I often see things, but then it takes a while for the penny to drop. In fact it really doesn’t drop at all until I paint something…or write about it, or write about the painting. It’s like I need that extra dimension, that extra play with form or language to take that leap to the higher mind, or intuition. It’s the place where dreams (and paintings and poems) make sense of life by opening it up, expanding our awareness.
My first memoir, The Nancy Who Drew, the memoir that solved a mystery, is packed with pennies that finally dropped. Those “pennies from heaven” that enabled me to look deeper. So that I could draw connections between those feelings and experiences in childhood and youth that had been mysterious, unfathomable fragments of an as yet unexplored psyche.
The Dreamer by © Nancy Wait (1981) oil on canvas
When I was thirty-one I had a breakthrough: I painted a picture that revealed a hidden agenda. Paintings can do that. Drawings, poems, automatic writing. Even if it’s not our own, we can go to museums to connect with artists, connect to their feelings which connect us to ours. We read others to connect to our unspoken, unexpressed thoughts. The greatest benefit, of course, is when we can create our own work, as that is the work that will speak the loudest and most deeply and most profoundly. Because we have connected to our own inner voice.
It’s a way of intuiting who we are on those inner levels hidden from physical 3D reality. An inner plane, accessible in dreams and visions, and to the inner senses. The fourth dimension, 4D, which has been called, the “Clearing House for Humanity.” – Patricia Corri
In2it. I spell it this way to emphasize there are 2 of you. The outer self and the inner self. The Dream-Self and the Awake-Self. The morning these two over-lapped, and the days leading up to it, I call my Spiritual Awakening.
The Awakening led me on a quest to realize the Dream of my Life. One veil had been pulled aside, only to reveal another further on. Another layer to be pierced.
In hindsight, a major step forward was the painting I did five years after the “awakening.” I called it The Dreamer. It was a large canvas, 48″x40″, and it came about “by chance” when a friend of a friend came by to pose in a green gown. I knew right away there was something special about that painting, that it spoke to me in a different way than others. It had to do with the way the model was looking off to the side as if lost in thought, and the way a door was open behind her.
Girl in the Emerald Dress by © Nancy Wait (1985) watercolor
Actually, I’m the only one who knew the door was open. In the painting it looks like a window. In reality it was a French door, and it was open. I had never done a painting where there was a door, open or closed, but I’d seen one open in a dream. Perhaps the girl in the painting was thinking of that dream. The model’s name was Martha, but she was also me. I read once that every portrait is a self-portrait. I think it is true. And I know that painting a thing makes it more real. And when it’s painted big, as this one was, then it becomes even more real. I eventually dripped paint across the canvas horizontally to give a watery feeling, a more dreamy feeling. Later, I did a watercolor version of the oil painting, and the dress came out a bright shade of emerald.
Nancy Wait 2010
Water represents the subconscious. The painting I called The Dreamer opened an inner door in my psyche, and was not only the start of a new series of work, but the start of a new life. Then, some 25 years later, at the start of another new life (my son left for college and my “empty-nest” would now be filled with uninterrupted work on that other baby, my manuscript) I took this picture of myself with a webcam. The significance of the green light above my head didn’t even hit me until just the other day when I was thinking about the Emerald Alignment.
The green light above my head is just like the green light I have been visualizing in my practice of the Emerald Alignment, a brief and wonderfully effective meditation created by Rainbow Light Foundation. 
I heard about the Emerald Alignment nine months (interesting number for a gestation period!) after my webcam photo. It was the first day of summer, 2011, during my blog talk radio show, Art and Ascension, when my guests introduced the meditation.
I have since renamed the picture, The Girl In The Emerald Dress. But of course, The Dreamer came first. (She always will.) I am currently working on a short story about how the painting came about, which I will make available soon, before my next book comes out, The Nancy Who Drew Herself Out of the Swamp.
I drew myself out of the (chaotic emotional) swamp when I connected to The Dreamer, who “happened” to be wearing a green gown that was transformed into an emerald dress when it became a watercolor.
Green is the merging of yellow (mind) and blue (spirit). It is located exactly at the point of color balance – midway between red and violet on the color spectrum. The human eye is able to recognize more variation in the color green than in any other color. Its energy contains: harmony, sympathy, health, abundance, balance, growth, and expansion.
©Nancy Wait 2012
What wonderful synchronicity! This morning I happened across a website with a quote by Whitney Johnson:
“When I took a sabbatical from Wall Street to pursue a different
dream and help others live theirs, I learned that women in the U.S.
may be placated, even pampered, but because we aren’t dreaming,
we are also desperate and depressed. Drawing on a variety of
sources, ranging from academic studies to pop culture, dare to
dream encourages us to dream. And then to act on our dreams.”
This is her book, “Dare To Dream” http://whitneyjohnson.com/book/
As an avid participant on facebook and twitter, I see so many posts about daring to dream, and naturally it stands to reason that lack of dreaming would cause depression. That little tidbit is now spurring me on to describe my process of how painting “The Dreamer” connected me to the dreamer within… and shook up my life.
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