Mystic Garden Gathering

Originally from Belgrade, Serbia, Sofia has lived in the U.K., the East coast and all over California where she sailed on the Pacific. She now lives in Boulder, Colorado, in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains, the spine of the Dragon.

“I derive great inspiration from being in Nature, from traveling and and cross-cultural experiences. I believe true artists function as shamans and alchemists of the society at large. Painting is my commitment, meditation, expression of the awe and mystery of life.

I am an instrument tuned to the flow of energies around me, an interface between the personal self and collective consciousness, and an antenna for higher visions for the purpose of personal and hopefully global healing and evolution.

By receiving and trusting the visions — “the language of light” — the rational mind is bypassed. Yet its work consists of striving to capture some of their essence and, improving the methods to do so.

Chad Haarman is a recent art school graduate who has shown at NYC Decompression and Burning Man in Entheon Village. We love the way Chad’s paintings express the personal experience of transcendent bliss across lines of gender, culture and and the generations, and we are stoked to share him with you.

This painting is called “Water for Life”.

I believe that art is a technology that can communicate and transform the collective consciousness. If we begin to integrate what our sciences and ancient philosophies are telling us about Holographic Reality we learn that everything is energy vibrating. With the integration of the knowledge of subtle energies in our every day lives, the artist becomes more than a transmitter of images. The artist becomes a technician of the visible wavelength, using it to receive, transmit, and amplify the subtle energies in ways that could be beneficial for the evolution of consciousness as well as for the health and vitality of any being.

The paintings are not the message, nor are they holding the message within their content. The paintings are the device that assists you in bringing out the message. The message is already there, it is inside you.

“Artists are the Antennae”- we are allowing energy to flow through us and this energy is activating our capacity to interpret themessages within us. Likewise, the paintings activate the viewer’s capacity to decode their own messages lingering within, waiting for them to relearn their own native tongue.

This is why it is so great- instead of having to mean one homogonized idea or intention, a painting can simultaneously be any and every interpretation given to it, because it is none of those things. It simply catalized an individual to make an interpretation or intention, whether it was comprehended and “understood” by the left-brain, or whether it was comprehended and “experienced” by the right-brain. Either way, you are different than you were before you viewed it.

I dedicate all my work to the transformation of a collective of entities on the brink of quantum breakthrough.

I give thanks to the trailblazers that have inspired me.

Christina Wagonblast

Christina Wagonblast is a popular live painter who loves painting late at night at festivals all over the West Coast. This is her second summer painting in the Mystic Garden. You can read more about her here.

Sunset Under a Mantle of Stars

Darren Minke is an accomplished digital artist, commercial artist and fine art painter who has shown art at Mystic Garden for several years as a vendor. We are pleased to showcase him as a Featured Artist this year and have his sacred and goddess art grace our stages and altars. Darren has shown at Sacred Spaces Village and Red Lightning at Burning Man and is constantly touring and showing at music festivals along the West Coast.

by Yurik Riegel

Yurik Riegel was born in the small coastal town of Half Moon Bay, California. He received his first formal art training at the local high school. Though art was his first love, he also spent a great deal of his time away from class doing physical exercise. It was here in the vigorous physical training of running in the school’s Track and Cross Country teams and practicing the martial art of Hapkido, that the seeds of personal evolution first took root in his soul.

Yurik attended San Jose State University where he received a degree in Illustration. At the age of 22, after experiencing a panic attack, he began to read books on personal growth, why people suffer, and the relation of psychology to art. Upon graduation, he traveled across the U.S. in search of classical figurative training at the Arts Students League of New York City, under the instruction of Peter Cox, Greg Kreutz, and Michael Burban.

After returning to San Francisco, he was hired by his childhood inspiration, the Lucas companies. It was in this time period, in the wake of 911, that Yurik was more formerly introduced to the world of course work and meditation. He dove in and never looked back.

Yurik’s imagery speaks of the teachings of the Buddha,Werner Erhard, David Deada, Tony Robbins, Ekhart Tolle and many others. It also speaks to the growing trend in the world of urban tribalism, spirituality, and global connection. His oil paintings are an up-to-the minute reflection of modern man’s struggle to know himself in an Age of Information and Globalization.

Yurik still lives in the San Francisco Bay Area near his favorite city, paints, works as a personal coach, studies transformation, and races competitively on a local running team.

Green Goddess by Roman Villagrana

We are pleased to welcome back Roman as one of our featured artists. Roman has been showing in the Visionary Arts Village since our first Mystic Garden five years ago.  Roman represents a harmonious universe portrayed by dancing beings, galactic councils, sychromystics and other enlightened perspectives symbolizing the ever-changing moment he calls the eternal party. Roman loves to make art but ultimately he believes it’s a duty to his community and our existence as a visual representation of the world we want or have. He invites everyone to participate in a conscious movement declaring interdependence through the act of creating it.

Gadfly by Adam Fu

Adam Fu currently resides in Northern California.  Growing up, Adam was exposed to many different cultures visiting both the maternal side of his family in Taiwan and the paternal side of his family in Mexico.

From early on Adam Fu felt a strong calling to study the traditional plant medicine ways of the indigenous peoples of America.   Adam has lived with and continues to visit families from different indigenous nations of both North and South America  -  learning from and supporting their art and ways of life.   From the jungle dwelling Shipibo-Conibo and Matses – Jaguar tribe to the high desert Huichol Deer Tribe of Northern Mexico “All of these tribes have intimately touched me and influenced me as a being – Artistically and Spiritually.”

Adam Fu has been ordained and authorized as a Peyote Roadman and Minister for the Native American Church of the North America Contient through Chief Leonard Emmanuel Crowdog – Chief of the Sicangu Lakota Oyate and 562 Federally recognized Tribal Nations here in the North American Continent.  In addition to the honor of carrying this medicine altar from respected tribal chiefs of the North- Adam continues to study and work under Wixarica Huichol Elder and Kawitero Matsewa de La Cruz of Tuapuri (Santa Catarina) making annual pilgrimages to Huichol Sacred Sites and Altars.

Recently Adam Fu and his work is making a powerful emergence in the Live Painting and Visionary Art scene.  Painting live with such performers as Mimosa, Heyoka, Shpongle, Tipper, Random Rab,  Ott, Ana Sia, Pantyraid, MartyParty, Lynx n Janover, BlueTech, Eskmo and Eoto.  With Paintings having shown at many up and coming Visionary Arts Gallery such as 99 High Art Gallery in Venice Beach and Tribe13 Visionary Art Gallery in Ukiah. Also one of the 4 New Featured Artists for Alchemeyez 2011 Visionary Arts Congress in Hawaii.

Whether Painting Live  at a Music Festival, chanting in the deep jungle with Taitas, or laying offerings in the  high desert w/ elder  Mara’kame guiding – one can find Adam Fu channeling deep healing visionary work for the people .

Zahira Soul, etherically painted by Victoria. Zahira will be performing with us this summer!

“My oeuvre bridges the material and ethereal realms through the essential integration of art and society. In an effort to restore the lost harmonic equilibrium, I portray the emergence of a new cosmology I am witnessing. Through diffusion and cross-cultural exchange between the East and West, we are building a deeper sense of connection and understanding in accordance with the natural world and global community. We are myth-makers, visionary practitioners, mystic sound, and holistic healers. Through the recognition of the divine within, we present our various works with bodhisattva-like intentions of aiding spiritual awakening and eliciting a strong sense of positive social and environmental responsibility. I strive to combine technical proficiency with visionary imagination. My paintings are visual manifestations of the archetypal energies which guide my path as well as divine reflections of ascension. They do not deny the sorrows of the temporal plane, rather symbolize our capacity for transcendence.”

Blacklight painting by Sergey Rytov

Sergey Rytov was born and grew up in Central Russia but I always felt an inexplicable interest to ancient eastern philosophies and their culture. His art was inspired by magical journey to India in 2006, a mystic country which manifests variety of miracles even nowadays. Sergey’s art is symbolic with themes that are taken from classical Tibetan Buddhism. Transparent canvas symbolizes infinite space and emptiness – it’s a basis from which everything is manifested. And image – the union of deities, accomplished with fluorescent paints in a Drops Style is a spontaneous game of energies in this space – like emanating illusory vibrations of
light and sound, which we can perceive by an innate mind in its particular natural initial state of purity.

The creation of art for Sergey is an act of self discovery. The transfer of a certain emotional experience, of energy, pours out into the composition. The artist becomes like a conductor – he participates in the process, and is not involved at the same time. This approach is similar to ancient and cult arts in all traditions and in all nations, especially vividly expressed in the East, in the art of Ancient India, Tibet, China and Japan.

The human experience in those cultures is presented not in separate views, but as an indivisible part in an organic flow of manifestation. In a word – the Universe is in one atom and each Universe is just nothing but an atom. In that way the ancient eastern cultures remain close to us. All manifestations – like life and death, sensuality and distance, concreteness and abstractedness are perceived as equal natural things, and the creative work as a spontaneous game of space
energies which vanish and become apparent again.

Sergey’s partner Olga is certified yoga instructor and teaches Ashtanga style Yoga as well as Hatha Flow. She has been experienced the bliss of yoga for the last 8 years in different styles (Hatha, Iyengar and Ashtanga) and shares her devotion to ancient practice which is the tool that opens up the physical and mental binds that block your potential, limiting your life.

Her class is based on classic Ashtanga yoga, primary series where the focus is directed inward: observing your physical body, concentration on Ujjayi breathing that helps you find the right rhythm for your practice, watching your mind, holding the bandhas to keep the energy flowing through the body.

Enjoy profound and self-transformative journey which leads to awareness of who you truly are. Feel rejuvenation, strong energized body, discover your inner strength and peace…