Singing Songs of Ecstasy
"...when artists are working directly from their emerging consciousness, their art is their most honest mirror."
On September 14, 1989, in her candlelit living room at around midnight, we interviewed poet and painter Carolyn Mary Kleefeld at her home in Big Sur, perched on the crest of a mountain cliff high above the sea. Carolyn was born in Catford, England, and raised in Santa Monica, California. Fueled by a life-long fascination with psychological transformation and a passion for creative expression, she is the author of three internationally acclaimed, award-winning poetry books that address these archetypal themes: Climates of the Mind, Satan Sleeps With the Holy: Word Paintings, and Lovers in Evolution. Her influential books received the rare honor of being translated into Braille-so as to give vision to the blind-by the Library of Congress, and are used worldwide at many universities and human potential centers. Carolyn is currently completing her sixth book-The Sixth Dimension: Architecture for Ecstasy.
During the Summer of 1990 the Gallerie Illuminati in Santa Monica featured a daztling series of Carolyn 's visionary paintings in an exhibit entitled "Songs of Ecstasy," and an art book of the same title was simultaneously published. Since then her work has been featured in galleries all over the world. A selection of her paintings is also available as a line of fine art cards, from Atoms Mirror Atoms of Carmel. Her painting "Neuro-Erotic Blast-Off" appears on the cover of my first book, Brainchild, and her piece "Fluorescent Sunset of the Future " is included in a textbook on visual art called Unique Journeys, by Professor James Schinneller of the University of Wisconsin. Carolyn spoke to us about the relationship between art and consciousness, expanded awareness and creative expression, and personal and universal transformation, and muses with us about the living secrets of nature. She looks as though she danced right out of one of her own paintings. Her eyes and smile have a luminous mystery about them that is present also in much of her work. She has a graceful and elegant manner about her, and one is easily enchanted by her poetic style of expression.
DJB