Painting the aurora: celestial light in shamanic works
The northern lights have called to the human imagination for centuries, but for shamanic painters like Imelda Almqvist, the aurora is not a meteorological phenomenon. It is a conversation between visible and invisible worlds, a curtain of breath drawn across the night sky.
Shamans across cultures have looked upward and seen more than weather. The ribbons of green, violet, and crimson that ripple over the poles are interpreted as the garments of ancestors, the pulse of the earth, or the breath of celestial beings. To paint the aurora is to participate in that ancient act of interpretation.
For Australian audiences, this work carries particular resonance. The Southern Hemisphere offers its own celestial theatre: the Magellanic Clouds above the Outback, the aurora australis shimmering over Tasmania and Victoria. Visitors to the dreamtime collection often say the paintings speak a language the southern sky has been teaching for millennia.
This exploration weaves together pigment and prayer, geometry and geography, touching on materials, the cultural conversations opened with Australian collectors, and the ways sacred art can be learned.
Aurora in shamanic cosmology
In many indigenous and animist worldviews, the aurora is not a phenomenon to be explained but a presence to be honoured. Siberian shamans call it the dance of the dead, while Norse traditions frame it as the breath of the Valkyries. For Imelda, the aurora represents a threshold state, a place where the membrane between worlds grows thin enough to see through.
The colours carry distinct meaning. Green is often associated with healing and the heart. Red signals vitality and the life force. Violet speaks of spirit, transformation, and the unseen. By choosing particular palettes, the painter can invoke specific energies, turning the canvas into a map of inner and outer worlds.
Pigments and sacred geometry
The materials used to paint celestial light matter as much as the brushwork. Many of Imelda's works layer natural mineral pigments over gessoed panels, allowing the surface to participate in the painting. Gold leaf often appears where stars might be, while copper and mica shift with the viewer's angle.
A comparison of common aurora motifs reveals how intention shapes form:
| Motif | Colour palette | Symbolic focus | Typical placement |
|---|---|---|---|
| Veil of the north | Green, silver, indigo | Healing, guidance | Upper third of canvas |
| Blood aurora | Crimson, black, gold | Vitality, warriorship | Central panel |
| Spirit door | Violet, white, pale blue | Transition, dream | Horizon line |
| Ancestral fire | Orange, red, yellow | Memory, lineage | Lower foreground |
This table is not a formula but a key to reading the work, showing how Imelda translates intangible meaning into visual form.
On the threshold
A finished painting is rarely still. The best shamanic works continue to move, shifting with the light of the room, the mood of the viewer, the hour of the day. Imelda often speaks of her canvases as having a breath of their own, an ability to open and close depending on who stands before them.
Collectors in Adelaide, Perth, and Brisbane have written to describe the way a particular piece seems to grow after years on the wall, revealing new figures and colours as the relationship deepens. This is attention, the slow unfolding of a visual language that rewards repeated looking.
The southern sky and dreamtime
The aurora australis is rarer than its northern counterpart, but Australian audiences have a deep relationship with the night sky. Aboriginal astronomy holds that the Emu in the Sky, the Seven Sisters, and the celestial river are as much part of the land as the rocks and trees below. Imelda's paintings, which draw on the same impulse to find pattern and meaning above, feel at home in this context.
Her work treats dreamtime not as static mythology but as living practice. The same act of looking upward that produces a songline also produces a painting, mapping the world in a language the soul understands.
Studios, markets, and Australian collectors
The market for sacred and visionary art in Australia has grown steadily, with Melbourne and Sydney hosting regular exhibitions. Galleries in Fitzroy and Paddington often feature works at the intersection of contemporary art and spiritual practice, and original pieces commonly range from AUD 2,800 to AUD 18,000.
Australian customs shape how these works are bought and sold. The Indigenous Cultural Intellectual Property protections do not directly apply to shamanic art from other traditions, but collectors increasingly follow similar ethical standards. GST applies to domestic sales, and imported work must clear biosecurity inspection.
From nautilus to night sky
The shapes of the natural world often seed the compositions of sacred paintings. The chambered nautilus, with its perfect logarithmic spiral, has long been a symbol of cosmic order and creative unfolding. One artist has documented the process of creating a ceramic nautilus, capturing how the shell's geometry mirrors the spiral arms of galaxies and the curling forms of auroral curtains.
Imelda's work draws on similar sacred geometry, repeating the spiral across fields of painted light. The curve of a wave, the turn of a comet, the shell of a sleeping creature, all become references in a visual language about return and continuity.
Learning to paint the light
Sacred art is not a closed tradition. Imelda teaches it as a practice, a way of seeing and a discipline of the hand. Her two-day introductory courses and longer professional programmes in London and Pennsylvania welcome students from anywhere in the world, including Australia, where interest in visionary and shamanic arts continues to expand.
Beginners are guided through preparing a panel, mixing mineral pigments, and developing compositions rooted in personal experience. More advanced students explore layered glazing, metallic leaf, and the symbolic vocabulary that gives the work its particular gravity. Each course is small, supportive, and rooted in the conviction that painting can be a form of prayer.
If you feel called to bring celestial light into your own practice, Imelda's London studio offers a place to begin. The aurora has been painted by many hands, and there is always room for one more voice in the choir. Visit the courses page for the next gathering, or explore the dreamtime collection to see where the work has travelled.