A Tribute to Akiane Kramarik: Artist, Poet and Inspiration

I hope you have a chance to listen to Akiane on YouTube, to read her poetry and to see her gallery of paintings which are easily found on the internet.  I was feeling creatively flat when I happened to catch an interview with her. I was moved by her deep connection with God and how effortlessly she accessed her artistic potential. Her mother described her seriousness and dedication to art, rising at four in the morning to go work at the studio.  Akiane explained to her mother “You don’t wait for inspiration; it waits for you.” How much do we miss because we don’t present our self to the muse?

I selected one of her works for comment and to share my appreciation of her art with you.  Below is Akiane’s self portrait.  It is a visual treatise on Selfhood. She is a stand-in for each of us.  At least, this is how I see it.  The real Cosmos is the backdrop and yet a beautiful living star is just now being painted.  Look at the starlit left hand. Look at her balance and her focus. Everything is vivid, breathing life –conscious yet still with the serenity of wholeness. She has merged with cosmos… or is cosmos merging and expressing itself (Herself) through her? Which is which?  She captured the ultimate creative moment when the soul reflects the face of God, in whose image she is made and through this act dissolves into the Eternal Now. What I see in Akiane’s art is what I hear with the poems of Rumi, the revelation of my own soul.

The revelation of God as God is enfolded within the self as Self.  Let go and merge into the unfettered world, your own radiant expression of the loved inner child self, far beyond the captivating constraints of millennial judgments and ego expression.  Beyond good and evil, it awaits as a Presence, always present. In the hush Rumi’s voice comes in distant echoes, “Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and right-doing there is a field. I’ll meet you there.”   The Divine is waiting…

What I know of God is not measured in my limitation but in God’s infinite capacity to manifest in me the longing to be my Self, not only as identity but as an act of being, to create and share with me the higher reality I am becoming, ever singing into my heart the soul-stirring song of Awakening . Where does the music come from? Who is the musician? Who is listening? Is the beauty in the notes or in the silence that separates them?  Am I now the note?

The joy of God’s creating is the pain in my increasing.  Does this register consciously or is this the striving of dreams.  And when I awake, am I entering another dream?  No, when the starlight of cosmos was revealed, it was I who painted it.  Cosmos and Psyche are both implicated; they are one and inseparable.  It is God looking through my eyes. It is God who guides my brush. I am whole.

Thank you Akiane, for your beautiful gift.

by Michael McCann