“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(“Number twenty-eight: Have I painted any portraits of Speakers?”)

You have indeed. One was a painting purchased by Carl and Sue Watkins (which, half jokingly, we had called Moses); one, the portrait of me (pause); and one that you have not completed — that the Dean (Seth’s friendly title for Tom M., one of the members of ESP class) asked about recently, of a woman. And your blue man. (Pause.) That is your answer.

(In Chapter Seventeen Seth told Jane and me that we’d both been Speakers. Since I haven’t painted any self-portraits I wouldn’t have been included in the list anyhow, but Seth did neglect to mention my painting of Jane. I didn’t catch the omission, so I didn’t ask about it….

(After the sessions began I started a series of portraits of people I don’t “know” consciously. At first I understood little about the possible sources for their inspiration; I simply put my urge to paint them to work. Ideas for the portraits “come” to me spontaneously when I am mentally occupied with something else. I am always surprised. Sometimes I see an outright vision, objectified quite clearly and in full color. The vision is either of the finished painting, or of the individual who is to be portrayed. On several occasions I have “known” the subject was dead. Few of the paintings are of Speakers, obviously, and in no case did I realize I was working with such a personality.

(I recently finished the blue man that Seth refers to. I painted a male in modern garb, but in reality, according to an amused Seth, the subject was a female clairvoyant who lived in Constantinople in the fourteenth century; unconscious distortions in my own perceptions led me to the male figure. Seth has given her the name Ianodiala. The oil is very successful, and is done in blue and green.