Since studying the Mischtechnik with Amanda Sage in New York, Janette has committed to including her stories along with her paintings. All paintings that were hung at the FELTS Grand Opening in February 2017 have along side them the story behind the painting. The following is one example.
Janette paints skulls. Her power animal is Buffalo. One year on her birthday she received a phone call asking if she would paint a long horn skull in exchange for a Buffalo hide. Janette agreed and picked up the hide and the skull that day. Both were magnificent.
For a long time, every time Janette would feel a desire to start painting the skull, something would come up that would keep her from doing it. |
One of those times she found urine on the skull and had to wash and disinfect it. A year went by, and almost another year went by. Again, when she went to paint the skull she found urine on it, the most rancid smelling urine she had ever experienced, fresh, bright yellow and in abundance. She soaked the skull in bleach, but the odour could still be detected at the base of one horn, a dropped horn, making the skull unique.
Janette had been corresponding with a Native Chief, learning about healing, and she told him what happened. He told her not to paint the skull, to wrap it in red fabric, that he wanted to see it. A family member came to visit and, as Janette was telling her the story, urine appeared on a cushion that was sitting next to the skull. Janette contacted the Chief and together they spent 5 hours on the phone as he directed them through a ritual for protection. He told Janette to take the skull and hide and drop them to the bottom of the lake or bury them. He believed that the skull held an evil spirit. He told the story of a man he once saw with the head of a goat, reeking of urine and emanating a pungent yellow vapour.
Janette contemplated what to do, as neither the skull or hide belonged to her. She decided to tell the story to the owner of them and return them, as they were, still wrapped in red fabric with sage.
New Year’s Day she packed up the skull and hide and tied them to the back of her horse whom she led from the back of her other horse. Upon walking through the gate to leave the property, there was a loud crack and Janette knew it was the skull. She took the pack off the horse’s back and dropped to her knees, untying the red fabric to find the dropped horn broken off the skull at the base. She looked at the horse and repeated over and over, “What am I going to do?”… Each time the horse telepathically replied, “You’re going to paint the skull”. Janette was torn between the guidance of her mentor, the Chief, and her promise to the man who had left these items in her care. She finally cried out to the horse, “How can I paint the skull?!”, and she heard the horse reply, “You’re going to paint the skull… only because you love to”.
In that moment Janette saw with her intuitive eye a yellow smoke rise up out of the hole in the skull where the horn had broken off, and she realized all of the things that she was doing in her life because they were what she felt others expected of her. She smelt the skull and could no longer detect any odour. She decided in that moment that everything that she did in life would be done only because she loved to. Her life changed after that. After some shifts and endings, it became easier. It became purposeful. Through one phone call she acquired a special kind of cement and reattached the horn the same day it came off, and she painted the skull, because she loved to, and it turned out beautiful – her most cherished art piece she has executed to this day.
Janette Damsma