Lifting Sparks To Their Source:
On Art as Magick, Meditation, and Communion with Hashem
I don’t remember the first time I made something just for the joy of it, but I remember the feeling: time dropping away, my breath deepening, my hands moving without overthinking, the quiet click when I knew it was right. Even before I had language for it, I was practicing a kind of magick. Not stage-magic with rabbits and hats—real magick, the old kind, where intention and focus shape the unseen into the seen.
For me, art has never been just “pretty pictures.” It’s been spellwork. Energy work. Prayer without a siddur. It’s a way of moving my inner world into the outer one, of holding a conversation with Hashem through color, light, and line. When I make art, I’m not only making something to look at—I’m setting an emotional temperature, weaving together the physical and the spiritual, and leaving a vibration in the work that others can feel, even if they don’t know why.
Over the years, the form my art has taken has changed, shaped by both inspiration and the realities of my body. I started with painting—acrylics, oils, watercolors, whatever I could get my hands on. Later I fell in love with photomanipulation, layering stock images and textures into strange, beautiful worlds. That work was meditative in its own way, though painstaking and time-consuming—combing through hundreds of images to find the right pieces, balancing layers, blending light until the seams disappeared.
But Ehlers-Danlos is a teacher in impermanence. As my joints have grown less stable and my dexterity less reliable with age, the fine motor control I once relied on has become harder to sustain. Holding a brush for hours or making endless micro-adjustments with a mouse is no longer kind to my body. For a while, I grieved that loss. Then, like water finding a new path, I shifted. Now I use AI tools as part of my process—guiding them with detailed prompts, refining results, making minor adjustments as needed with photoshop in post-processing, weaving the digital threads into something that still carries my signature and my spirit. Some people scoff at AI art, but for me, it’s as much a spiritual act as painting ever was. I’m still channeling vision into form, still shaping energy, still listening for what wants to come through. The tools have changed; the magick hasn’t.
When I’m in the flow, my mind quiets. Not empty, but softened. My hands move, my breath slows, and I slip into that same meditative space I reach when I’m in deep kavanah during prayer. I think of b’tzelem Elohim, the idea that we’re made in the image of the Creator, and that creating is part of our divine inheritance. I’m not making a universe out of nothing, but I am making something where there was nothing before. Every piece is a small echo of Yehi or—“Let there be light.”
The Torah itself makes room for this kind of work. The building of the Mishkan, the portable sanctuary, was an act of sanctified artistry. Hashem chose Bezaleel to lead the project, filling him with “ruach Elohim, b’chochmah, u’v’tevunah, u’v’da’at”—the spirit of G-d, with wisdom, understanding, and knowledge (Exodus 31:3). His skill with materials was not separate from the holy; it was holy. I think of that often when I’m creating—how art isn’t a distraction from spiritual life, but a form of it.
There’s a Jewish mystical teaching about tikkun olam, repairing the world by lifting sparks of divine light hidden in the material realm. I sometimes imagine each artwork as a vessel for those sparks. I've taken pigments, pixels, photographs, data—ordinary, inert materials—and I arrange them into something whole, something that points back toward the Source. In that sense, each finished piece is a stitch in the vast, torn fabric of creation.
Art, for me, is also energy work. The emotions and intentions I pour into a piece stay with it, radiating outward. That’s why art can feel alive, why it can move someone to tears without explanation. It’s why creating can be healing—not because the sadness or anger or longing disappears, but because it transforms. Just as in ritual magick, the act of creation changes both the creator and the creation.
This is where my closeness to Hashem deepens. Not always in grand, solemn ways—sometimes in joy, even playfulness. Hashem made platypuses; I’m allowed to make something whimsical for no reason except delight. That delight is its own bracha. And sometimes, yes, it’s solemn: in the quiet after the last touch, when the piece tells me it’s complete, I feel a stillness that is pure awe. Not pride at my own skill, but gratitude for being the hands that brought it into being.
There’s risk in creation, too. The fear of “ruining” something mid-process still visits me. But Jewish tradition reminds me that the Torah is written in both black fire and white fire—the visible and the invisible, the marks and the spaces between. The smudges, wrong turns, and unexpected details are part of the holy pattern. Trust—both in my own hand and in Hashem—becomes the bridge between vision and reality.
I’ve come to see my artistic process as an altar. It’s where I lay down my offerings: my joy, my grief, my longing, my praise. It’s where I remember that I’m small, but that smallness is part of the beauty. And it’s where, again and again, I meet Hashem—not in thunder or fire, but in the slow unfurling of a vision, in the space where brushstroke or pixel meets breath, in the whispered Hineni of showing up to create.
Art will always be the door I return to. It’s where magick, meditation, and energy work meet. It’s how I take part in the ongoing act of creation, how I lift sparks back toward their Source, and how I speak—without words—my deepest truth: I am here. I am listening. I am making this for You.
For me, art has never been just “pretty pictures.” It’s been spellwork. Energy work. Prayer without a siddur. It’s a way of moving my inner world into the outer one, of holding a conversation with Hashem through color, light, and line. When I make art, I’m not only making something to look at—I’m setting an emotional temperature, weaving together the physical and the spiritual, and leaving a vibration in the work that others can feel, even if they don’t know why.
Over the years, the form my art has taken has changed, shaped by both inspiration and the realities of my body. I started with painting—acrylics, oils, watercolors, whatever I could get my hands on. Later I fell in love with photomanipulation, layering stock images and textures into strange, beautiful worlds. That work was meditative in its own way, though painstaking and time-consuming—combing through hundreds of images to find the right pieces, balancing layers, blending light until the seams disappeared.
But Ehlers-Danlos is a teacher in impermanence. As my joints have grown less stable and my dexterity less reliable with age, the fine motor control I once relied on has become harder to sustain. Holding a brush for hours or making endless micro-adjustments with a mouse is no longer kind to my body. For a while, I grieved that loss. Then, like water finding a new path, I shifted. Now I use AI tools as part of my process—guiding them with detailed prompts, refining results, making minor adjustments as needed with photoshop in post-processing, weaving the digital threads into something that still carries my signature and my spirit. Some people scoff at AI art, but for me, it’s as much a spiritual act as painting ever was. I’m still channeling vision into form, still shaping energy, still listening for what wants to come through. The tools have changed; the magick hasn’t.
When I’m in the flow, my mind quiets. Not empty, but softened. My hands move, my breath slows, and I slip into that same meditative space I reach when I’m in deep kavanah during prayer. I think of b’tzelem Elohim, the idea that we’re made in the image of the Creator, and that creating is part of our divine inheritance. I’m not making a universe out of nothing, but I am making something where there was nothing before. Every piece is a small echo of Yehi or—“Let there be light.”
The Torah itself makes room for this kind of work. The building of the Mishkan, the portable sanctuary, was an act of sanctified artistry. Hashem chose Bezaleel to lead the project, filling him with “ruach Elohim, b’chochmah, u’v’tevunah, u’v’da’at”—the spirit of G-d, with wisdom, understanding, and knowledge (Exodus 31:3). His skill with materials was not separate from the holy; it was holy. I think of that often when I’m creating—how art isn’t a distraction from spiritual life, but a form of it.
There’s a Jewish mystical teaching about tikkun olam, repairing the world by lifting sparks of divine light hidden in the material realm. I sometimes imagine each artwork as a vessel for those sparks. I've taken pigments, pixels, photographs, data—ordinary, inert materials—and I arrange them into something whole, something that points back toward the Source. In that sense, each finished piece is a stitch in the vast, torn fabric of creation.
Art, for me, is also energy work. The emotions and intentions I pour into a piece stay with it, radiating outward. That’s why art can feel alive, why it can move someone to tears without explanation. It’s why creating can be healing—not because the sadness or anger or longing disappears, but because it transforms. Just as in ritual magick, the act of creation changes both the creator and the creation.
This is where my closeness to Hashem deepens. Not always in grand, solemn ways—sometimes in joy, even playfulness. Hashem made platypuses; I’m allowed to make something whimsical for no reason except delight. That delight is its own bracha. And sometimes, yes, it’s solemn: in the quiet after the last touch, when the piece tells me it’s complete, I feel a stillness that is pure awe. Not pride at my own skill, but gratitude for being the hands that brought it into being.
There’s risk in creation, too. The fear of “ruining” something mid-process still visits me. But Jewish tradition reminds me that the Torah is written in both black fire and white fire—the visible and the invisible, the marks and the spaces between. The smudges, wrong turns, and unexpected details are part of the holy pattern. Trust—both in my own hand and in Hashem—becomes the bridge between vision and reality.
I’ve come to see my artistic process as an altar. It’s where I lay down my offerings: my joy, my grief, my longing, my praise. It’s where I remember that I’m small, but that smallness is part of the beauty. And it’s where, again and again, I meet Hashem—not in thunder or fire, but in the slow unfurling of a vision, in the space where brushstroke or pixel meets breath, in the whispered Hineni of showing up to create.
Art will always be the door I return to. It’s where magick, meditation, and energy work meet. It’s how I take part in the ongoing act of creation, how I lift sparks back toward their Source, and how I speak—without words—my deepest truth: I am here. I am listening. I am making this for You.
