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Jaimie Cahlil



I was born in Oxford, UK, 30 November 1954 - one of dissimilar twins.
The year I was 5 was deeply significant for me – in terms of inner
vision, inspiration and healingful experience. My first role model and
creative guide was my father, James, a writer. Philosophical,
inventive and entertaining, he introduced the work of many artists
into my life, as well as other inspiring people, such as Gandhi. In
1970, at the age of 15, on the strength of my drawings, I was accepted
for the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art, Oxford - which I then
attended between the ages of seventeen and twenty. While there, a
fellow student handed me a second hand copy of 'The Prophet' by Kahlil
Gibran.

Leaving art school in 1974, I then entered a lengthy 'dark night of
the soul' – an uncomfortable and unusual journey into unknown
territory. Where I was within myself suddenly came into clear focus in
early 1997. Subsequently, 1997 proved a transformational year - the
beginning of a process of profound self-integration. Drawn to healing work, in 1997 I began further training - and now support my art with parallel work as a transpersonal-integrative counsellor/psychotherapist. This aspect of
my life's work is nourished by my intuitive and soulful awareness as
artist and inner explorer.

ARTIST STATEMENT

I'm profoundly moved by this 'waking dream' of ours called 'life': our
experience of 'shadow', our intuitive recognition of and longing for
'light', and our souls' searching for 'home'… For me, my life's work
finds equal expression within art and therapy, these providing paths
for a powerful inner journey.

You will view my drawings and paintings through the filter of your own
being and life experience, your own associations and innermost
beliefs. So your response to my art, and to my voice, speaking through
these words, will occur in the context of your own unique 'waking
dream'. When you truly 'receive', in whichever way, the process is
subtle and profoundly transformative. Charged with the subtle energy
or 'language' of symbol and alchemy, richly infused with feeling, the
images I 'see' within… move and heal my deepest being. My wish is that
they also touch you - and move your soul.

One universally-held symbol, present in each of my pictures, is the
symbol of 'light': this is the light that touches, awakens and heals
heart and soul. My journey through life has been guided by this
profound sense of light… with the knowledge we are all here in this
together, as one – as if aspects of one another.

My work is a process of building layers of colour and texture, out of
which images appear - and into which images merge or perhaps
disappear... like the flowing and ebbing of the tide. Like breathing
in and out... shapes, lines and colours advance and retreat. With each
working, some images deepen with vibrancy... and sing, while others
recline or fade to a whisper... As the picture slowly builds, and the
images grow in clarity, the whole thing energetically expands...
reaching out and filling the room. This effect increases as my picture
evolves. As it does, I am less and less 'artist', more and more
'witness'.

I have reached a profoundly exciting moment in my work as I notice my
evolving pictures now describing the subtle shifting of experienced
dimension and energetic pattern, through the feeling form of human
being, symbolic archetypal image, and the universal pattern conveyed
through mandala design. Throughout this process of shifting structure,
form and colour is one constant: always the light.

I consider my art and psychotherapy work alike, as profoundly healing
expressions of being, soul-to-soul – in a world where such core
experience is widely discounted, and where we are often expected to
present our self in accordance with the largely unspoken drive for
denial. As children, adults may have distracted us from feeling the
hurt and shock of falling. And now adult, we have learnt well the
imperative to distract ourselves from our deepest pain. Disguising the
truth of our deepest being creates mass denial, separating us from
knowing our being and from our soul's longing for expression.

As with the relational healing conveyed through presence of the
therapist, I am told the presence of my paintings inspires an equally
profound therapeutic effect – at times bringing those viewing to
tears, and to an unexpected unblocking of the heart. The intimacy of
soul-work can prove either deeply moving or psychologically
over-whelming. My pictures are clearly not for the
intellectually-detached, or for those wishing to remain entranced and
desensitised by distraction and disowning of essential being. My
paintings speak beyond words or concepts, in the language of heart and
soul.