01/09/2026
Different Paintings, Different Feelings
Mystical Shaman of God’s Colouring Book
I’ve been looking at these paintings together and thinking about how extraordinarily different they feel.
They came from the same hands.
The same place.
The same jungle.
The same palette of impossible greens.
And yet each carries an entirely different energy.
One feels like bliss — an opening into turquoise light, soft and expansive, as though the jungle has parted and invited you through.
Another feels like enchantment — a secret garden, abundant and feminine, somewhere between memory and dream.
Another is invigorating — green upon green upon green, nature vibrating with life.
And then there is the wild one.
Euphoric. Mystical. Uncontained.
The great white gesture came without much conscious thought. I didn’t need to know what it was.
A bird?
A spirit?
Wind moving through the rainforest?
A flash of divine energy?
Perhaps none of those things.
Perhaps all of them.
And this morning a phrase arrived in my journal:
Mystical Shaman.
It made me think about the way I paint.
I don’t really want to reproduce the rainforest. Nature already does that infinitely better than I ever could.
I want to enter it.
Listen to it.
Feel what happens inside me when I am surrounded by its impossible abundance—and then allow that feeling to travel through my body, through the brush, onto the canvas.
I am a vessel.
That is increasingly how painting feels to me.
I arrive at the studio with an idea, but the best moments happen when the idea disappears.
The thinking mind becomes quieter.
Something instinctive takes over.
A colour asks for another colour.
A mark demands to be interrupted.
Something beautiful needs to be destroyed.
Something hidden suddenly wants light.
I follow.
Perhaps that is what God’s Colouring Book means to me.
The rainforest is already filled with colours I could never have invented: acid greens, turquoise water, bruised purples, shocking flowers, gold flashes, darkness, sunlight.
I don’t need to invent the magic.
I only need to notice it.
And then surrender enough to let it come through.
Not every painting needs to make us feel the same thing.
One can whisper.
Another can dance.
Another can soothe.
Another can practically grab us by the shoulders and shout:
WAKE UP. YOU’RE ALIVE.
Maybe that is why I keep painting.
I’m not trying to make pictures of paradise.
I’m trying to paint what paradise feels like.
And every day, apparently, it feels a little different.
✨ Different paintings. Different feelings. Same mysterious source.
Which one is your favourite — 1, 2, 3 or 4? And what does it make you feel?
www.thejoyfulartist.co.nz
