is the color of our lives, and if we’re always trying to control and we turn off, particularly our emotions, what does that do to the source? And the energy of creativity that sits at literally the heart, the center, the [00:01:00] foundation of our lives.

[00:01:03] This is ‘The Artist Journey.’ I’m your host, Jo Bowers PhD. Our show appears natively on OzFineArt YouTube on the OzFineArt Collective on Substack and in Apple Podcasts. Our show, The Artist Journey is sponsored by OzFineArt.Au, an artist scholar, practitioner inspired project that combines artfulness transformative agency and the sacred business of nurturing relationships in our interconnected world.

[00:01:36] Art therapy, business leadership, and marketing. Please join our community at OzFineArt.au. Consider purchasing our beautiful artworks and please remember to sign up for our bimonthly periodical. We look forward to seeing you. Thank you so [00:02:00] much.

[00:02:01] To get in tune with both the landscape of the mind and the palette of the heart means that we need to channel our emotions to use them more effectively, to access them, to allow ourselves to be aware on one hand, but on the other hand, to allow that movement of energy to speak to us in nuance and meaning and power.

[00:02:31] This I like to call the alchemy of artistic living. The transformation of our lives that allows us to become self-aware, to engage in personal development, to move forward with a sense of our identity. We can only discover our style and our identity when we allow ourselves to express [00:03:00] that, to literally practice the art of expression.

[00:03:06] I want you to feel this to, to to sense this. The colors of your heart provide for this emotional alchemy, core engine of your creativity, of your source arises in the colors. Of the palette of your heart. I want you to drop into that to feel that, the sense of that, the feeling of that, the connection with that, because it takes work because we’re so stuck, we’re so stuck up here in the mind, and our critical sense is so [00:04:00] hypervigilant.

[00:04:02] And we self evaluate and edit all the time in everything we do as we grow older, to move back into the source, the heart means that we reconnect with the emotional energy, the raw power, and directly beneath that heart. Is the intuitive basis, the intuitive foundation, the feeling sense that is embodied, our kinesthetic self, that holds us, that is our unconscious anchor, these aspects of ourselves, the mind being the canvas, the heart.

[00:04:51] Being the palette, the source of color, texture, and form, and the intuitive [00:05:00] sense that holds us in its hands and will not let us fall. This is divinely created system. This is a Creator blessing in our lives that provides for us our sense of creative agency. I wish for you that you can deeply, deeply connect with this teaching because it’s at the heart and the focus at the center of this sacred modality, as I like to call it, this sacred process that we enter into in this artistic journey.

[00:05:45] This journey of human discovery and at the basis of this is a sense of trust, not trust in anyone else, but trust in what you [00:06:00] know, what you know to be true. Because you experience it. This isn’t a belief, this isn’t a construct of the mind. This is not even a teaching that is handed down to us, Only in the sense that the teachers, the elders, they suggest that you get in touch with your inner truth.

[00:06:28] And they’re so wise, they point us back to ourselves. They point us back to our own experience. It is the basis to understand truth, insight, wisdom. And these aspects are what guide us forward in life in the artistic process. Then when I was painting the image of the florals behind me, [00:07:00] I needed to almost

[00:07:06] turn off or just not focus on my critical mind. I needed to stand in front of the canvas of the mind, the blank canvas, and imagine color, and then drop into my heart. And this is what I would like you to do for yourself. Stand before the canvas of your life. Imagine it blank with ultimate possibility.

[00:07:44] With complete possibility. Open ended. And drop down into your heart. Imagine the colors of the heart and [00:08:00] express from there. Allow that to flow. To engage in such a form of expressionist creativity means that we allow, we embrace, we acknowledge, we channel emotion and the power of that. The raw power that into forms of creativity.

[00:08:27] Your form of creativity may or may not be painting. Your form of creativity could be writing, could be cooking, could be crochet. Your form of creativity could be gardening. Perhaps your form of creativity is intuition and queuing into the emotions of others. Maybe your sense of creativity is in business and you love [00:09:00] marketing or you love business leadership, and you have a keen eye for the ways forward in the corporate and business world.

[00:09:13] All of these aspects and gifts are given to us. Yeah, we channel them best when we’re connecting. Not so much with the critical sense up here in the mind, but where that sense is integral, where it is integrated with our heartfelt energy and our intuitive insight. I think of the piece Cathedral, which I’ll bring up for you here.

[00:09:47] Cathedral was painted in a way to express really deep and longstanding emotional turmoil and a sense of, [00:10:00] irreconcilable differences with the institution of the church. And so the painting expressed over a period of days while we were working on this piece, the intense emotional upheaval. And in order for me to paint this work, I needed to key into those emotions to allow them to flow, to be expressed on the canvas of the mind, to allow them to percolate.

[00:10:32] And once allowing that and expressing it, the forum on the Canvas takes on its own life, its own expressions. And this is so true of the projects that we engage in life, of the way that we use our emotional energy for generative ends, for positive purposes. The next painting I’ll share is Black Opal by Dwayne Wannamarra [00:11:00] Kennedy.

[00:11:01] Block Opal is an amazing work and it’s so passionately beautiful. For him to be able to paint this image he also needed to take a step down into the emotional center, the heartfulness of agency, the heartfulness of presence. And when he painted these beautiful colors and textures, he was imagining and thinking of the black opal of the opal within the depth of the, of the heart, of the earth, of Mother Earth and of the work of the Rainbow Serpent moving through the landscape and

[00:11:47] creating the colors of the opal in that deep pressured place underneath, deep underneath the crust of the earth. And so this [00:12:00] painting expresses that incredible resilience, the power of being able to survive. The enabling insight that allows us to move forward with creativity in our lives after great hardship and struggle.

[00:12:19] These are narratives of two interconnected paintings, but very different, aren’t they? Expressing very different sensibilities and coming from different places and different stories of origin. Connecting with art then is a form of personal awakening, and when you understand this, you begin to realize that participating in the artfulness of living is central to art appreciation.

[00:12:59] Take [00:13:00] this in a stepwise fashion because introducing yourself to the artist way, to the, process of self discovery and awareness takes a bit of time, takes a bit of patience, takes a capacity for self-discovery that grows over time. Doesn’t happen all at once. Can be difficult at first because we’re confronted by our shadows.

[00:13:27] We’re confronted by our fears, by negative emotions, and we think, oh my God, I don’t want to go there. I don’t trust myself enough to go there. This takes time. Give yourself time and understand that this is nurturing. If you can nurture others towards this journey, how much more do you need to nurture yourself in this journey?

[00:13:56] I think that then this [00:14:00] connection with our inner self, this connection with the canvas of the mind and the palette of the heart and the intuitive depth of our being is a way. A process, an orientation towards growth, a way that we can enter into art appreciation and collecting of art that gives us a keen sense of our personal values, our personal likes and dislikes, our personal preferences, and where we sit on this spectrum of artistic identity.

[00:14:43] Of self, personal and artistic identity. These connections, these connections are really a form of medicine. They enable within us key skills, yes, but they also [00:15:00] reconnect us with the most important values, the most important energy of our own bodies, of ourselves, of our experience, emotionally, physically.

[00:15:11] Psychologically. And so this medicine compounds in its effectiveness over time and increases our, our positive energy in such a way that it reforms our neural networks, our neurology, the pathways of our neurons in our mind, our memory is reformed as we engage in this. Artistic process of living and this sense of connecting with our inner truth and the peacefulness that this brings, emerges over time.

[00:15:51] Once we work through the difficult edges, once we work through our shadows. There is a landscape of [00:16:00] creativity that exists in the world, exists in your inner world that is very powerful. It is a very powerful, creative space to live within. That it a world of abundance inwardly within your own being. I think then that.

[00:16:22] Isn’t it profound that these insights are so personal, but they’re also really shared? We are a community, so I encourage you, please leave some comments below. Share your experience of reconnecting with yourself, of reconnecting with the artistic journey of the artist way, and share how do you do this?

[00:16:49] What insights would you recommend to others? What simple steps would you suggest to reconnect with yourself, to reconnect with, uh, [00:17:00] with art itself and what that means for you in the artistic? Process. What ways do you connect to other people’s art that really deeply resonates with you? How does that happen for you?

[00:17:14] This would be a, a really great insight to share with our community in the comments and in our Substack community as well, where you can comment once you have subscribed to the OzFIneArt Collective. So I just encourage you there to also subscribe, please to our channel and to share it forward with others to let others know.

[00:17:42] An artist in this sense then is really a cartographer mapping the territories of the mind and heart. And the soul, the intuitive soul, the cartographer artist, is [00:18:00] expressing and exploring the landscapes of our being and the potentialities of that explored at the edges of consciousness.

[00:18:13] The artist connects with the intuitive wonder of the universe. We are, after all, Stardust. In our bodies, we are made of the very substance of creation. At the moment of the Big Bang, the so-called big bang and creative moment of the universe and the expansion of the universe is this outward growth that is continually unfolding within that encounter point is the inward journey.

[00:18:49] The ways that the universe spirals in on itself and engages in this retrospective [00:19:00] agency, and this critique and self-creation aspect moves in counterpoint to the expansion of the universe and these two movements, the inward and the outward. The, the generative and the deconstructive. These layers are so vitally important.

[00:19:25] So many of us and in western society have queued into the critical mind to such a degree, to such an extent that we’ve lost our sense of creativity. We’ve lost our sense of possibility. We’ve lost wonder and awe. And the majesty of the universe and our own bodies. To regain that mysticism is, an experiential process that begins with exactly what we’re on [00:20:00] about here in this discussion.

[00:20:02] The Artist’s Journey is a pathway into personal mysticism, to the practice of self-awareness and discovery is really what mysticism is all about. It’s an experiential awakening to the potentials, the powers of spirituality, and what is spirituality but the ability to come to terms with what means the most to me.

[00:20:37] What means the most to you is your spirituality. That’s in fact what it means, and that’s in fact part of the scholarly definition of spirituality, which is ‘how a person makes their sense of meaning.’ How you make your sense of meaning is really your spirituality. [00:21:00] When you put it in that way a spirituality is everything.

[00:21:04] It’s, our beliefs, values, sensibilities, it’s our experience expressed in stories. Our spirituality is our culture and familial story. Our spirituality is our sense of value, our sense of identity, and in all the different ways that that’s expressed, and how powerfully too to express that in art is a beautiful event.

[00:21:32] It’s a seismic event. It’s an event that ought to be celebrated. So then the heart’s palette is our greatest source of strength, our greatest source of creativity, our greatest location of self, our identity, our place, the heart is country. The heart is literally the sacred country [00:22:00] upon which we dwell.

[00:22:02] I Remember speaking with the elders and learning about this sense that the country itself is the embodiment of our elders, of our ancestors and their lives. Their very essence, their their very physicality is embodied in the way that their bodies were given back to Mother Earth, and the way that Mother Earth carries us and nurtures us is central to this sense of the heart. The heart

[00:22:33] is our place of connection with the environment around us. And so the heart is so many things, but it is a conduit of communication with our inner truth. As well as a way that we intuitively and cognitively connect to the world around us and to the people in our lives, to the [00:23:00] people on this planet who share this journey with us.

[00:23:04] This is a key insight that the artist journey is a way for us to connect and reconnect, to honor and to respect. And these are so central values in the journey. And the process here we’re talking about is certainly not, it’s not a magic pill by any means, but it is a sacred form of magic and mysticism that is experiential.

[00:23:35] That’s the secret. That’s really the secret because it’s your experience that is most valuable. It’s what you know to be true is where the value rests and resides and, and from that knowing and the unknowing within that. There’s always a sense of mystery, right? There’s so much that [00:24:00] we don’t know, but what you do know is what you know, and that’s the foundation.

[00:24:07] That’s the beginning. That’s the cornerstone upon which is built a sense of agency of. Action and fulfillment of what it is that you want to achieve. What it is that you want to form as your goal to manifest that goal in your life is to cue into your energy, first of all, and then. Have a sense of, of the steps towards making that real in your life, making that true and having that interconnected in our heartfelt way that resonates and fits and is congruent with, you know, that fits with your family, [00:25:00] your environment, your community.

[00:25:03] And when we, when we find this pathway it really, it’s a powerful thing because we not only have a sense of where we’re going, but we have a clearer idea of how to get there. That’s not just an idea, but it is a manifest truth. That comes from this connection that exists at this heartfelt palette level where we can see the details of the colors of our journey unfolding in front of us, step by step by step.

[00:25:44] And so this artist journey is central critical to our very source of energy. Our very source of creativity, inspiration, our very source [00:26:00] of forward looking power to manifest our truth, our beauty, our individuality in the world, as we become the custodians of our own emotional center, our emotional world.

[00:26:23] We are tending to the landscape of our minds, the landscapes of our being. Our heart becomes well tuned like an instrument, like a beautiful classical guitar. Our heart sings the music of our being. Our heart manifests the music and wonder and power. Of our becoming our heartbeat, our heartbeat [00:27:00] becomes in sync with the heartbeat of Mother Earth and our lives connect with the cosmos at an expansive level, at a transpersonal level that manifests within us a connection.

[00:27:20] That is primordial, and this connection comes about in our dreams, in our unconscious images and creativity. This power manifests in our waking moments when we arise from our beds in the morning and we have a new energy. A new vitality. This power manifests in our sense of health. Mentally, physically, [00:28:00] emotionally, our centeredness grows and encourages ourselves to also heal and to let go

[00:28:15] of contaminants within our system in such a way that we transform over time, our healthfulness expands and grows in its potentiality, and we increase our likelihood of longevity through the mental, emotional, and physical processes of our body, which is now in sync with the artist’s journey. These are powerful, powerful realities that move forward our sense of living a long, healthy, and happier life of contentment and peace in this moment.

[00:28:59] [00:29:00] Please do subscribe, like, and offer comments in our community underneath the video or wherever you access this resource. And if you’re listening on podcasts, we thank you so much for your participation as well. Please visit our website. OzFineart.Au a beautiful home for our artwork, and we’re so interested to hear your feedback and comments on the website as to what resonates with you when you dialogue with our artwork?

[00:29:38] I so look forward to having your presence in our lives. Thank you so much for joining us