The Shadow Seekers’ Dispatch, Edition 2
In This Edition
Using Art to Set Intentions for the New Year
The new year loves a clean page. It sells you the fresh notebook, the sharpened pencil, the calendar square waiting for proof that you have finally become easier to manage.
Your subconscious does not work on that schedule.
It speaks when it has material. A color you keep reaching for. A shape that will not leave your hand alone. A mark that looks wrong until you stop arguing with it. Intention-setting through art gives those signals a place to land before your thinking mind starts tidying the evidence.
Intention Is a Threshold
An intention is a line you choose to cross with your eyes open. It is less about becoming a better version of yourself and more about telling the truth about what needs your attention.
That matters because the conscious mind edits fast. It explains. It fakes competence. It grabs the socially acceptable answer and calls it wisdom. Art interrupts that habit. It lets image, color, pressure, pattern, and refusal speak before the incompetent untruth gets its hands on the script.
You do not need to know what the work means before you begin. You need to begin honestly enough that the work has a chance to answer back.
Art Exercises to Draw Out What You Really Want
A Note on the Subconscious and the Unconscious. For this exercise, I am using “subconscious” as the broad word for the material outside ordinary awareness: buried memory, instinct, pattern, image, fear, longing, and all the internal signals that move before language catches up.
Here are three creative exercises to help you set intentions for the new year by following your subconscious mind’s suggestions to guide you toward what you need, how you want to feel, and the energy you want to invite into your life. Follow these easy suggestions to set intentions for the New Year.
Exercise 1: What Needs Your Attention?
Gather paper and whatever materials are close enough to use without making this precious. Pen, paint, marker, torn paper, yarn, charcoal, pencil. Use what answers your hand.
Ask one question: What needs my attention this year?
Then make an abstract piece without explaining it while you work. Choose the color that pulls first. Follow the shape that irritates you. Let the mark repeat if it wants to repeat. Let the page stay uneven if that is what happens.
When you finish, write down what you notice. Where does your eye go first? What part feels tense, heavy, crowded, open, guarded, or unfinished? What did you avoid making? That answer may matter more than the part you made beautifully.
Exercise 2: Draw the Feeling You Want More Capacity For
Choose one feeling you want to hold with more steadiness this year. Peace. Courage. Joy. Power. Clarity. Desire. Grief without collapse. Anger without destruction.
Make that feeling visible, but don’t turn it into a cute poster for your future self. What is its weight? What color does it carry? Does it press against the ribs, sit behind the teeth, gather in the hands, or move through the spine?
When the image is complete, place it where you will see it. Let it remind you of the capacity you are building. Let it witness the days when that capacity feels thin.
Exercise 3: Build a Threshold Symbol
Create one simple symbol for the year ahead. Draw it, paint it, cut it from paper, shape it from wire, or make it into a small charm. Keep it specific. A symbol with too many jobs doesn’t complete one meaning.
Ask the symbol to hold one thing: the threshold you are choosing to cross.
This could be a mark for clearer boundaries, steadier creativity, more honest self-expression, or the courage to stop negotiating with old fear. Give it one purpose. Keep it visible. Return to it when the old pattern starts reaching for the wheel.
How to Read What You Made
Look at the piece like evidence. It is showing you what your system is already carrying.
Start with what is concrete. Name the colors. Name the shapes. Name the pressure of the marks. Notice what repeats. Notice what gets hidden. Notice what sits at the edge of the page, half-exposed, trying to disappear beneath the composition.
Then turn the paper upside down.
What changes when the image loses its usual footing? What feels heavier? What suddenly has room to breathe? Ask what you are ready to alter, release, or exchange for the energies you want to hold with more steadiness.
Let the next marks answer. Add what protects. Remove what crowds. Strengthen what remembers. Refuse what keeps dragging old weight back into the center.
Do not rush toward meaning. Sit with the work long enough for the first easy answer to get bored and leave. The second answer is often more honest.
Absynthe
Absynthe is a You-Do-You Voodoo™ art doll built around emotional steadiness, protection, courage, and clarity.
Her blue tiger’s eye head carries the energy of grounded perception: the kind that sees through panic without pretending fear can’t hurt. Selenite sharpens the line of clarity through her structure. Cloves bring protective fire. Camphor essential oil adds a clearing note, bright and bracing, for the stale places where old stories keep breathing.
She is not here to fix you. She is a material witness for the work you are already doing.
Use her as an anchor when your intention needs a body. Place her near your journal, altar, desk, or studio space. Let her mark the threshold between thinking about change and participating in it. The power is in returning, again and again, with your hands open and your story less defended.
Absynthe is a You-Do-You Voodoo™ healing art doll uniquely designed to provide courage and guide survivors of trauma through emotional healing and self-discovery. She brings clarity, protection, and peace with her symbolic design, blue tiger’s eye, selenite, cloves and camphor essential oil.
Fire Agate and Sunstone for the Work Ahead
Fire agate and sunstone add motion to intention-setting. They can help you step over the threshold to do something real.
Carry them if they help. Keep them on your desk if that feels better. Let the stones work as reminders. You still choose. You still act. You still return to decipher your next wave of action.
Fire Agate
Fire agate belongs to motion, stamina, and creative force. It carries the heat of doing, especially when inspiration alone has wandered off to make tea and leave you with the mess. (Image from fossilcartel.com)
Sunstone
Sunstone brings vitality, confidence, and a cleaner relationship with personal will. It supports the part of you that wants to move without asking permission from every old fear in the room. (Image from Wikipedia)
From the Shadow Seekers’ Journal
How to Interpret Artwork for Self-Discovery
Unlock your secrets: Explore how symbols, colors, and patterns in anyone’s art can guide your self-discovery and emotional growth.
Read More
Turning Pain into Art
Discover practical steps for turning pain into growth, resilience, and self-discovery through creative expression.
Read More
Closing
At the time this Dispatch first went out, custom You-Do-You Voodoo™ art dolls were the only pieces available in the shop because Balefire and Brew in Tippecanoe Mall had taken the current finished dolls into their metaphysical store.
That is the kind of problem an artist can live with.
Custom work remains the clearest way to request a doll built around your specific intention, materials, and internal focus. Bring the truth of what you are working with. I will bring the structure, the symbolism, and the hands that know how to give it form.
When you are ready, send the first thread.
In the work with you,
Kellie Jo Close
Artist & Author
For Women Who Want to Know Exactly What They Buried. And Why.
https://kelliejoart.com | Subscribe to the Shadow Seekers’ Dispatch