Since the beginning of human intelligence people have looked for signs or messages to help us navigate the unknown. One of the ways I find comfort and entertains my curious mind, is looking up the symbolism and meaning of a repeating number or unusual animal sightings. There might be a message that is grabbing my attention at that moment. Especially when it repetitively shows up or I can’t shake the thought of it. I never put too much weight on the meanings but when I do find out, it’s usually that ah-ha moment of clarity. Joe and I have learned to have faith in our journey and going where ever our intuition is led. But we are also creative designers and have refined our use of those skills in every aspect of our lives.
In November of 2021, we met our most influential friends David and Angie. David opened his art studio and taught me how to do a pour painting technique. I’ve wanted to decorate our van with something more organic in contrast to our sharp modern loft feel of our van build. We have very limited space, so to use it for artwork instead of storage was a bold choice. The simplicity and uncluttered space of our van has brought a sense of peace and simplicity needed for my mental health that our regular houses did not provide. I wanted something meaningful and inspiring. A painting I made over the foot of our bed seemed like a good fit. I knew when I saw the canvases this size was perfect, 12” X 36”, to fill the space.
After living with this painting for about 6 months now, I still find myself staring at it, getting lost in the shapes and colors. It’s mesmerizing how the colors change in different light settings. One way we design our lives is with purposeful use of color. When I chose the colors for the painting it had to coordinate with our interior design of black, white, grey, and red accents. These are our personal brand colors and were also chosen for their meanings. But there was something missing. I had been feeling the need for purple back in my life. It’s my favorite color and invokes a lot of comfort for me. So this was the perfect opportunity for me to infuse it into our decor. Below you will see the meanings and color psychology of all the colors in my painting.
Red - (Chosen for our Rolling Rogans brand color and it’s meaning.) A color of action, passion, energy, love, prosperity, and happiness. It’s effects are stimulating and draws attention.
Purple - (Chosen because I felt like I needed more purple in my life.) A color of creativity, imagination, independence, spirituality, wisdom, compassion, and wealth. It’s effects are encouraging, uplifting, and enlightening. Encourages self-knowledge, deepening our understanding of our innermost thoughts.
Black - (Coordinates with our interior design) A color of power, elegance, luxury, and mystery. It’s effects are boosting confidence, protection, and strength.
White - (Coordinates with our interior design) A color of purity, simplicity, safety, and virtue. It’s effects are calming, balancing, and brings clarity.
Silver - (Coordinates with our interior design) A color of illumination and reflection, grace, independence, wealth, success, and inspires intuition. It’s neutral like gray but more fun, lively, and playful. It helps with cleansing and releasing mental, physical, and emotional issues.
Pink - (This one showed up unexpectedly as a major part of the painting.) A color of unconditional love, self love, love for others, and sympathy. It’s effects are calming, uplifting, and romantic.
With all these colors together on the canvas, they are subtle, subconscious, daily reminders and affirmations of what we want a successful fulfilling life to include.
When David set me up to paint for the first time, he had meditative music playing to set the mood. As we stirred the paints, prepping them for the pour, I focused inward to set intention and asking for the flow of life to unfold as it was supposed to. I intended this painting to support our spiritual mindset. I never expected specific images of animal shapes with relevant meanings to appear in the painting though. Out of all of David’s paintings, as well as other artists using this technique, it is extremely rare for me to see animal shapes emerge. I didn’t have 1 or 2 recognizable images but 9! Only now, after these 6 months of staring at these animals and shapes, did I finally look up the meanings to gain a deeper understanding to what we have been designing our lives with. In one way, the results are surprising, but in another respect these messages are in a way exactly what we needed, wanted, or designed our lives to be. It’s a visual representation of the energy I put into this painting. It fills my heart with joy and inspires me to paint more. It gives me the self-confidence that I am on to something good with my talent and creativity. Because face it, we all need a little encouragement now and then. Enjoy reading the symbolism I found most meaningful to me. Go back to the image and see if you can find all the shapes I found. And if you don’t see them, that’s ok. Maybe they’re just messages for me through my imagination. Let me know in the comments if you’ve found some shapes I haven’t yet!
Flamingo - symbolism and meanings includes beauty, balance, pizzazz, romance, vibrancy.
Snake - represents a creative life force and fertility. As snakes shed their skin, they are symbols of rebirth, transformation, immortality, and healing. A symbol of eternity and continual renewal of life.
Frog - symbolism and meaning include fertility, potential, transformation, purity, prosperity, and good luck.
Bull - symbol of wealth and abundance, strength, stubbornness, hard work, and fertility.
Cat - symbolic of rebirth and resurrection. (Also my favorite animal.)
Dolphin - meanings include help, guidance, messages, intelligence, fun, joyfulness, freedom, teamwork, transformation, and psychic abilities.
Goose - symbolizes family, protectiveness, teamwork, loyalty, bravery, fertility, navigation, and communication.
Wolf - symbolizes guardianship, loyalty, and spirit. The wolf has the ability to make quick and firm emotional attachments, and needs to trust their own instincts.
Shoes - symbolic of our lives, representing a significant meaning of the paths, hardships, and dreams we take on through life. Shoes are the physical and symbolic embodiment of the past, present, and future paths we walk.
Many of these meanings are fun reminders of who Joe and I are and who we want to be. Some of them are confirmation of the life we’ve designed for ourselves. One of the meanings is repeated quite frequently. Fertility… makes me curious to learn more. From the very beginning of our relationship neither of us wanted children of our own. We’ve felt that it was better for our health if we did not have kids. We also needed to focus our energy on creating positive impact instead of our own physical children. We birth creative projects, like our upcoming book Happy Medium, to inspire people and bring hope. So much hard work and energy goes into these projects that they take on a life of their own. They are our babies. I guess the fertility is meant for that or at least that’s the story I’m sticking to since neither of us can actually make children anymore. It is difficult to find symbolic explanations for fertility but I did manage to come across this statement that felt relevant. “Fertility has a deep and strong relationship with the perennial human desire to survive and perpetuate their existence.” I have felt like a warrior trying to survive through my mental and physical health challenges my entire life. Maybe the more powerful way for me to express this is through the art I create.
Some people might think reading into these images and colors is ridiculous. Or they might not even know cultural symbolism shows up. I don’t really care. I find more freedom and happiness with intention and curiosity. It works for me. The only thing I hope by sharing this story is that it inspires you to find your signs. Think about what surrounds you and how it affects your mental health and mindset. Our brains are constantly taking in messages and meanings based on our belief systems. Do you think you could purposefully put images in your daily viewing to stimulate your curiosity and to design your life? Do you think vision boards can be something we set intentions with but also they can teach us a thing or two? Do you think there is a higher power or spiritual guide gently affirming our intuition? What do you think? Let me know in the comments.