Seasons of the Soul

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It has been over 20 years since Seasons of the Soul was initially published as an open edition hand signed lithograph.  Since then thousands have been purchased.  Many of those were bought with the intention of giving them as gifts.  I found that many who bought them worked in the helping and healing fields, such as psychotherapists and counselors, ministers, massage therapists, hypnotherapists, life coaches, etc...  And they got them to hang in their offices.  And people saw them there and some of them would contact me to purchase a print from time to time.  And those people had their own stories to tell about how they discovered and connected with this artwork.  And it is those stories that keep me going when I get discouraged.

The individual figures for the Seasons of the Soul originated as doodles in a sketchbook over a difficult period of time in my twenties.  Then some time passed.  About a year or so later I happened to pick up that particular sketchbook and flipped through it and noticed the figures and thought, wow, it is almost like they are telling a story...  So I drew them again and arranged them in a line and there it was, a visual story told with stick figure symbols.  I was amazed.  Where did this come from?  It obviously came from my subconscious but it is like it existed on some level in its entirety before I could even become aware of it.  And then it dawned on me, it was incomplete.  Something was definitely missing, but what?  At the time I had ten figures and the last one in the series was the "harmony" figure (although, at this time there were no subtitles for the figures).  What could it be?  And how was I going to find it?  I knew that it wasn't just going to be a matter of thinking something up, it had to come to me from the same place the other figures came...  Weeks went by and I still had no clue what the next figure would be.  Somehow I sensed that I would know it when I saw it.  And then it happened!  I saw it and it was only for a split second but that was enough.  I was watching the old television series, Fame, and Debbie Allen was dancing and then for an instant, in mid-stride she struck a pose that froze in my mind and became what I later labeled as "movin' out", the eleventh and last figure of the series.