Healing and Re-Igniting what has been Colonized out of us.
I artistically express in metaphor what I intuitively discover in partnership with Spirit. Metaphor allows the imagination to wander internal landscapes seeking out what personal connection and understanding may be available and wanting voice. Through my imagination, the imagery can emerge and find its reflection somewhere within the ordinary of life. This may not always be understood, and often comes in bits and pieces, but for me it is always implicitly trusted. I have found essence and elegance in these moments of clarity, in its many voices and forms, magically revealing the eternal within that ordinary. This is about intimacy and how it relates to the Self. My relationship to my images is both intimate and consistent in language. I mix and match according to what wants voice and expression in the moment, and I love them all, as well as the ones to come.
Rummaging through memory, dreaming, and time, I, as the archeologist, exploring and searching, find that all that was in the past must be brought forward and made contemporary. The importance of being contemporary is that only here and now can we experience healing and joy. All that we co-exist with is imbued with the Sacred, all are our partners on this voyage: the dream of our souls. Each partner is distinctive, unique, and rich in emotional content and language. It is their relationship with each other that tells the story.
As for my style, I fall into the category of the neo-classical painter. I draw and paint imagery such as you would see it in nature. This brings me great joy and satisfaction. My work is about beauty and the joy of being. Thank you for visiting, and be well.
Graduate Work
I am Kathleen Walters Schwab, the daughter and eldest child of Irene Elizabeth Arnold Walters and Mathew Anthony Walters, Junior. I am the granddaughter of Vilma Dorner Arnold and Adam Arnold and Hazel Frances Harrison Walters and Mathew Anthony Walters, Senior. I am the great-granddaughter of Gizella Brindza Dorner and Peter Dorner and Janos Arnold and Maria Hutyora (on my maternal side) and Adeline Fauvelle Harrison and William Harrison and Mary Nonweiler and Anthony Walters (on my paternal side). I am German, Slav and Hungarian on my mother’s side and Irish, English and French through Canada and German through Luxembourg on my father’s. I am here to tell you a bit of my story.
Time and space were very different growing up in the 1950’s in a small city just south of Cleveland, in contrast to this decade currently being experienced in the Bay Area. I was able to spend time without distraction, doing and drawing whatever attracted my attention. I began my journey into creating art by copying Disney cartoon animals and book illustrations of horses, then moving onto portraiture before entering high school in South California in 1961. That summer, I copied three Breck shampoo ads with the Nupastels my maternal aunt had given me. I did not try painting until I returned from Hawaii at 23, when my mother gifted me with a painting class. The end results were a pleasant surprise but I went no further.
After my youngest son was born (at 27), I began to take my education and art more seriously, and went back to college. At my local community college, I added watercolor to my interests, but basically worked on honing my drawing skills. After transferring to San Jose State, I took my core classes in drawing, perspective, and painting with Maynard Dixon “Dick” Stewart, who received his classical training from the Art Students League in New York. Here I learned the rules and techniques that I was so hungry for, and lacking.
Following graduation, I worked in graphics for a while, as well as taking commissions and portraits for the remaining years, until I felt I was ready for the commitment of graduate school (at 51). Drawing and painting pretty pictures was not enough for me; I hungered for more. This drew me to John F. Kennedy University, where I worked for an MFA in Arts and Consciousness. I had stepped into the shamanic world in my late forties, and this fed my need to grow further. Within the walls of this most unique and amazing institution, I learned to access my interior world and to put what I found into my work. Once graduated, I realized that there was a part of my interior world that I could not ground in this outer reality, which turned out to be my maternal lineage. My mother shared little about her ancestry, and now there was no one to ask. With guidance, I began an Indigenous Mind Program with Dr. Apela Colorado (Wisdom University) and Dr. Kimmy Johnson (JFKU), and moved forward on sorting out this mystery with the assistance of their care with ritual and ceremony. This was a most important approach, and the best one for me. After five years and completing my ancestral journey, I had found many of the influences and parts of my character/nature that had long eluded me, as well as some of my history and culture. Questions were answered; I had a much better idea of who I am, here and now.
Since then, I continued the journey, taking online classes with Robert Moss, Sandra Ingerman, and Evelyn Rysdyk to further explore my interior world and its richness and information; to stretch my shamanic muscles. For the past few years, and after taking a SoulCollage® facilitator training class with Mariabruna Sirabella, I began exploring the fascinating and profound realm of her School of The Origins, which I completed last Fall. This is beautiful and rich work, both satisfying and fulfilling. This is now grounding my life as I apply it in practice. I have also begun to study the Runes with Megin Rose, which will augment my path for the next year.
As I look back, I have always followed my heart and its voice, my Aumakua. After all, it’s the soul’s journey that we are on, and when I leave here, I want it to have been found worthy.
Mahalo.