"Because I want to be of benefit to sentient beings, I entrain to be a hollow bone, a channel, for beneficent beings. I believe the Spirit of some of my paintings are not of me, but are of energy creating through me and communication from these multi-dimensional realms."
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Sarah Hylton is an Expressive Artist and Arts Facilitator specializing in a whole person-centered approach for creating art. She is an avid painter, dancer and ceramic sculptor and can often be found dancing while painting. Sarah’s paintings have been featured in galleries, juried exhibits and are in private collections.
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You described painting as an experience of art as a dream. Please explain.
I experience painting as accessing and being immersed in the language of the unconscious. The process becomes a symbolic representation of the communication with non-ordinary realms that influence waking consciousness. I respond to personal inquiry, what is most relevant to my development of consciousness. A painting can have many layered paintings within it. Regularly, I will take what I am working on and place it at the foot of my bed. I will stare into it, allowing it to inform me before I fall asleep and when I arise. I will notice what works and where to re-enter the painting. Sometimes I will “dream into” the painting for months at a time. Always, I will see the Spirit of the painting emerge and evolve. This may mean I “sacrifice” an aspect of the painting I have previously held as precious, in order to authentically move forward. I let the process of painting open a channel of curiosity and play that my own hubris is diminished by.

What is Depth Hypnosis and how has it affected your creativity?
The Depth Hypnosis discipline was developed by Isa Gucchiardi, Ph.D. and Founding Director of the Foundation of the Sacred Stream. Depth Hypnosis integrates the modalities of Transpersonal. I had been gifted a workshop with Isa after a series of experiences, both traumatic and initiatory in nature. Shortly after this workshop, I faced fire calamity and was displaced from my home for several years. I continued training as a Depth Hypnotherapist and Applied Shamanic Practitioner, while addressing personal symptoms of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. In the process of healing and deepening my experience with altered states, my life force became stronger and more organized. My capacity to hold power in a compassionate way has increased. My creativity and life force are inseparable. I am more able to follow my joy in being creative and not be derailed by my own suffering.
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"I experience painting as accessing and being immersed in the language of the unconscious.
​The process becomes a symbolic representation of the communication with non-ordinary realms that influence waking consciousness."
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​Tell us about your work in Permaculture Design.
Permaculture is essentially a style of land stewardship and management, and social interaction based on biomimicry. We see this illustrated historically in indigenous practices. Permaculture includes the premise that the earth and all biological life are one being, contemporarily called Gaia. In this orientation, human beings are biologically part of Gaia. Therefore, our social restoration and interspecies cooperation is essential to the over-all life force of the Being of Gaia and our quality of life as human beings. In observing nature we can bear witness to the interspecies cooperation. An example of my artistic work in permaculture is a mural titled the Three Sisters, installed in the Ceres Project Garden. The mural illustrates the interdependence of all sentient beings, from starlight to salmon, and is essentially an acknowledgement of indigenous wisdom, as told in the story of the Three Sisters. As a community youth art project, the painting process brought together youth from various different cultural and socioeconomic backgrounds participating at the Ceres Project Garden and S.A.Y. Dream Center. People of all ages are able to sit in the garden, as well as help cultivate organic food to be used in making meals for people with significant health challenges. S.A.Y. Dream Center is a multi-service housing campus for homeless youth. The mural is dedicated to the indigenous Miwok and Pomo nations of the region.

​You are an Applied Shamanism Practitioner; how does this influence your painting?
As a practitioner, I have non-ordinary experiences, and have become more agile and disciplined in moving between dimensions of reality and interacting with non-ordinary beings. Because I want to be of benefit to sentient beings, I entrain to be a hollow bone, a channel, for beneficent beings. I believe the Spirit of some of my paintings are not of me, but are of energy creating through me and communication from these multi-dimensional realms. The process of painting helps me to consciously integrate these experiences and insights and stabilize in my ground of being.

"Following my inspiration resources me. I am able to develop compassion for my experience. I may wrestle and flail about in what I don't understand, but ultimately, art midwifes me through that."

What does art do for you internally?
Following my inspiration resources me. I am able to develop compassion for my experience. I may wrestle and flail about in what I do not understand, but ultimately, art midwifes me through that.

You have a passion for empowering disadvantaged people. Please share with us some of your efforts.
One arena is co-facilitating Expressive Arts classes for homeless and transitionally housed community members. We use a holistic approach, humanistic in nature, in our work with people.

What role can art play in healing the world?
The Arts allow humanity to communicate with one another sincerely and without harm. Through art a person or group can express themselves honestly and go beyond the limitations of society without violence. Art can be a social narrative and commentary, as well as sacred and personal in nature. There is a cacophony of dissonance in America that at its base speaks to a lack of cooperation and abuse of power and resources. Art is creative not destructive. It can deconstruct outmoded and fixated forms of being that have been normalized, and does so through all the senses. Through art, our sensory gating can expand to include a new and more inclusive paradigm. Neural pathways can regenerate through creative practices. Art has the capacity to transmute energy and rebuild communities restoratively and sustainably. Art is healing in nature. Creative inspiration comes from the drive for life and helps us tolerate our differences. Art won’t kill us. Last year I designed a community project that included an exploration of personal dignity. With shelter-in-place restrictions, I adapted the project to include the Hexagons of Dignity Tapestry. People of all ages and backgrounds have been participating, creating hexagons that represent their own experience of personal dignity. Where needed, I support fostering this exploration of what personal dignity means. This is an inquiry into how we relate to our own essential nature and authenticity. Thus far, people have created narratives of their process and shared these with me, as well as donating their hexagons. The inclusive nature of this ongoing project allows for many social and economic backgrounds to be part of the tapestry. It is my hope that this tapestry continues to grow and that in America, as well as other nations, people can become aware of their own personal dignity, and where lacking, develop positive regard for themselves and others.

"Art has the capacity to transmute energy and rebuild communities."

​Please tell us the story behind Dreaming W/Bear'.
I hadn’t painted for myself in raising my son as a single mother. After being bitten by the bear, I returned to my studio and painted for myself. Initially, I started the painting as a collage of drawings I had done. The apple with cows and a chicken were an idea for a community project, and I had been playing with tiny bees on tracing paper to come up with a stencil design. I began layering paint and thinking about “falling from innocence” as told with “Eve’s first bite into the apple.” One thing led to another. I saw the woman and bear within what I had done and then realized I had been lying in this position when I had my wild encounter. The fact that the bear was embracing the woman, felt like reassurance that I would be OK emotionally. While painting Elder, I further explored the nature of my experience; my relationship to bear; and the healing process.

Why is it important that the aesthetic value of your art is as great as the message you are conveying?
Thank you for the inherent compliment in this question. It’s really about working until I feel a sense of satisfaction. As a self-taught artist, I have trained myself to discern what aesthetically works for me and what doesn’t. Because I do not have academic training or purport to have mastery in any particular style or form, I have ample room to experiment and stay fresh. It is in this experiential process that I follow my curiosity. If something is interesting to me, there is a genuine sense of authenticity in what I am creating. It’s a dialogue with the painting: a call and response. A painting is more like a relationship than an object. I do not aspire to be like anyone else, but rather to stretch myself beyond my known abilities and to satisfy myself aesthetically. This is often a multi-layered and complex journey. It is, in and of itself, refining by nature. Sometimes it’s through aesthetic value that the complexity of our human experience is communicated most clearly, and thus the painting becomes a visual transmission of energy. I define a good painting as one that keeps communicating to me as well as others long after the final layer of paint is dry. Besides, a painting feels complete when I experience a sense of satisfaction and can lay down my brushes.

"The Arts allow humanity to communicate with one another sincerely and without harm."

Tell us about some of the proudest moments in your art career so far?
I can think of two. One was in my twenties when I was primarily creating lost wax casting jewelry. I was invited to visit a jeweler residing on the second Mesa in Hopi Lands. In his home, we talked for what seemed like hours. I had brought a couple of pieces of my work, in particular a necklace. We talked about the processes of how we implemented our designs and the meaning of our symbolic representations of interfacing with sacred forces. We were engrossed with one another’s methods and the similarities in our finished art compositions. My host explained the Hopi method of using layers of sheet metal to render their sculptured jewelry. He was giving me a teaching and at the same time was clearly inspired by my approach and the universal language informing both of us. After he showed me articles in the magazine Arizona Highways, where he was the featured artist, we went into a sweat lodge in his backyard.
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​The second time was an installation at the Paul Mahder Gallery in Healdsburg CA. I was working with homeless women and co-facilitating a medicine doll project. The women were invited to create dolls for themselves. I supplied the natural materials and facilitated their personal exploration in designing and making their dolls. The finished dolls were then hung on a wooden armature in the shape of a safety pin. This was during the time that immigrants were fleeing war torn countries and the safety pin was used as a symbol of solidarity. The Paul Mahder Gallery was creating a forum to showcase awareness of homeless issues being faced in Sonoma County. The Medicine Doll/Safety Pin Project was included in this installation. Women from the Expressive Arts classes were also invited to include additional artwork they had created while navigating housing scarcity. The women participating came to the reception, and were so proud to be part of the exhibit and for their artwork to be seen. At the time, Wosene Kosrof had an extensive installation at the Paul Mahder Gallery. I felt this sense of being part of a bigger purpose. I was honored to facilitate the restorative and healing nature of art for the women and to have them be showcased in a prestigious gallery that simultaneously featured Wosene’s paintings, an artist I admired so deeply.

What drives your inner need to always learn more?
My Dad described the motivation as divine discontent. This concept has stayed with me as I am motivated to develop in consciousness. With art, I try to discern what about an artist’s work I find engaging and why. What does the art communicate to me and what about the artist’s style is engrossing? Though in some ways I might be hampered by not having academic training, I also do not have any restraints of conditioned aesthetics. I can freely experiment. It is in this experiential process that I follow my curiosity and inspiration. It’s a journey of discovery by trial and error. I do not aspire to be like anyone else, but rather to stretch myself beyond my known abilities and stay fresh. I try to satisfy myself aesthetically and to be in communion with what I experience as Divine Energy in Motion. It is often my intellect that needs to be set aside, so that I can follow the direction of my heart. At times, this is easier said than done.

Which artists (past and present) have inspired you most?
Anonymous Ancient Indigenous Artists; Chagall; Picasso; Van Gogh, Lilly Yeh; Wosene Kosroff and my son, Levi Hylton.


Website: www.sarahhylton.com
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