The natural landscape enthralls me. I paint landscapes as love-songs to Pachamama, Mother Earth. Her majesty can not really be rivaled, but if even a small iota of it can be captured, the result can be a painting of great beauty.

Painting landscapes, especially forest scenes, is very intimidating because of all the detail they contain. Even a small scene can contain dozens of trees, thousands of leaves. Therefore the process of painting such a scene becomes a balance of simplifying it, and yet capturing the essence of all the chaos. Working from photos can make this process a little easier. These two paintings were painted completely independently, from photos of the same location, a spot near a magnificent look-out of the Hudson Valley high in the Catskills of New York. I had a great deal of fun painting these, exploring the complexity with a loose and playful "brush." Later on, when I went to hang these paintings up in my studio, I discovered how perfectly they work together to form a diptych!

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Can art help us to SEE in a new way? There is much mystery in the world around us – we are not seeing all of the beauty and connection that exists between the natural elements of our environment. I want to us my art to make the invisible content of our world visible.

In the high Andes of Peru, the shamans, known as paqos, give a rite of initiation called the “kawak karpey” or “seer rite.” This initiation is given in order to help the receiver to start developing their kawak, or “vision” — an ability to see the invisible forces that are at work in the world. This process involves building pathways between the visual cortex of the brain (located towards the back of the head), the “third eye” or 6th chakra, and the heart — the three centers that are key for developing this ability.

The development of the kawak is vital in the shaman’s skill as a healer, as a healer’s must possess the ability to track the subtle energy of their clients. As an artist, or a viewer of art, it is helpful in being able to draw the connections between content and emotional effect. Paintings use color and form primarily as a way to reach the viewer and make connections. The subject matter (or lack thereof) may also play a role in this. If you look at one of Georgia O’Keefe’s flower paintings, you may react “Flower!” and this carries a certain emotional response. But the way in which the flower is portrayed… a single blossom filling the entire canvas with bright reds and pinks and yellows… not to even mention the other associations that the floral forms evoke. The flower becomes MORE than a flower — we as the viewer become transformed and we see connections that we weren’t aware of before.

I have coined the term “deep visioning” to describe this process. Coining a term has proven easier than making it happen in my art! But none-the-less, this is what I am striving for. I consider all of the “Visionary Paintings” on this website as experimental — I welcome your comments as feedback to let me know where I am succeeding and failing in this endeavor.

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Landscape has always been the most appealing and most challenging subject to paint. Whether painting “en plein air” or working from photographs and reference sketches, the challenge always seems to be about simplifying the imposing complexity of the natural world. Looking into a forest one is perplexed by all those tree trunks and leaves – one can’t possibly paint them all!

But the other aspect of the challenge is to capture that inexpressible aspect. Painting landscapes has always felt very sacred to me. I have always been most attracted to natural scenes as opposed to “city-scapes.” Painting nature is very much like doing a portrait of Pachamama, the Earth Herself.

Birch trees have always captivated me. Their white trunks stand out brilliantly against the greens and browns that surround them. They have become sort of a fetish for me – they represent something about what I love most about the landscape of the Northeastern region of North America that I am most familiar with.

Images of the natural world as interpreted by an artist can help bring back a connection to the sacredness of the nature. A painted landscape can express some of that inexpressible beauty and mystery that is present in nature. This is deep visioning!

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I am trying to make art that is connected with the spirituality of nature. I want to instill a great visionary quality into my art. “Deep visioning” for me is about finding a way to make the connections between things VISIBLE, and that is a deeply spiritual thing. I am just beginning to attempt this profound thing – I don’t claim that my recent art is succeeding at this, but this is what I am striving for.

What is the experience of looking at art like for you? Do you respond to the level of realism or impressionism in a piece? To the use of vibrant or subtle color? Or to subject matter (or lack thereof)?

Some of my favorite artists are Georgia O’Keefe, Odilon Redon, Andrew Wyeth, Paul Cezanne, Willem De Kooning, Alex Grey, Wassily Kandinsky, Salvador Dali, Jean-François Millet, Susan Seddon Boulet, Mark Rothko, Henri Matisse and Pavel Tchelitchew. Of course, there are many other artists that I love and I am sure have had an influence on me.

I believe that art should not be gimmicky, kitschy, or difficult to understand. Now that we are firmly in the 21st century, all the “isms” of the 20th century are old-hat. The role that art needs to play now is it’s most important role, to touch the heart and connect us to that which is most profound. I strive to create art that fulfills that role!

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In 1984, after 6 and a half years of art school, I received my MFA degree in Art. And I stopped painting.


So why did I stop?

After graduating, I took slides of my paintings around to galleries, and did everything I could to get into shows, with little success. Moreover, I looked at the work in the galleries and saw nothing that looked like my work – it seemed no surprise that I received little acceptance. And meanwhile, finishing school had left me with the dilemma of needing to find work, and an art degree provided little help. People would say “Why don’t you TEACH art?” But teaching positions, especially in NYC, are very scarce, and the positions that were available usually went to artists with reputations in the art world.

So I got a job and stopped painting.

Much of the twenty year interim between when I stopped painting till now was spent on a spiritual odyssey that is to be greatly reflected in the painting I am creating now. It was early in my art training that I first felt a deep kinship with “Mother Nature.” The same passion I had for painting led me to become deeply curious about Goddess spirituality and paganism. Eventually I also found myself engrossed in Buddhist thought and practice. These involvements have led me to a sort of transformational shamanistic spirituality I embrace today.


Why am I painting now?

I think in my mind, I never really stopped painting — the creative process has always continued.

In the last few years I have been putting a lot of thought into what work I was put here on Earth to do. My reflections on this are complicated, but I have come to feel that I DO have a gift for painting, and I SHOULD be using it. What’s more, my spiritual path has helped me to feel that I can paint about things that I wasn’t able to before.

My father loved my artwork, and I think he was very disappointed when I stopped painting. He would always encourage me to paint. Ironically, I started to paint again after he was severely impaired by a stroke. Deepvisioning.com was inaugurated on the first anniversary of his death, July 9, 2007.

In memoriam: Eric Gustav Heinemann, August 13, 1922 – July 9, 2006.