This story begins mid evening in October in the strange year of the pandemic. 

 I rent the front bedroom on the first floor of two story wooden craftsman style house in NE Portland. The house is painted cerulean blue with lavender, sun yellow and lime green trim.A front porch begins at the steps leading to the front door and runs the length of the living room.

Perhaps it’s a stretch to say I met Hilma Af Klint at a party.

She was born in 1862, in Sweden.

I attended a meditation group on zoom, led by Mark Mezadourian, who often relays messages from Archangels, Ascended Masters, and sometimes, the spirits of poets, painters and musicians who come forward to offer their wisdom and guidance.

Hilma af Klint born near Stockholm, Sweden in 1862, at Karlberg castle, a naval academy where her father was an admiral. She was fourth of five children born to Mathilda af Klint (née Sonntag) and Captain Victor af Klint. The male af Klints were well -known in Sweden as ocean map-makers and naval officers who had written technical books about navigation, surveying, and mathematics.

When Hilma af Klint’s: Paintings for the Future opened in 2018 at the Guggenheim, many of the museum goers had never heard of her. Between October 2018 when the exhibit opened until April 2019, over 600,000 people attended the exhibit. It was the most visited exhibit in the museum’s history. 

I saw a documentary once about Balinese dancing. In it, a young dancer sat cross legged while her teacher sat behind her, moving her arms in the intricate patterns of the dance.

How different, I thought that how I had learned dance, by watching the teacher’s body and then trying to translate what I’d observed into movements.

Hilma af Klint was one of the first class of women allowed to attend art school in Sweden. She studied landscape, portraiture and botanical drawing. She also met another artist there Anna Cassel.

Together with Sigrid Hedman, Mathilda Nilsson, Cornelia Cedarburg they formed “The Five,” and met every Friday for ten years to conduct investigations into the world of the invisible.

With the pandemic came Zoom — zoom meetings, classes on zoom, tele-health appointments. It wasn’t the same as meeting in person, but seeing the faces of people I knew and loved became a lifeline.

What I hated was having to look at myself.

When Hilma’s work was finally began to be shown in museums, it became clear that she was doing abstract art ten years before  Kandinsky and Mondrian, who art history books claim as abstract art’s originators.

Six months into the pandemic, the old realities had fallen away.

Some people still talked about going back to the way things were, when we could once again resume “normal” life.

Looking at photos of her paintings I noticed repeating shapes: spirals for one. This is one thing she is known for and I felt a personal connection with her as if this were one thing we had in common.

My own paintings were also filled with spirals

The name of the second picture, Portal of the New Earth came easily, as did the painting itself.

I imagined a gateway created to greet star beings from near and far.

How much easier it would be to let go of what is not working if we could imagine and perhaps catch a glimpse of another way  if we believed another way was possible.

This desire to create a better world is often met with derision, called utopian, and generally looked down upon as naive — in a form of "magical thinking.”

Hilma af Klint, small in stature and curious by nature, possessed a lively mind. 

Like her father, she was interested mathematics and music, and from summers spent in Adelso, an island in Lake Malaren, she developed a life-long fascination with nature and natural forms. 

One day while I was painting strange images, somewhere between a doodle, a landscape and a dream, with the spirit of Hilma af Klint looking over my shoulder, I remember something that happened a few months before.

One way to interpret a dream is to imagine that whatever you dream is significant and contains a message from your subconscious. The language of dreams is visual, but also draws in the other senses: a feeling or an action you witness and may also be a part of.

Doodling begins with the movement of your hand across the page. Something emerges out of the movement. One line or shape may suggest another. Repetitions become patterns. Something emerges onto the page that you may not recognize or have conceived of until the doodle is finished.

Doodling begins with the movement of your hand across the page. Something emerges out of the movement. One line or shape may suggest another. Repetitions become patterns. Something emerges onto the page that you may not recognize or have conceived of until the doodle is finished.

How do you know when a doodle is done? Without a reference point in the outside world, its more intuitive, a decision you make based on what feels complete.

While reading everything I could about Hilma, I also began to study her paintings, the recurring symbols and shapes in them — the spiral, the figure 8, her use of dashed lines, musing on their possible meanings.

Hilma af Klint kept extensive notebooks in which she explained the significance of the various symbols and colors in her work. In Notes on Letters and Words pertaining to Works by Hilma af Klint, she writes, “The snail or spiral represents development or evolution.”

Every day that I paint, it’s feels like a chance to fall in love again, and for the first time.

To begin a journey of transformation, you must be willing to let go of what has held your world firmly in place. This is not always easy, and sometimes it feels like change comes as sudden turn, a dream that unexpectedly falls way, taking the ground out from underneath you.