“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

[...] One question had to do with the oil showing two male heads which I painted in 1965. [...]

[...] One question: as I look at the painting, which of the two heads represents my whole self, for instance?”

[...] Do not be afraid of making errors in your paintings, but trust your inner self. [...]

Your painting technique is excellent. [...]

[...] Look at them as you would a painting you have created. [...]

[...] Your beliefs are your palette, using the analogy of a painting again.

[...] to finish my book, start up a definite dream schedule, that is, two or three scheduled long naps plus suggestions as I used to do for various kinds of out-of-bodies and dream states; a session a week as of now with the dream work perhaps making up for the second session we don’t have; and painting. [...]

Painting is really unalloyed fun for Jane. [...] When painting she knows a release from time, care, and responsibility that she doesn’t experience otherwise—and surely that pleasure emphasizes qualities of living that Seth has always stressed. Her painting is her unhampered creative translation of the Seth material into pigments instead of words. [...] She’s produced many more paintings than I have in my own more conventional, more plodding way [although now I’m working faster than I used to]. I think that any assessment of her writing and psychic abilities will have to include a close study of her painting. To me, the lessening of Jane’s physical mobility has resulted in a strong compensating growth in her painting mobility. I also think her painting reflects her free physical motion in her dreams. [...] I’ve seen her turn almost automatically to the relief that only painting can give her.

While she contended with her physical difficulties and related questions, having to do with who and what Seth may or may not be, Jane continued to paint for relief. [...] She could read and write, paint, have sessions, watch television, do a little simple housework, call or see a few close friends, and answer some of the mail. [...]

As if manufacturing tiny, intensely personal counterparts to those large events, Jane and I finished checking the proofs for God of Jane; she resumed work on her essays, and some new poetry, for If We Live Again; I painted, answered a lot of mail, and helped her continue our private sessions. [...]

[...] “I paint like I do because I don’t have any depth perception. [...]

You will do very well financially in the next few years—so well in fact that you, Joseph, will feel yourself compelled to sell your paintings in order to hold your own. [...]

[...] As you create a painting, and the painting is still an aspect of yourself, so it creates the whole personality, which is an aspect of itself. [...]

[...] The natural person that is yourself loved to draw and paint. [...]

Ruburt instinctively likes your tree painting. [...]

Unconsciously you feel that because you are the oldest son you should be the money-maker, in your mother’s eyes; but she never considered painting as such as financially rewarding. [...]

Now, because it seemed to you for so long that you could not move freely in your own life, that you did not paint full time, you got in the habit of automatically viewing all change as negative. [...]

Man painted, thought, dreamed, sang, and so forth from the beginning. [...]

[...] He may or may not sell his paintings, but the difference between the artist and other people is his or her way of being—a difference in the style of existence. [...]

[...] The painting, however, and the poetry, sets him into motion, releasing the trust that will then flow into his other writing. [...]

[...] The paintings that you will paint exist now. [...]

[...] This kind of radiating line pattern is one which Jane uses in her paintings, and in past experiments has been interpreted as “sun shape,” “star shape,” etc.

[...] Their blooms are red leaved, of course, with brilliant yellow centers; I have painted poinsettias many times on my job, for greeting card designs. [...]

(I added that the more spontaneous she was about doing what she wanted at any given time—in other words, following her natural impulses—the more writing and painting she’d find herself able to do. [...]

[...] So you paint your reality with your ideas in the same manner. [...] You would behave instead like a mad artist who says, “My paints are a part of me. [...]

[...] Think of a limiting idea as a muddy color and your life as a multidimensional painting that is marred. [...]

[...] Any painting in Bill’s gallery could be “A representation.” [...] “Yourself a year ago” I regarded as valid, since I had paintings of my own on exhibit at Bill’s gallery on the occasion for which he made these cards; and the event took place around a year ago, although I do not know the exact date offhand.

[...] Indeed, playgrounds have an almost mystical significance for her and she uses them often in her paintings.

[...] If you began to paint for an hour a day, you would not need to eat so much. [...] Now the joy that you experience when you are painting will be yours, and not desert you whether you stay in your house or go to someone else’s. You will not have to worry about “carting it along” with you. [...]

([Mary:] “And an hour of painting every day?”)

[...] But it is not as important as the painting. [...]

Take your paints outside sometime. [...]

[...] If it were tied to money-making, as it once was, then painting became also power-making, and hence acceptable to your American malehood; and I am quite aware of the fact that both of you were, by the standards of your times, quite liberal, more the pity. You would not take your art to the marketplace after you left commercial work, because then, in a manner of speaking now, understand, you considered that the act of a prostitute, for your “feminine feelings” that you felt produced the painting would then be sold for the sake of “the male’s role as provider and bringer of power.”

The painting connection is not difficult. You felt guilty because you have not offered to help paint your parents’ home, inside or outside, although your mother has dropped frequent and heavy hints. [...]

Your various complaints this week were connected with Ruburt’s painting and housecleaning. [...]

[...] This is her first day home, and she has begun to paint our apartment by way of diversion.

[...] She had not told me before the session began, but now admitted that she had been very tired by 9 PM, after painting all day. [...]

[...] She said she had indeed painted too long today; but although she was tired before the session began, she feels fine now. [...]

Now when either of you, or both of you, feel that there might be something wrong in spending your time thinking, writing, painting, or worse, daydreaming, you feel that way because your way of life meets some conflict from old Darwinian and Freudian beliefs: you should be out there in the world—active, competing, or even just riding bicycles. [...]

Your own behavior with your parents, with Ruburt, your attitudes toward your painting and outside jobs, Ruburt’s attitudes toward children, his work and you—all of these were so influenced. [...]

[...] Your painting required it, but Ruburt’s position required it still more. [...]