The following series of questions posed to visionary artist Marlaina Donato provide deeper insight into concepts discussed in the story, “WHAT IF? Visionary artist Marlaina Donato emerges anew in KÓSMOS” (River Reporter, July 9-15). Donato's work will be on view at the Narrowsburg Union starting Saturday, July 11.

1. What are your thoughts on “portals” and their relevance to this body of work?

When we hear the word portals, we immediately think of places on the planet like Mount Shasta, Sedona, or Machu Picchu that bring some people into the deep mysteries. The word also conjures up theories of quantum physics and the interaction of particles. For me, portals are inner doorways where our everyday consciousness can slip through momentarily to something greater or deeper. Some people experience this through mind-altering substances and/or shamanic practices, but personally, I have never even taken a drink, much less LSD or ayahuasca. Portals, from my perspective, are purely energetic, of finer nature, and I slip through sometimes during the process of creating art, making love, or being in deep nature. It can’t be forced or manipulated. Kosmos, in its essence, is a visual diary of my experiences within this energetic dynamic that attempts to articulate what is beyond language. My hope is that the viewer can feel these paintings rather than analyze them, the same way we feel mist in our hair or on our skin before we even realize that we’ve walked through it.

2. What does it mean to you to understand things “not intellectually but cellularly?”

Despite the monumental efforts and accomplishments of humankind, the totality of existence remains unknowable, and the finite mind cannot truly comprehend what is infinite. There is a sentient life force deep within us that understands the infinite, something human intellect, no matter how developed, cannot. Intellect relies on language and analysis, but cellular intelligence goes beyond human explanations, emotion and dogmatic filters. I believe that place of cellular knowledge is only accessible when we become willing to relinquish the ego—that hardwired survival instinct based on fear, competition and belief systems—to find something much more authentically powerful within us that is in tune with something authentically powerful outside of us.

3. You write, “What if we became the eye of the storm, stillness observing the entirety?” How does one become still within the storm and what advantages does that offer?

Sensitive, awake souls see the horrors on this planet and feel helpless, but it accomplishes nothing to put ourselves in the fray 24/7. I think it helps to allot 10 minutes twice a day to circle above the landscape of one’s own immediate life, above the news, above the media. For me, that means lying on my back with one hand on my heart and the other on my belly and sinking into the floor or the earth, to really feel my own gravity. My only meditation these days is silently saying the word, ‘Allow’. Allowing can be a powerful spiritual discipline; allowing for both the world’s ugliness and beauty; allowing others their own choices, mistakes and detours; allowing our body’s fluctuations in energy, weight and state of wellness; allowing all our human emotions without self-judgement. There is freedom in allowing that can be incredibly life changing. Allowing doesn’t mean we are indifferent to the realities of our times or that we stop doing our part. It simply means telling our nervous systems, “There is nothing to fix, nothing to change, nothing to heal, nothing to prove, nothing to attain and nothing to strive for,” and from that mind-space, so much can be accomplished because we literally allow ourselves to detach from outcome. It brings us to a clean slate, a full well, and then we can naturally align with what is worthy of our precious energy.

4. What is “our soul’s mother tongue?” mentioned in your publication, “Kosmos: A Journey of Emergence,” and how might we better hear it?

I see the soul’s mother tongue as a language that is unique to each of us because we are each a unique spark of the Infinite. This language is our soul-signature, our personal geometry in a fractal, singing universe, and I believe it is our spiritual duty to express it because our frequency matters. I think we can hear our soul languages most when we commune with, notice, and create beauty…whether we are simply admiring a beautiful flower, artfully arranging a meal or allowing ourselves the exquisite privilege of loving another person. For me, I hear my own mother tongue the most clearly when I am unplugged out in nature, especially when I sit motionless and become part of the landscape with pollinators humming around me. I hear my soul language in nature’s microworlds—back to basics, no dogmas, no interpretations, just existing like a bee with one task only: to gather life’s sweetness, totally unaware of my own invaluable place within the ecosystem.

5. You mention “being raised in a visionary household.” Can you elucidate on this?

My parents were originally from Brooklyn; my mother managed health food stores in Manhattan in the 1950s, long before the wellness craze that would come decades later. They left urban life to build a house in the Pocono Mountains, have an organic garden, and to be in tune with the rhythm of the seasons. I was an only child with wildflowers in my hand, wood smoke in my hair, and my parents’ extensive collection of books at my fingertips the moment I learned to read. They exposed me to the world’s religions—from Christianity to Sufi circles. My earliest memories are of Sunday school and visits to ashrams. I was given tools like practical meditation and visualization for self-regulation at a very early age; these tools would later help me to survive a lot of trauma. From a distance, my upbringing might sound counterculture, but there was nothing airy-fairy about it. It was solid, practical, and based on living in tune with nature’s intelligence, something our culture has forgotten. I am grateful every day for my parents’ bravery, knowledge, and individualism that also lives on in me.

6. “We are worlds, universes, microcosm, macrocosm contained by dark matter—the invisible cosmic fascia of the universe.” Can you offer additional insight to this statement? 

The more I study the human body the more I understand how we are mirrors of the rest of existence: arteries resemble rivers and tributaries; our inner respiratory system echoes the line of trees with limbs and branches… I cannot help but ponder the hypothesis of dark matter and compare it to our countless layers of fascia that hold our bodies in form—from the superficial layers of skin down to the bone. Dark matter cannot be seen or measured, but it holds galaxies and heavenly bodies in place in the same fashion.

7. You write, “What if they told us the most important thing to accomplish is to embody Love?” How does one embody love and how does this free us?

The frequency of love is not identical to the human emotion we label as love. Human love, I think, is a particle of the greater frequency of love and only a speck of its magnitude. Embodying love is emptying ourselves of everything but this energy—the energy that is the life force or Eros behind everything. Eros is the atomic as well as the galactic, the eternal Ruah or breath, the unknowable source of all things and is beyond the prison of fear. Embodying love means remembering that we are that.

8. “There are no divisions between what we call science and what we categorize as spirit. Everything is frequency and frequency is everything.” Can you elaborate on that and clarify the meaning of the word “frequency” as you see it?

From my out of body experiences (not induced by trauma or substances), I’ve been aware of sound that is inaudible to the human ear yet permeates everything—from the underground root systems of plants to shifting particles of beach sand in a gust of wind. Each cell in our bodies emits frequency, and so, too, everything else that exists. Frequency vibrates, oscillates, and is subject to being in flux. Once we understand that all of existence is a grand web of geometric frequency, we can no longer see through a lens of isolation.

9. Can you offer additional insight on your goal of capturing “the merging of microcosm and macrocosm”?

Springboarding from the last question, once we understand that everything—from our emotions to atoms—exist in vibration and oscillation, it is easier to see all worlds and beings as music in motion. When I am in a flow state during painting, I feel that my conscious self retreats to somewhere in the background, and I experience what the ancient Greeks referred to as ekstasis which means “to step outside oneself”. When I am in that state, everything is exquisitely lucid; my mind is razor-sharp yet I am able to allow my superconscious to command the brush, the part of me that is beyond my everyday ego-self. It is then, for a millisecond, I understand that the macrocosm IS the microcosm and vice versa; inside of each other. The experience of the two merging, in essence, is realizing that they are like Rumi says about lovers, “in each other all along”.

(To learn more, visit WildflowersandWoodSmoke.com)