"Agnes, I have to tell you what an amazing impact you have had on my creative life. A few months ago I was ‘blocked’, thinking I had nothing more to say in the area of creative practice that has been my work for 20 years.
From the first of our hypnotherapy sessions, you have taken me on extraordinary but surprisingly ‘familiar’ spiritual journeys. Now I am at a point where my creativity is going in a totally revitalised direction - more assured, confident, certain, excited and meaningful. You have given me greater confidence to draw and paint the places and presences I engage with under hypnosis. Many of the images link back to my very early work: Conversation with my Goddess (1988), Astral Travel (1990), Aliens (1995) and Sleep Poem (1998).
Sadly these seedling images were mothballed years ago in response to external opinion and pressure - the years and years of received and implanted attitudes about ‘art’ and the legitimacy, or otherwise, of particular art forms. School teachers telling me to not take art as a subject; family uncertainty of whether it could be called a Career; Art Colleges, where I had to change my practice to get onto a Foundation/finish a BA course/ get onto a Masters Degree. Then, of course, the world of exhibiting artists who find out how belittling it is to receive rejection letters from funders and galleries, and how fickle the ‘market place’ can be. I found that this type of mitigation could persuade me, a sensitive artist, to moderate what I engaged with, what I put out into the world, and to keep my feet firmly on the ground.
I have had a very respectable number of exhibitions and residencies in the UK and abroad, as well as receiving many acknowledgements for my work of the last 20 years. But I have become tired of treading a safe path and need a nudge to take my work in a new direction.
Now, because of the hypnosis, I have found that I can make a connection to my earlier work, which was directly influenced by my search to connect with my higher spiritual self.
The sessions I have had with you have helped me take that leap of faith. You have enabled me to explore a connection to the work and writings of other artists who engage with their spirit and soul and see it reflected in mainstream creative practice throughout history. The depth and volume of your knowledge and awareness is staggering.
This is exciting and freeing for me, as well as a little frightening. But I’m now engaged in a stream of my work that is more deeply creative and personal than I have ever been able to sustain. I feel so confident, and have no worries about reputation, or judgement or approval from others.
In the last 8 weeks I have produced works titled Swimming with the Keeper of Secrets; My personal Akashic room; Look East (to Persia); NUT, Egyptian Goddess (Mother of the sun, and the Earth. The Milky Way); Three pats on the Head (Soaring to the Sun).
I also have sketches ready to go for Sharing the healing bowl; Dancing in Persian fabrics; Sing out the splinter; Pewter and Pink candles; My Alabaster body; a Mausoleum for my old artwork; and a few others I can’t remember just now.
You are a quite brilliant person."
Nicholette, May 2023