By Natalie Dekel.

Psychic portraits can help people see their past-lives, their loved ones and their Spiritual Guides. I would like to share with you the process of inspiration behind the psychic paintings that I produce.

I have been painting from a very young age, and have always sensed colours as if they were ‘entities’ coming to me with emotions and messages. In 2002 I began to practice the technique of Reiki healing, and I noticed that the more I was developing and working on self-healing, the more I became aware of what seemed flashbacks into different periods of times. I felt as if I was experiencing lives from the past. In 2004 I embarked on a project to depict those past-lives in paintings. I started with a self portrait (figure 1), which is based on a Vermeer’s painting, Girl with a Pearl Earring (1665):

I was desperately trying to connect my present-self with my past-life that I saw in a flashbacks, and which was in 17th century Holland. At first my ability to see details was not as good and I had to go to what I was familiar with as an artist – paintings from the history of art by great Masters. I would look for the paintings that depicted the closest feeling to the image that I saw in my mind’s eye, and which could serve as an inspiration to my paintings.

Through healings and meditations I gradually learned to see more than just the past-life person that I was. I started to sense the positing in society that I held, and the ‘mood’ of the time. Here I was serving tea in Japan of 1800:

Figure 3: Self portrait as a Japanese woman serving tea in 1800. A3, Acrylic on card, 2004.

Slowly I have developed my skill and my portraits seemed to develop with me. I did not need to consult other artists’ works anymore in order to create my paintings. Instead I started to consult my own feelings to provide me with the right images. Here I was a pregnant angel:

Figure 4: Self portrait as a pregnant Angel. A3, Acrylic on card, 2004.

I also began to paint portraits of other people whom I met or worked with, and whom I saw in particular periods in history. I would look at people, and messages from their past would come to me. I presume that I saw them in the way that I knew them in past lives.

Gradually I have developed a new way of painting. Instead of first thinking of a person, and recognising who he or she were in their past and drawing them, I started first with the actual painting of what comes to my mind and only then seeing who the painted person is and where they come from.

For example, I have drawn a portrait of a young man who came to my mind, and whom I never seen before. His image was held in my imagination, and as I drew him I could sense that he is guiding me, as if requesting which colours to be used and what ‘energy’ I should convey in his portrait. I felt that it was more important to convey a personality rather than the exact colours.

That man had died some years ago and is now what we term in Reiki philosophy a Spirit Guide. As this person is the guide of a friend of mine I have shown her the portrait once finished and she took it to a relative of that young man. The relative recognised the personality from the portrait. His essence was portrayed correctly for the most part.

Figure 17: Keith, a Spirit Guide. A3, Acrylic on card, 2008.

I feel that this is an example of a guided portrait, where the artist is what some people feel a channel through which a spiritual essence can come forward to the physical world, in the form of colours and shapes.

It seems that my portraits are teaching me how to develop an insight into the core personality of people and humanity in general. My learning continues to evolve with each portrait.

Figure 18: Self portrait in Art Nouveau style, early 20th century, after Alphonse Mucha. A3, Acrylic on card, 2004.

I believe that by creating portraits I can help people come closer to qualities that are hidden within them. It often helps to boost people’s self-esteem and deepen their self awareness. In a way these portraits act as a healing process, both for the creator (myself) and for those whom they are made for.

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To order your own past-life or Spirit Guide portrait, contact me, or to book a past life reading, click here.

“Thank you very much from the bottom of my heart for the amazing painting you did for us! We are absolutely blown away, you are incredibly talented. We will have it framed professionally, it is such a special work of art…” – Marelise.

17 March 2008.
Last updated 23 May 2011.

© Natalie Dekel.