My work focuses on the intersections of art, ritual, and spirituality, and the ways in which creative process can document and facilitate personal and collective growth and evolution. My meditative and creative practices hold as a primary goal the experience and alignment of the physical and energetic aspects of the self. Drawing, painting, and embroidery become contemplative acts through which I transcribe visions of non-physical, numinous phenomena that arise during meditation. A successful work transmits an essence: a non-tangible quality that causes what feels like excitement, or an awakening. Completed compositions can be used as aids for further meditation, and offer viewers a quiet space to reflect and inquire about the experiences they have of matter, energy, and spirit in their own lives.

Inside // Outside, a gouache and graphite drawing/painting on paper, will integrate my somatic and spiritual practices and evolve a growing body of what I call vision drawings: gouache and graphite compositions sketched intuitively as part of a continuing venture to reconcile my ontological position. I will work Inside // Outside after my daily practices of yoga asana, yoga nidra, and contemplation in nature. It will depict the internal energetic processes that I witness during meditation and my body’s relationship with non-physical forces I perceive in the external environment. The completed work will offer a layered and complex visual experience that evidences how patterns of thought, emotion, tension, and ease manifest in human physical and energetic structures over time. 

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Chelsea Rushton holds a BFA with distinction in Creative Writing from the University of Victoria and an MFA in Visual Art from the University of Calgary, and she is certified at the 500 hour level as a yoga instructor. She is the designer and instructor of Art of the Soul: Creative Process as Spiritual Practice, a special topics lecture, seminar, and studio course currently offered at the University of Calgary. Her creative endeavours have been generously supported by the British Columbia Arts Council, the Alberta Foundation for the Arts, the University of Calgary’s Centre for Research in the Fine Arts, and Calgary Arts Development. She shares her time between Calgary, Gabriola Island, and the Bay Area.