Calling in the Ancestors:
The Original Was 20 x 36
Calling in the Ancestors – Original Pour Painting
Acrylic pour, blade technique, palette knife | One-of-a-kind mixed media
Calling in the Ancestors is a ceremonial invocation — a visual prayer shaped through flow, spirit, and sacred memory.
Created almost entirely through layered pours, this painting emerged intuitively, allowing ancestral presence to rise organically. Faces and energies surfaced through the paint — not planned or brushed in, but received. The movement of color and gravity became the medium through which spirit stepped forward.
At the heart of the composition stands a tipi — the only element the artist gently shaped using a blade and palette knife, guiding the paint like a prayer offered with intention. This tipi anchors the scene, symbolizing both home and ceremony, a threshold between the physical and spiritual realms.
This piece carries the energy of a specific and sacred moment in the Native American Church: when the medicine man steps out of the tipi at midnight, eagle bone whistle in hand, and calls in the spirits from all four directions during the water call. It is a moment of breath and reverence — when the veil is thin and the ancestors are invited to enter the space.
The original painting was gifted to someone very dear to the artist — someone who is no longer in her life but will always be a part of her thoughts of the church. That offering was part of the medicine.
Calling in the Ancestors is not just art — it is a portal of presence, a living witness to sacred ritual, lineage, and unseen communion.
