Buy the Mount Fuji Print

I love Mount Fuji because it’s one of the best subjects for landscape paintings.  In my opinion, the majesty of this mountain is a great visual representation of sacred power.

In order to add contrast and accentuate Mount Fuji’s grandeur, I painted delicate pink cherry blossom branches.  The cherry blossom also balanced out the painting quite well.  I decided not to paint any Japanese calligraphy because it would have made the painting too complex.

You can read about my Mount Fuji climbing experience, and view another painting I made of this mountain, by going to my blog post ‘Satori (Enlightenment, Awakening) Painting – Art inspired by Mount Fuji‘.

Buy the Tengoku (Heaven) Print

I was watching a webcast video on Oprah.com called Finding your spiritual path. Elizabeth Lesser, author of The Seeker’s Guide and Broken Open, said something early on in the webcast that really caught my attention.

Elizabeth says that our soul is something that we come into life with and that it’s always with us. She adds, “[our soul is] shining in our hearts”.

She uses the metaphor of a lantern to represent our psyche and our body, and the light within the lantern to symbolize our soul. Elizabeth explains that our lantern can get covered by soot (layers of conditioning). Negative emotions, such as fear, mistrust and anger, put soot on our lantern. As a result, the light of our soul becomes dull. (more…)