My name is Seven and I'm a full-time painter and poet living in Olympia, WA. I've been painting professionally since 2008 and exhibiting my surrealist oil paintings in Olympia, Seattle, and along the West Coast. I am inspired and informed by my lifelong pursuit of truth and healing, and the many profound experiences this has brought me.
As a patron you will have exclusive access to my creator blog, and your contribution is directly fueling the creation of new paintings, poems, music, and writing that I will be sharing with you. I greatly appreciate the opportunity to continue my life's work, knowing that I am held by an art-loving community that understands what it takes for artists to keep creating. Thank you!
About the Paintings
Every painting is intensely demanding and time-consuming, with layers upon layers of increasing detail. They are creations of love, testaments to the resilience of the spirit in the face of great difficulty.
The progression of my work is symbolic of my own process of alchemical transmutation, which is a psycho-spiritual quest to dig into the belly of my accumulated life experiences, extricate the dragons, and liberate the gold. It is an awakening that is ever unfolding, and each painting is a multi-faceted visual diagram reflecting different stages of this process. I've learned so much from engaging with this process for so many years, and it just keeps going deeper.
Poetry
In addition to painting, since 2015 I have been supporting myself by working as a poet, writing spontaneous poetry on a manual vintage typewriter. I was introduced to it by a friend, and we are a small collective of poets under the name of the Poem Store. I set up at farmer's markets and invite people to contribute a topic of their choice for a poem, which I type up and give them for donations. Sometimes I am invited to write poems at parties, events, and weddings.
I love connecting with people in this creative way, and seek to empower, inspire, and uplift through the power of words. My first publicly published poem will be with the City of Olympia Intercity Transit System, and will be featured on five city buses in the near future. I also aim to publish a book of poetry.
Other Writing
The symbols and concepts that appear in my art and poetry help me to understand greater patterns and relationships in myself and in the world. These ideas I am compiling and slowly building into several books.
One of the books is all about the ancient Egyptian deity, Thoth, who brought writing, wisdom, alchemy, and magic to human kind. This is the subject of my latest painting, titled The Transfiguration of Thoth, which has been six months in the making and represents a path forward for humanity, beyond the identification with thought.
I am working on another book about the Black Toad as a symbol in alchemy. The things that I post on my patreon blog will reflect aspects of this process and I will keep you posted on the progress of my books as they develop.
Your Patronage
As a patron, you will be making a big difference in reducing the financial stress that impedes me in my creative work. You'll be providing the capital that is so vital to turning my work into a viable business that supports me in a healthy way. The future will get to see more of these paintings, which are getting more epic as time goes on.
By becoming a patron you will make this easier to manage all of the costs involved with being an independent creator, including work space rental, website costs, marketing, advertising, typewriter repairs, travel expenses, oil painting supplies, photography/scanning to digitize/archive work, making and packaging prints and other art products, distribution, and promotion.
Thank you so much for taking the time to read this and for your interest in my work! I truly could not survive as an artist without my fans, so I am eternally grateful and love you all.