By Shelly Mortensen, Watercolorist

(Editors' Note: Please see this author's earlier article on this topic.)

The power of creativity: With vibrational essence watercolor work, we tap into a living synchronicity. Vibrational essences are generally used as therapy representing the life force shaped into a particular pattern. They are an educational principle that attunes people to their natural harmonics within nature. Awareness, respect and intuition of the flower essences are very much a part of this artwork. It functions as a teaching tool to help you understand, assimilate and balance issues that you may want to work on. Faithfulness to the moment and to the present circumstance entails continuous surrender.

Surrender means cultivating a comfortable attitude toward not knowing. It means to being nurtured by the mystery of the moment which is fresh and surprising. Creating through technique, not with it. You are immersed in the work itself, letting your view of it develop in context instead of a learned, academic response. You certainly use your training, you refer to it, understand it, ground yourself in it, but you don't allow your training to blind your trust.

Within vibrational essence watercolor work there is an overwhelming impulse to measure the effect. But once you have worked with it and felt the effects of the essences, you get over that need. One begins to understand that this work is not measurable within our limited scope as humans, today. However, there is something here that is rock bottom solid. You, as an artist, must be very present at all times to receive its teaching. Do not expect dramatic results when using vibrational essences in holistic therapy or watercolor practice. The essence impact results in a much deeper, longer-lasting kind of profoundness. It takes a lot of patience to do your best watercolor work. Vibrational essences used with watercolor pigment thrive in a patient knowing that comes with time and exposure to your interaction with the essence.

Essence patterns can be unlocked, released to and infused in a water solution. Used with watercolor pigment, they release the energy pattern in your painting through the vibration of color and the way in which they allow you to move the pigment on the essence-soaked paper. When the energy of flower, gems, astrological or channeled essences are used with water, there is a difference in how the water color pigment vibrates on the paper as compared to just using tap water. It amplifies the vibration of the colored pigment and enhances the color. Sometimes, as with the rose essences, it mutates the colors into jewel-like, oriental carpet colors. When using the Valerian flower essence, the colors became a fluorescent, day-glow color similar to Playdough colors. As an artist you need to assimilate these "new" expressions of color into your work to get a successful image.

The power of water: Water is the matrix for flower essences. It is the receptive medium that is imprinted with the archetypal messages. Messages from Water, a book produced by Dr. Masaru Emoto of Hado Research from Japan, has used photographs of frozen water crystals enhanced by human intent to stress the imprint capabilities of water. Dr. Emoto has proven through longstanding research, that water is provided with bio-resonance. He discovered that all substances and phenomena have their own unique magnetic resonance field, which is converted electro-magnetically into 4- to 5-digit numbers through a spectroscopy. Water is capable of reflecting human thoughts or actions, and changes its state accordingly. Dr. Emoto believes that we must look at the atomic level or even the micro-particle level. Hado or specific vibrating waves can be shown as pattern, and experienced by the method of crystallization. It can also be shown and experienced by people and watercolor work through the use of essences. This is the very essence of vibrational essence therapy and watercolor work. It is amazing how these bodies of work validate each other.

In vibrational essence work, you are working strictly with the ethereal vibration or intelligence of the essence object, be it flower, gems, planets or channeled. It is a field of study that encompasses the force or energy similar to music that is carried by fluctuations of sound or radio waves. It is in the realm of energy, of information, of pattern. This self-organizing pattern arises, slowly changes, suddenly shifts, learns from its mistakes, and interacts.

The power of light: It is energy and vibration that enable us to see color. Nearly half of the energy that radiates into space from the sun oscillates at wavelengths that our eyes respond to and process into sight and color. A giant advancement in the study of light came in 1660s, when Isaac Newton's experiments with prisms revealed that white light is composed of all the colors of the visible spectrums. The paradox of color is that while it exists only in light, light itself seems colorless to the human eye. Visible light is part of the spectrum of electromagnetic energy that also includes radio waves and cosmic rays. The lobes of the brain contain the theater for light. They translate wavelengths of energy into color. The passage of light from the sun to the eye and brain requires that light to act both as a wave and as a particle.

The power of color: Color is best understood as a wave when it moves through space. Light waves reaching the eye are bent and focused as they pass through the cornea and lens to reach the retina with its dense mat of rods and cones. The cones in the human eye come in basically three types, identified as blue, green and red. Each has a peak sensitivity to a specific range of wavelengths. If all three types are stimulated at the same time, the result is white. When encountering these light-sensitive cells, light acts as a particle of energy, or photon. The photons interact with pigments in the rods and cones, triggering neural impulses to the brain, which analyzes and converts them to sensations of color. The wavelengths of light determine its colors or hues much in the same way vibrational essence waves or sub-atomic particles determine the hues in the watercolor images.

The power of you: By this time you may be wondering why I am writing about all of this scientific information instead of the art and creativity you expected. When one decides to walk in the realm of the creative process, one can often meet with an unintentional resistance to our new self and creative work from our fellow, well-meaning friends and family. This information about water, light, and energy is designed to give you tools with which to address the validity of the work you are engaging in with vibrational essence watercolors. It is physics, not magic.

From our technology to our spirituality, we are creatures of light.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Shelly Mortensen resides at Stone Lagoon in Humboldt County. She is one of the California Redwood Coast's leading watercolorists. See her website, www.floweressenceart.com. Contact her at shellart95570@yahoo.com.

Art Credits: Paintings by the author. Background courtesy of Art Today.

The World Wide Essence Society does not mean to imply any recommendation of nor give certification to any individuals or companies above. This article is provided purely for informational purposes. We ask consumers to make their own determination as to quality of the services and products offered above. This article is not meant to be advice, and the information is not meant to replace medical or psychological treatment.

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