Louise Lalande ~ coCreations

Last week, on the monthly Imprensiva MUSEA call, I had the pleasure of gathering with my tribe. It is always meaningful, but this month’s call left me with a deep sense of joy and optimism.

As Drew Carter read from Your Brain on Art by Susan Magsamen and Ivy Ross, we painted. The passage wove together ideas of patchwork and quilt, heart cells and tiles, the pattern of life, and the movement of heart cells through sound. It spoke to invisible complexity and the relationships required for healing.
This is the art I created during that time.

As I reflected on this in relation to chaos, I began to sense the arts as an equally powerful invisible force. While we don’t fully understand these subtle forces—both benevolent and harmful—there is a possibility for balance, a yin-yang dynamic where one does not overtake the other. This realization felt empowering.

May the forces of love and healing continue to expand in our world.

PS: The theme for this year - Frequencies of Creation.
https://musea.org/imprensiva

I’m sharing my process and inviting you to explore your own—finding ways to play creatively and move emotions through your body.

This painting came after listening to the introduction of a MUSEA course I am currently taking—one that goes beyond painting into thinking, feeling, and processing the chaos around us through creation.

Much of the chaos I feel isn’t random. It comes from personal, social, and emotional layers—and at times, what feels like external influence. What I’ve found is that creative practices like painting, meditation, and reflection allow the body to process it naturally.

So I didn’t plan this. I made one mark—and let the rest follow.
The first gesture, a deep Prussian blue sweep, became the spine of the painting. Everything else organized itself around it. Like dropping a stone into water—the ripples came after.
What began as turbulence slowly formed into something more structured. A kind of landscape. Movement finding its own rhythm.

Later, I noticed something unexpected—a face in profile beneath the dark mark. Almost like someone inside the painting is releasing something. Screaming—not from distress, but from letting go. It felt like energy leaving which might otherwise have been trapped.

When I finished, there was no need to analyze it. Just a sense of calm. Nothing to fix. Nothing to resolve. Later that evening, my mind grew inquisitive, and I saw these different elements.

This is what I’ve come to trust: Art making is not just expression—it is transformation.�It allows what is held in the body to move, reorganize, and release. Without forcing meaning, something shifts, and in that shift, healing begins.

Painting is such a unique experience.
Somewhere along the way, many of us learn to expect perfection—to create something “beautiful” or “right.” But that’s not how we learn anything. We fall, we try, we play… and painting is no different.

When I let go of that pressure and allow play, something shifts. The process becomes more important than the outcome. Again and again, I’ve witnessed how art making moves things through my body—an intuitive, natural way to process emotion without needing words.

This piece came after a group meditation where I felt very openhearted. We were invited (my interpretation) to see a supportive symbol, let something release, and trust that the field would respond.

I didn’t try to control or understand it. I just painted. What emerged feels like what remains after release—like residue, memory, or something still quietly moving within. I see:�
• a red, layered inner atmosphere—dense, alive, like a heart space�
• forms on the left that feel like cycles, seeds, fragments of perception�
• a turquoise shape on the right—something becoming aware within the environment�
• soft upward lines—like breath, signals, or movement passing through

The second painting of my supportive symbolic shape was created simultaneously

When I finished, I felt calm. Clear. Not clarity with answers—just an absence of noise. No pressure to resolve anything. This is often where I land after something has moved through.

Over time, I’ve come to trust this: nothing needs to be forced, explained, or even fully understood. The act of creating does the work. The rest is simply witnessing.

Happy Creating!

A beautiful message from Michelle MacEwan:

"Truth lives in the body.

Choosing to see life as a pilgrimage helps us recognise that every day is a threshold we cross into the unknown.

It is a practice that deepens us into the art of following the signs, of trusting the deep knowing within us.

We come to recognise our milestones as currents flowing within us, guiding us forward.

We feel them in our body — just like I feel the ocean. The lifting of my heart, the excitement I felt as a child when that sapphire blue ocean appeared on the horizon before me. The smell of the salt, the fresh air on my face.

We discover a sense of belonging here.

And perhaps, we are led to where, in this life, we belong.

Much love,
Michelle"

Home | Michelle MacEwan | Spiritual Guide Michelle MacEwan is a spiritual teacher and guide with natural healing abilities. She is an international speaker, environmental activist and storyteller with over thirty years experience leading retreats, guiding groups and working with individuals towards deeper wisdom.

THE MEDICINE OF JOY | FREE LIVE ONLINE EVENT
Resilience as a Sacred Practice for Challenging Times
With Wolf Martinez
Saturday, March 14, 11:00am - 1:00pm (Eastern)

This event is FREE and all are welcome.
No preregistration is required.​

Shamans Directory Live Event ✨ Zoom Link
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/3913758693?pwd
Meeting ID: 391 375 8693
Passcode: 08164761

"Across our planet, many are feeling the weight of uncertainty and change. And yet, within every authentic lineage-based tradition, joy is critical medicine.

We are honored to welcome Shamans Directory Member Wolf Martinez, for this powerful online gathering. In this timely and heart-opening session, Wolf will share lessons learned from his own life experience, and the Lakota lineage, on the sacred role of joy, not as denial of hardship, but as a disciplined, life-affirming practice that strengthens the human spirit.

Joy, as Wolf teaches, is an act of resilience. It restores balance. It reconnects us to Creator, to community, and to our responsibility as good relatives. Especially in challenging times, choosing joy becomes a way of standing upright in our humanity, emerging wiser, kinder, and more courageous. This is an invitation to remember that joy is not separate from the work of healing, it is medicine that the world needs.

Wolf Martinez has dedicated his life to learning, honoring, and living the wisdom of his ancestors — teachings that remind us we are related to all that is within the web of life. Guided by reverence for the Seven Generations before us and the Seven Generations yet to come, his path is rooted in humility, responsibility, and trust in the Creator of all that is. Having found his way to these teachings at a young age through profound personal struggle, Wolf speaks from lived experience about what it means to come home to oneself.

Join us for an enriching and grounding experience of story, wisdom, and reflection, and rediscover the medicine that lives within your own heart."

Shamans Directory 2026-03-06 Newsletter content

Painting is often intuitive for me. It acts as a mirror — capturing emotions and sensations as they are, even when I already have some awareness of them. The act of painting helps me acknowledge where I’m at. Sometimes I think or talk through the work afterwards, and that reflection can be useful. But more than anything, it’s the process itself that matters.
Unless I'm sharing this process, these words are silently integrated. That's the extraordinary power I have experienced through artmaking.

These two paintings are watercolour on paper that I made earlier this month, five days apart. Most of the time I don’t write about what I paint, but I’m sharing these words to give you a sense of the process and how shapes and colour can offer reflections.

The first painting explores the push, pull, and pause of relationship energy.
The second reflects “wintering” — integration after Qi Gong, a softer inward settling.

The first contains more lines. The second contains more breath.
Both are emotional states, not identities. Just different. Moving through something… shifting.

The lines in the first piece wrap around each other without fully merging. There is contact, but not fusion. Movement, but also interruption. A “pause” lives in the slight containment of the shapes. Energy wanting to move, yet checking itself. Its vertical orientation feels structured. Lines wrap and layer around a central axis, creating a sense of tension and internal motion as the energy gathers inward, with forms pressing against each other but not fully resolving. It feels concentrated, held, and in process.

The second shifts into a more horizontal flow. The structure softens, edges dissolve, and the paint moves more freely across the surface. There is less containment and more atmosphere. The energy disperses rather than gathers, suggesting release, integration, and settling.

The geometry has softened into gesture. It breathes outward instead of coiling inward. It feels like exhalation.
The dark pools are not conflict; they are sediment. Integration. Nutrient returning to soil.

Where the first emphasises line and direction, the second emphasises space and diffusion.
One feels compressed and focused. The other feels expanded and open.

Neither is me or feels more like me, because I am not either state. I am aware that I moved through both. I expressed contraction and integration without clinging to either as identity.

2008-09 Doll Making Memories

This whole thing started with a couple of tiny creatures that were gifted to me that sparked something. I decided to make my own. Mr. and Mrs. Calypso were my first spontaneous attempt in 2008. Working with materials at hand, I cut up one of my old shirts to turn it into mini versions because the print was too festive not to share.

What came out of it was this quirky little duo. They’re kind of an odd couple, but somehow, they just fit. Their oversized cartoon-y features have a way of making people smile—like they tap into some silly, joyful place inside.

There’s something oddly familiar about their faces—even though they’re real rough around the edges, almost childlike in how they’re stitched. That kind of raw, rudimentary look only makes them more lovable. It’s like they carry a memory—not a specific one, but a feeling. A flash of some forgotten joy or shared silliness—like they’re channeling some deep-down memory of mischief and play.

There’s a kind of charm to them that reminds me of carnival season back when I was living in Trinidad and Tobago. That same playful energy, full of colour, rhythm, and lightness, the music that doesn’t ask permission to move you. These dolls hold a bit of that spirit. Sometimes, undomesticated beauty shows up when you’re just making something for the fun of it.

It’s like a little pocket of memory stitched into fabric.

For the story on Selina and the doll maker, author Pamela Hasting, click on
https://cocreations.ca/2026/02/12/4359/

I couldn't help myself 🤭 I had it printed! I absolutely love being able to hold it 🥰
Some images were reiterated to better fit my embodied understanding of the imagined concepts.

Printed by a Canadian company in Canada - PosterJack.com

What are you saying YES to this year?

Inspired by Whitney Freya, this is my painted YES ~ part of a wild and wonderful YES extravaganza. The powerful YES to our true hearts' desires.

Yes to Love.
Yes to creating.
Yes to compassion.
Yes to rest.
Yes to the healthy version of me/you

Paint it. Doodle it. Write it in big bold letters. Have fun with it.
Imagine your YES taking form.

https://whitneyfreya.com