Art Commissions Paintings by Colleen-Joy
CREATING SPACES FOR WISDOM
Art Commissions original paintings for your home, office, gallery, meditation space, spa, interior design client or as a gift.
Colleen accepts two oil painting art commissions a month.
- Choose between an impressionist seascape, landscape or abstract.
As you can see in this sample online art gallery, the style of Colleen’s art is intuitive and impressionist.
Art Commissions from your photos
Bring photos of your special spaces, favorite colors and the feeling you want the art to evoke to the conversation. Colleen-Joy will guide the process, turning your photos into an original oil painting art commission to bring peace, love, beauty and wisdom to your spaces.
Don’t have a photo? Colleen has travelled to many remote wild spaces with hundreds of photos to inspire your commission. Chat to her about your ideas.
Landscape painting “Storm in the Delta”
This is a scene from deep in the Okavango Delta. It is twilight, the sun lights the fields of grassland as we drive towards the approaching storm. We see rain ahead, and can taste the welcome crisp air.
It is just before the wet season, so we can drive across flat plains, following hardly used tracks. There are very few people in these remote places. My mind is resting mindfully in the inner and outer openness. The horizon bends to meet the sky, the lines of the land arc towards wherever our eyes are gazing.
For each set of eyes, there is a curvature of light bending.
Reality looks entirely different, roads in reality are straight not curved, colors are pure, but our eyes create this dance where lines bend and colors explode.
I prefer to open the heart to natural beauty, than to trust my eyes.
To walk on a pristine beach in solitude and have the mist roll in, sometimes I feel I am incarnated just for these moments for the smell of rain.
This oil painting honours the ocean, a perfect metaphor for the true self.
As waves rise from her still depths, so does the appearance of many apparent separate selves. The ocean teaches its wisdom, whispering that even though we appear to be many separate selves, we share the same ocean self.
May my art help you to meditate on the true self.
This oil painting in a series of wild flowers asked me to look at life differently. So the colors are reversed, blue flowers and orange background.
These oil paintings asks us to find the freedom that is never not free.
Bring me a wildflower, free.
Let me feel the breeze shake loose the grass. To carry my fragrance. To dance as I must.
Let me dance my freedom dance, grounded by stalk and nature. To serve life. To be the heart of the self.
“Autumn on Mount Fuji” oil landscape
This oil painting was in my heart the moment I saw the autumn trees at the foot of Mount Fuji in Japan. The crisp cold air, the cyan blue sky, the stark volcanic grey earth and orange yellow autumn leaves.
This is a harsh beauty that took my breath away.
It demanded to be painted, and so I bowed in surrender.
I always say that my paintings paint themselves, well the best ones do.
They come to life. It’s an intuitive movement, the mind is dethroned to let life be the artist. I cannot feel the edges between the art and the artist. Only open awareness.
There is love and joy. When the colours blend and the intuitive feeling arises that this is the right colour. I can’t tell you how the colours are mixed. If I try to paint, the colours are muddy, the shapes contrived.
When life paints, the art is alive, it can be felt. This is the intention of the gift of sharing this work.
Our eyes don’t see everything in detail. Our eyes see only a focal awareness point that comes to life under the light of awareness. Without knowing that my painting was starting to express this, I see that this is exactly what is happening.
I am noticing that my art is creating a space for wisdom.
How wonderful, what a lovely surprise!
I love sharing my art. These art commissions are created with love.
Walking on the beach after high tide, the wet sand reflects the light. Storm clouds on the horizon and dancing light.
How could an artist resist?
I fall in love with colour.
Whenever I want to paint too realistically, the painting simply won’t allow it. It wants to be alive, to breathe.
Though my artwork is inspired by natural reality, the deeper calling is to express what the eye cannot see.
Even though I mostly paint wide-open natural spaces, sometimes it’s good to look more closely at the wide-open spaces hidden in small universes.
This oil painting is of a raindrop about to fall from the petal of a red flower. A simple moment, a slice of time and space.
What raindrop is about to fall in your life, to bless you with an abundance of nourishment?
I don’t usually paint realistically, but this flower wanted some detail, to draw us in. Don’t you love how art tricks the eye — just like life does?
Consider letting this painting invite you to turn your attention inwards, to discover the treasures within. To look beyond the images and words of the mind, to find what is awake and aware and never not free.
I think it’s true that most artists are never 100% satisfied with any artwork, that’s at least how I feel because it seems impossible to express in paint the depth and reality of the true.
But we do our best anyway, for the joy of it, and sometimes because we have no choice — we must paint.
This painting of the sacred Japanese forests below Mount Fuji, and all their Autumn beauty moved me so much that I had to paint her.
This work flowed, there was no mind.
I put down my paintbrushes, preferring to paint with gloved hands so that I could feel intuitively where the paint wanted to go, how the colors wanted to be layered.
If it is possible, to date this is the painting I love the most. I hope more works can emerge in the same way this one did.
The still small figure walks in the beauty of the blue forest.
Can we be alone and at one?
The washes of light weave between strong vertical tree lines calling us in and upwards. We are called inwards and upwards to our highest calling.
I love places and spaces where you can see the sky touching the horizon.
These open spaces invite us to remember that we are openness itself.
We are the space in which the dance of light and form creatively expresses itself.
This oil painting was inspired by a moment of watching the sunset across the Drakensberg mountains. May it inspire you to find the open breathtaking space that is you all of the time, even in crazy busy cities, even in a world that seems to have gone mad.
Abstract “Journey of Souls”
On the sad news of the passing of one of my beloved teachers Dr Michael Newton, author of “Journey of Souls,” who I had the privilege of working with for some precious years, this abstract oil painting.
This abstract oil painting art commission explores the dance of duality, the play of light and shadow, how one becomes the other.
This painting was done entirely without paint brushes, I wore gloves to push and pull the paint across the canvas intuitively.
Sweeping motions invite our attention to these wavelike movements, unsure where to rest for one movement arises and collapses into another.
All the while, you are awareness, still and at peace. This dance of duality is within you, but you are not confined within it.
Discuss an abstract oil art commission with Colleen-Joy.
Many decades ago, I asked my soul’s wisdom intuitively, what I should do to attract clients and business.
I had found my natural design and wanted to honor my true self by building a business that expressed this truth. But I had an allergy towards selling, and didn’t want to offer services to the world in a way that was anything less than authentic.
And this was a dilemma. How do you trade? Do you do business in a way that is not a cheesy infomercial, in a way that is not about grabbing? In a way that honors the true self which is love.
Wisdom replied to my meditation question, “Be like a flower.”
At first I was puzzled, thinking that this was not a very helpful marketing strategy. But soon, the wisdom revealed itself and became a guiding principle that I used to build a very abundant business.
“Be like a flower” — be your natural self, don’t hide out of fear of seeming to be arrogant. It is just as egotistical to shrink back as it is to puff oneself up.
A flower doesn’t say, “I am better than,” but neither does it say, “I am less than” — it simply says, “I am this.”
Being like a flower means opening to being invisible and sharing your colors with the world. No need to grab, to push or to pull. When the bees that want your pollen come by, they will be attracted to what you have to offer.
This oil painting is an expression of gratitude for the wisdom and intuitive guidance that put me on the path to be like a flower.
Do you see the speck of red and blue?
This is a couple sitting in the ancient Redwood and Sequoia Forest outside San Francisco. The trees are drawn to scale. Mixed media charcoal, white acrylic paint and a splash of red and blue are all in honor of this breathtakingly beautiful ancient sacred place.
When my husband suggested we visit the forest outside San Francisco, I had no idea what to expect. As we made our way amongst dozens of regular visitors, hikers, cyclists and moms pushing their babies in prams along the wooden walkways, I thought, “This is very beautiful”— what happened next shocked me.
As walked deeper into the forest, my heart was struck. I cannot easily describe the force of the emotion, the presence that seemed to rip my chest open with sheer beauty.
I tried to hide the spontaneous crying from the passers-by.
Uncontrollable sobs kept rising. I stopped closing my eyes, trying to gather myself. ‘Stop crying,’ I tried to reason with myself. The emotions subsided, so I braved opening my eyes again, but the force struck me again, and hot fresh tears flowed.
So I surrendered and quietly cried as we walked in silence.
My husband lovingly gave me space.
I thought we’d walked for 20 minutes, but it was two hours when we left. There was only the sheer force of ancient sacred beauty, the depth of which I’ll never forget.
This artwork is in honor of that forest. May the artwork and my story remind us of the power of nature’s beauty.
Where sky and storm and green rolling hills meet, we are invited to take a breath.
How often do we really look? Truly see the way nature calls us to see ourselves in all things.
This is an oil painting of the rolling hills of Tuscant Italy.
See yourself in this vibrant dance of life.
A simple flower. A universe.
Look until you can see yourself looking back.
This oil painting was painted impasto style. Thick layers of palette knife paint are placed intuitively, sometimes chaotically, but always with mindful to honor a simple orange flower.
A universe, an opportunity to see the self in everything.
Even in the crazy busy world there is an invitation to find the sanctuary within. This pen and ink drawing is of the atrium in my home. My home is often busy, with family, staff, friends, clients and students coming and going, but always this inner sanctuary is peaceful.
May this artwork remind us to take refuge. To call attention back from the contents of awareness, the battles of the mind, the noise of life, to rest as the true self, which is like a peaceful inner garden atrium, always calling us home.
An ordinary moment, one of my favorite things to do — so simple, sit on the couch with my husband. Here he is watching TV, focused intently on the sport that he loves to watch. I captured this in graphite pencil, deeply working in the shadows of the night, and the light from the setting sun and the television capturing his gaze.
You can see how focused he is, drawn in by the game. An ordinary moment, I love ordinary moments.
Have you ever stopped, taken aback by the awe inspiring miracle of life, of natural things like dragonflies?
How does this tiny creature navigate his world with such grace? A glimpse of the intelligence of life, miraculous light takes flight.
This pen and ink drawing with watercolor washes honors the miraculous intelligence of life.
Meditation
Art for Mindfulness & Meditation
Art Commissions
Make my art useful.
My art is created to serve, to be useful, and its highest use is to be a focus of meditation, a transmission of peace, love and wholeness. Helping to create sacred spaces in our homes and workplaces.
Colleen-Joy
Artist
After a near-death experience at age four during surgery to remove an egg-sized monster-making tumor from behind my right eye, I tried to draw what death had shown me. Sometimes only art can speak for us.
I tried to draw freedom from the body, a tunnel of colourful light to what my child mind called “home.”
Sitting in the hospital bed, head covered in bandages, I was frustrated that the colors I recalled were not here on earth. My little hands failed to capture the feeling of flying without a body, of too much love to hold in our human hearts.
When tidying up, my mother asked, “Col, can I throw this away?” my heart wanted to keep the drawing; it was a most precious thing. But it felt too personal, and I didn’t know how to speak of it, so I watched my drawing of a tunnel of light to home be crumpled into the bin.
I have since painted many tunnels of colorful light to our “home.” And I eventually was shown by wisdom that “home” was not a place to go to when we died. It is the true-self. We are never not home.
My art career started at age sixteen, when I was commissioned to do portraits. I sold wildlife and surrealistic paintings, in my twenties, and worked as a professional graphic designer. Notable commissions have included:
- Illustrations for children’s books
- Millennium 2000 logo for national television broadcaster SABC
- Designs for various food, charity and retail brands
- Artwork for the cover of Soul II Soul “Back to Life” album
- Various oil painting commissions for private collections, spas, workspaces, meditation rooms and homes
Use my Art Commissions to create wisdom spaces inviting peace, love and joy into your home and workplace. You can also use the art to serve your Meditation + Mindfulness Practice.
