My work is so innately spiritual and communal, always been. In academia, I had to learn how to “defend” my work (in a process of critique). I remember the forceful transition from “I feel” to “I think”. Prior to my education, I was centered on how I felt about the world, naturally within my heart. My professors pushed me to exclude “I feel” and and express an intellectual framework of “I think, therefore” which later excluded the “I” altogether. It marks a shift into Western critical thinking and approach. For me, it took the God out of it. 

I fought that paradigm though and further rejected the school of thought “Art for art’s sake”. I am indigenous African centered and functioning, in this way of being, there is no separation between art and life. Further, there is no separation of art and spirit. You see how this translates when you can walk out of a restaurant in South Africa. A crowd of people break out in a beautiful song using call and response. Spirit moved them into creative unity. Or when the preacher speaks in rhythmic cadence almost like a song. The congregation responds with guttural sounds. These sounds mean amen, we are with you, we are the same, and we agree. Call and response, fundamental to African aesthetic and cosmology is everything! It is why I am, along with others, inherently connected with my soul and its families.

Call and response became one of the governing principles of all of the work I have done with community. It’s a social and cultural rhythm, dance, exchange that supports cohesiveness and cooperation. If one speaks, presents, organizes, or expresses without the community responding in affirmation, then you are off point. Approval is needed to confirm alignment with the community. You need to adjust so the intention, energy, and movement are in alignment with the spirit of unity. Togetherness of the whole is essential. 

You compile this with the spiritual. This includes the overarching practice of maintaining and expressing the love of God. It connects with ancestral legacies and the sacredness of the earth. There is also community unity and the soul. Soul food, soul talk, soul music, and soul art are mainstream concepts. These exemplify an aspect of the concept of oneness. You have a polyrhythmatic movement and balance. This balance is reciprocated as harmony between the self, community, and God Most High, one of the sacred trinities. 

I’d like to share more about how some people in this earth have never lost their direct connection to God or the Divine. This connection affects the purpose of many spiritual practices of this age. These practices aim to reconnect or acknowledge that we are God. When the concept of “oneness” was introduced to me, I couldn’t grasp why it was so foreign. It was abstract, with some having such difficulty with living it. On some levels, it is a “given” to me. A prime example is the idea of being “one with the earth”. I’m like, we are on the earth, eat of the earth, return to the earth, we are connected to other living and non living things on the earth, the earth is alive, we are the earth, we are connected to each other, the part, and the part of the whole… of course. It’s obvious. I also recognize that being in balance with the earth is not just a romanticized nostalgia of tribal living. It is also a leveling that happens even in concrete cities. This includes the otherness of technology or even living in separate compartments of a high rise. The key thought is balance, and harmony. Earth will harmonize with all. And our systems and bodies will harmonize with the earth. The frequency of this interaction and exchange is up to me, and us. When I lived in the concrete and asphalt neighborhood of SouthWest Philadelphia, I bonded with the streets as my natural habitat.

The survival strategy of “Double Consciousness” defined by by W.E.B Dubois, I can access, thus relate, to more than one thought at a time, I have many minds and I code switch. I can relate to the polarization and separation brought by Western homogeneous patriarchy. In this duality, humanity is like an alien force, a natural deviation like cancer in its consumption and destruction of the self and the earth because of fear. 

What I realized is the expression of the connection to the divine that was so innate in my work, and my mother’s, goes beyond the established ethos of the post modern art industry and academia. Although artist – who define and express connection in their work as subjects for the purpose of analyzing and observing much like you’d observe a community of chimpanzees from behind walls of unbreakable plexiglass in a zoo – in our structures and thinking we are still on the set of a Tarzan movie. 

I struggle with finding a place for my visual art within the systems, ideology and industry. And I do tend to differentiate my experience from other artists (and cultural producers). I recognize this is fear based, a lack of faith and forward thinking. Everything is going to shift, and as we move more into unconditional love, new platforms will come into being that best hold and manifest creative energy and oneness. The practice of creativity within itself is an act of devotion and faith, as it is an exercise, getting ready for what is to come. Amandla! (Creative Power to Be Free!)

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This is another artwork I found in the closet, a pastel drawing. I remember when I drew it. I was sitting in the hall of Wilkes University outside of the on campus Starbucks where I just consumed a very large cup of coffee, a ritual to inspire me and activate to create. I had 4 sheets of pastel paper I tore into 4 sheets each. Within a couple hours, I drew 7 pastel drawings. And I didn’t value them (like other work) because they took such a short time to create. I also viewed them as unfinished, a common sentiment with all artists, in fact it marks a level of maturity when you can tell “it is done”. 

I can see this work now and appreciate its clarity. I love myself when I can be this way: pushing through hard things (because “creating”’s 1st struggle is getting over your self), finding a flow or source of inspiration, then allowing it to come without an intellectual hindrance. Freedom!!! 

I can feel the freedom that came in this expression. I won’t delve into meaning, but I will ask you for your interpretations? Even deeper, what do you see of your self in this drawing? 

______________________ 💜 & 💜 

1000 words (a daily promise). 

Thank you for taking the time to read these wanderings and wonderings of my mind, spirit, imagination and voice. I’m grateful to have this opportunity to share with you my art, process and spirituality. My hope is that while I speak the authentic truth of my “I statements”, you are inspired and validated. This is my love. 

You can find more of my art Nataki Bhatti Artist. Join my group Creativity As A Spiritual Practice especially if you’d like to explore your creative nature in visual art and writing. For my light healing experience like Reiki by Nataki I am very open to talk to put aside the taboo and talk with you about energy. And inquire if you’d like to learn more about Karuna Reiki®️, Usui Reiki or Magnified Healing®️ energy healing.