River Town to Lava Flows
A Spontaneous Q&A
By, Laura McClanahan
Presenting at the 2026 Red Road Art Tour, November 21st, 10 am to 5 pm. Studio Q: www.CrystalMatrixArt.com
10/10/2026
My Gallery sold a large painting for me today. A couple from Tennessee came in and said they had been looking for five years for a painting they both loved and finally found it.
I answered to the, How are you? As I talked to a friend at a birthday party in Kaimu, Hawaii over looking the lava flows and ocean.
I explained it is my last remaining gallery from when I lived back East. It is called Gemstone Gallery in Frenchtown, NJ, a charming little river town centered between NYC and Philadelphia. I have about 40 paintings in there all curated around the colors and gemstones in the paintings with the crystal displays they are selling.
Q: How many galleries did you have?
A: I had 6 in New York City and then one in Connecticut, and few in New Jersey and one in Ohio. The main gallery in New Jersey besides Gemstone Gallery was Simon Gallery. I had solo exhibitions with them since 2009 until 2018 when they closed. They featured my work as a large format photographer for my first two solo shows and then thereafter as I switched mediums to large abstract acrylic paintings.
The Ohio Gallery was an an interior design company, Called ADC, Art Design Consultants. They selected artist for their collectors and made catalogs and took us all to art fairs. With this group, I showed in NYC, Miami, Florida and Santa Fe, New Mexico. For the Santa Fe art fair I flew out to also give a talk.
The first question they asked me was, do I follow trends? I said, no I set trends. I immediately felt flush by the interviewer being taken by surprise by my answer. So all the things I planned to say went out the window and I had to explain myself for the next 30 minutes. The thing is, coming from an interior design point of view, they follow trends for their decor choices. One year I was in an art fair in NYC at the pier and it was a Design show. My painting was selected as representative of the color of the year by Benjamin Moore It was a beautiful deep violet, that happened to match the chosen paint color swatch “Amethyst Shadow”. It also just so happened I put Grape Agate crystals in the painting, that were featured as the gem of the year at the gem shows. So my painting, “Grape Agate Stargate” was representing both trends, but I created it before I knew about the trends. I featured this painting in a solo exhibition at Ashok Jain Gallery in the Lower East Side of NYC. It is 36”x48”x2.5”. The frame depth is thicker than the normal 1.5” and for some reason I was questioned about this choice a lot by the local Brooklyn artist that came to the Opening. It was as if I had broken a rule they were all following and it made them anxious to wondering if they were doing it “right or wrong”. I felt a fierce sense of competition from the local artist not in the show and it created an upsetting atmosphere for me. I simply needed a strong substrate to hold the weight of a lot of resin and crystals, but in so doing I destroyed the “standard”.
Although this gallery closed its brick and mortar in 2019, I was featured in 2020 by them in my next solo show online. It was lockdown, so their premonition to close their physical gallery was brilliant. It was my first virtual reality exhibition, where you would walk through a beautiful white walled gallery space. With your mouse a you could direct yourself to get close to the art and click on descriptions and then navigate around the room. One of my very large 5 ft. X 13 ft. Paintings I had just made on top of Mauna Loa was in the show. It is a glistening gold painting made draped over the lava with poured paint following the contours of the new earth below. In the end I added circles and orbs as it looked like the interior of bumble bee jasper. A crystal new to me that Gemstone Gallery had acquired. In a local shop in Pahoa, I saw a necklace made of bumble bee jasper and although my gallery said it was man made and not natural, the pattern remained intriguing to me enough to paint.
Q: Was this the first time you exhibited with VR?
A: No, the first time I was in a show with VR was both a physical exhibition in Chelsea, NYC and they had a virtual reality room in the window from the street. So if you were outside and the show was closed, you could navigate through it digitally. From inside the VR room you could wear the headset and walk yourself through. It was a huge gallery and an international group show. I had three 4ft x 8ft paintings hung vertically. They are from my “Channeling Nadis” series of poured paint on loose canvas on the terrain.
Q: I have seen those paintings installed at our friend’s house when I go to pot luck gatherings there. How did that come about?
A: Yes, here in Hawaii, I have worked more through friend’s and word of mouth. I have installed 30 pieces at another friend’s vacation rental and that was the original intention with this house as well since she had a three room vacation rental part of her house, but then she decided to buy them for herself and become a very good collector of mine. They are both my collectors now and I am so grateful to get to see my paintings over and over again among their beautifully decorated homes. Whole house installations have become my new galleries here in Hawaii since when I got here all the businesses were to shutting down in 2020. It was a challenging time for everyone and I lost all my connections and most of my income from the East Coast because of it and because I chose to stay in Hawaii. My flight was canceled and so I had to stay! Haha.
My last VR Gallery was from Maui. I was in a group show of Hawaii based artist. Turns out it was a good move for them as well to have the VR gallery because they lost their brick and mortar to the Lahina fires the next year. I was devastated at the loss over there and I lost touch with them, not knowing what they were going to do.
I am now putting more focus and attention to my art business and I have set up my home as a gallery. I even dedicated a space inside to be able to paint at night and on rainy days since my studio is on the lanai outdoors. I will be part of the inaugural 2026 Red Road Art Tour with my Pohoiki Gallery set up with over 100 paintings of all sizes and from three series, my gemstone paintings called, “Crystal Matrix” Collection. The “Cosmic Confluence” Collection of newer more colorful works influenced by the emotion of color I studied from Rudolf Steiner’s newly released lectures from over a century ago. And, “Nature Spirits” Collection, an emerging series that seem to come through to me in dreams or experiences with nature and for the festivals I am apart of with my friends. Every year I exhibit at Festivals and do live painting and display large tapestries to cover lounge spaces with my art to create a psychedelic yet relaxing vibe. The themes of these events often trigger the Nature Spirits, like a Leo for an 8/8 Lion’s gate event, or for the Chinese New Year, Year of the fire horse, I painted on wood, a white Pegasus flying through the Cosmos. The White horse had long been my power animal, and when I used to ride my motorcycle on the river roads in Western NJ, I would pass farm fields with white horses. I always took them as a sign I was in my power and safe to ride! Also the day after I connected with the white horse during a meditation, my Mom brought me a photo I took years prior at the Roman Colosseum of a fresco of a white horse. Neither of us could explain why she felt called to bring me that photo.
The Lion literally was floating over my bed every morning for weeks asking to be created. Of course in my half awake half dream state with my eyes shut. I find a lot of my ideas for paintings come to me in the morning like that. Like nexts steps and solutions. I have to wait.
Recently my parents asked for a commission of a bald eagle for the 250th year anniversary of America. I immediately said no bc I did not feel a connection to it or judged it as too cliche. But later on I felt more inspired that I could do but it was still not from my initiation. The I had a dream that a bald eagle was stuck flying around my room and its legs were bound. I had to cut the ribbon binding it and set it free. So then I was able to continue with the painting and I could see where the lines looked like ribbons binding its feet. So painted in cuts in the ribbons and now he soars full of meaning and more symbolism that also came through for it.
Q: So you are Channeling?
A: Yes, exactly, I have been more consciously channeling since my second painting series called, “Channeling Nadis”,the terrain paintings. With those I would paint while I would record myself saying poetry I could hear in my left ear. I even started automatic writing about the circumstances around my birth and about the crystals I was collecting. All of those painting titles are from the poetry.
In 2012, I left my art and architecture teaching at a private high school of 17 years and went full time as an artist. I painted outside every day I could. This is also the year I started doing sound healings at yoga studios. It was a very spiritually activating time for me as I had gone to see the pyramid in Chechen Itza, Mexico during the winter solstice. I could feel the heart chakra of the Earth, the Heart and the Earth with the same letters became clear to me as one and the same. I received a planetary tuning fork sound healing session while there and I went home and got certified in Acutonics, a planetary based sound healing system out of New Mexico using the “music of the spheres” as introduced to the mystery schools by Rudolf Steiner. So I have a sound healing practice as my spiritual service I feel, and I perform weekly, sometimes a few times a week. It has evolved over time from playing with my partner, to our performing with larger groups and now I am developing as a solo artist since our recent break up. I still perform with my old partner here and there, but it has been my next challenge and growth opportunity singing to close dance or sound healing to start the Kirtan by myself or with new friends. I am singing more and more, or I would call it toning. There are no words that come through, but the sustained notes and toning feel like to me, pure channeling from the divine. I feel I reach up and meet them half way and bring back down the healing frequencies. Perhaps this also is what I am doing for my paintings since it is an altered state of mind experience where I do not even notice the time passing. 3 hours can feel like 30 minutes.
In reflection of the conversation, would I conclude my work is decorative or not? When I was in critique in Grad school, (Maryland Institute College of Art, MFA in Studio Art, 2004-2008.), I was asked by one of the mentors, “How is this not decorative?”
I was flush and because I was on the spot in front of my peers, I felt the question leveled me. I was barely able to defend myself and it was obvious they all thought being decorative was a bad thing and the kiss of death in an intellectual environment. I made the mistake of not introducing my work to the group and I just invited them to wander through and then start asking me questions. So I started off on the defensive. The series I showed them were darkroom color photograms. I would take glass light sconces and crystal vessels and place them on the light sensitive paper and dial various colors with the enlarger filters, a camera-less process. I would see appearing before me these wispy lines of light from the prismatic crystal bowls. Like microscopic organisms under a glass slide. They looked like plankton and even cellular object. I called the series, “Photo Cells” and later in a solo exhibit at my local art museum in Clinton, NJ, as “Planktonic Constructs”. At that point I had been learning glass blowing for two years in order to make my own vessels as my “life forms”. Fictional characters or little primitive beings I was brining to life and playing God over. I then had to bring my wheeled boxes of blown glass into NYC to use a color darkroom which was becoming increasingly hard to find. Back in the critique, I was unable to describe what I was doing since it was personal. But I attempted to explain that I made the work because I was adopted and I have always sought to understand my origins and the origin of humanity and the mystery of our existence. Then the Mentor’s next comment was that this was not therapy. Devastated, I burst into tears in the middle of the critique, learning a hard lesson about self advocacy.
But back to the question, about art being decorative or beautiful, in my experience seeing a lot of art in NYC and at the museums, there is a lot of blood, guts and gore out there. One post 9/11 Exhibit at the MOMA was showing body parts and half missing parts embedded in the ground or burned. All very realistic representation of the aftermath of 9/11 that we had all survived through the “shock and awe” or “Shek-in-ah” (the pillars of the Tree of Life that lead to the glory of God) that literally was a tower collapse. There was only the bloody aftermath displayed as high art that seemed to me like a dark ritual spell, with out any sense of hope or recovery or sign of the human spirit enduring. Even Picasso’s “La Guernica” that I saw in Spain, has a hand holding a single flower, a sign of future hope after war. I understand expression has not limits, but my personal mission is to spread beauty. I believe in beauty. I do not feel it is any less meaningful to express a sense of wonder about our lives, not just the trauma, but the profound nature of our reality. I am always searching for Origins and how we evolve spiritually as humans. There is a quest within me through all my creative endeavors that seeks to find the soul and our sources of growth and fulfillment. I am an optimist and I am routing for humanity to individuate and be more and more true to themselves, than “following a herd” mentality. I am for creativity to blossom and to explore the spiritual Unseen realms all around us. The psychedelic parties and ceremonies so prevalent in my community, show me a close loving community of people that seek to better themselves and connect on a deeper level to nature and one another. Living on an island in the middle of the ocean on an active volcano, calls together a certain tribe of rebels. This is the “Island of Misfit Toys”, whom are actually resilient innovators. We have a cause, and it seems to me it is for our soul development and holding a space for humanity to rise up to, supported by the profound beauty of Hawaii’s Sun, Sea, Stars and the Spirits of the Land.
Writing completed at 11:11 am on 11/11.
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