EPISODE 047: Spirit Portrait Art with Anne-Marie Bond

Our incredibly talented guest today is Spirit Artist, Spiritualist Medium DSNUd and Professional Psychic Reader, Anne-Marie Bond. Anne discusses the importance of bringing art into our lives, and she talks about how we can all start drawing at any time, blend with the spirit world and allow them to influence our thoughts to help guide our work.

Anne-Marie believes that there are many people out there with the talent to become great spirit artists, yet many have the negative inner thought that they cannot draw. Anne-Marie’s mission is to gently uplift our confidence, as she shows people how to draw the faces of the spirit and expand our ability to work for the spirit world.

This Week’s Episode

Episode 047 Resources

Here are some resources referred to in Episode 047, which you may find helpful.

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Ann Théato, CSNUt, Psychic, Medium and Spiritual Tutor, investigates psychic development, mediumship techniques, and paranormal science, so that you can come to understand your own innate psychic ability and expand your knowledge, whilst learning to develop a curious mind.

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PM 047

You’ll Learn

• What Spirit Portraiture is

• How a spirit artist blends with a spirit communicator

• What an auragraph is

• How to train as a spirit artist

• The importance of becoming attuned with just one pencil

• The difference between spirit communication and the conscious mind

• Why you can start spirit art any time

• How to hear the voice of spirit

• Why drawing is a skill that can be learned
  
  

TRANSCRIPT

Hello everybody! My name is Ann Théato and welcome to the Psychic Matters Podcast – episode number 47!

I’m absolutely thrilled to say we have reached number 5 in the podcast charts over in Hungary!  Huge thanks to all our Hungarian listeners – köszönöm, köszönöm, köszönöm!

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Meanwhile, let’s get back to this week’s fascinating episode on Spirit Portrait Art!  Settle back, get a coffee, you are going to love it!

Ann

We are very lucky to have with us today, Spiritualist Medium DSNU, Spirit Portrait Artist and appointed Arthur Findlay College Tutor, Anne Marie bond.  Anne, welcome to Psychic Matters.

Anne-Marie

Thank you, Ann, it is a pleasure to be here.

Ann

I am so grateful to you, we all are, for making time in your really hectic schedule, to come and talk to us today.  So, I know that your diary is jam packed with appointments, so thank you so much for your time, and you do something very unusual, which we haven’t covered yet in this podcast, which is spirit portrait art.

Anne-Marie

Yes

Ann

Anne, tell us what that is.   If you could explain because a lot of people won’t have even heard of that before.

Anne-Marie

Absolutely.  Spirit portraiture is the visual representation on paper, of a face of the spirit communicator, as they were in the physical body, so it’s a form of mediumship, where the spirit artist will then attune and perceive the presence of the spirit communicator, and through that, through that blend, they will be able to draw the facial features of how the recipient or the loved ones would have remembered that person.  And it can vary according to the development of the spirit artist in their own understanding of what it is, and their attunement of understanding that really, the process is automatic.  So, once you’ve blended with that spirit communicator, the idea is to, not to put yourself in what you deem the face should look like, but allow through feeling, thought, and your senses and your perception, to understand that the communication, via the drawing, is through the separate intelligence of that spirit communicator.

Ann

Wow, that sounds just a beautiful way to work.  When you say we should attune, or the spirit artist attunes and perceives the presence of the spirit communicator, can you say how that, how you perceive and how you …

Anne-Marie

Well our perception is based through the clairs, through the clairvoyance, clairsentience, clairaudience, and what we do is, we have our five senses, don’t we so, but what we do with the perception is to become aware that the communicator is there. And that happens with your development, your ability to achieve and to understand how to use those clair senses. And once you have understood that, or learned and developed it, what you do is, through the perception, the understanding that a communicator is drawing close, I’m understanding that I’ve got a gentleman here, he makes me feel this way, or he makes shows me this information.  And whilst you will perhaps verbalising that information, your hand is actually drawing at the same time.  And so where you have a medium on platform who will demonstrate just the mental mediumship, the spirit artist has to give the mental mediumship, but also the drawing as well, as the, not the proof, the medium cannot prove anything.  What the medium can do is offer information, and it’s the recipient’s job to receive that information, understand that information is of what they know, what they have known to be true about their loved one.

Ann

So how did you begin to work in this way Ann Marie?  Take us back a little bit perhaps, as to how you became a medium in the first place.

Anne-Marie

How long have you got? I don’t think we’ve got long enough for this!  How did I start?  Well, I can say this, I’ve always had an interest in life after life if you like, from a young child, and I’ve always drawn.  I’ve always liked to draw as a child, you know, as children do, give them a pencil but I always used to draw eyes when I was younger.  And through that, I just doodled like children, I didn’t think anything of it to be honest with you.  And I think around my late teens is when I started to want to adopt this skill, this art skill, to be able to draw the faces of spirits.  But I was untrained.  I didn’t have anyone to teach me, so it was a case of who did I have but spirit? So, I would sit with spirit and then they would train me, so they literally are my trainers when it comes to where I am now in my art.  You know, when I look back at my artwork, my artwork is no different than any person I see that is starting out right now.  It’s no different than anyone who feels they look at their artwork and think ooh, I’ve drawn an alien head, ooh, the eyes are too close, the eyes are too far apart, and the proportions are not right.  You know, I had the same thing, that 2-D face that the proportions could have been better.  Most people have problems drawing noses, you see, and I was one of them. But then to take my development to a place of becoming more in depth in it, I would sit with spirit at midnight.  I would sit with them at 5:00 o’clock in the morning, I would sit with them in the afternoon. When I got, when I felt that calling to draw, I would sit at my table, set that intention and draw.  And I always say to my students, you know, there’s many people in the spirit world who are ready and willing to help students, and that drawing may not necessarily be for a specific recipient.  It may be that they are there to whisper to them, whisper and kiss their thoughts, I was like this, I am like that, you’re doing right, make this a bit wider.  And it helps those people in training in the spirit world as well.  So perhaps someone like myself, and there’s many people at my level and above, where I am at as well, who are able to attune to that information and draw more precisely.  And so, I on my journey I would sit with spirit a lot and draw hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of drawings.  But I was always able when I was younger, to draw … I’m a copy artist, so I can, whatever I see with my physical eyes, I can draw it, no matter how big, no matter how small. I’ve always had that ability and I used to love drawing cartoon characters, so I could get a magazine and free hand, I’ve always been a free hand artist.  So, I would sit there and I would draw cartoon characters really, really small, and then I would draw them on the wall, when I got in trouble a lot of times, I would draw them on the wall quite large.  And I remember a time when my parents were moving house, and in the new home where the walls hadn’t been painted, I said, can I draw here? And they said yes, so I used to practice drawing there as well, and the idea is, I would only use one pencil.  And I tell my students that all the time.  You know too often, people starting to work as student medium artists, they want to use a range of the pastels, then they want to use this, they will use that… Have one pencil, become, I know this not the right term but I will say it ,become attuned with that one pencil, work with that one pencil.  Know how to darken, how to shade with that pencil.  Know how to draw lighter with that pencil, because if you can learn the skill in one pencil then you will be able to learn the other skills that’s needed, but of course this is just my opinion, you know, and so what I used to do is I used to practise a lot until such point where I felt then, okay, I can now progress to pastels, which I did.  And then I would draw in charcoal and I draw A3 size, I can draw one inch by one-inch faces, I can draw A3, A1, A2 sized faces and again it’s all about the speed of drawing as well, so there’s so much involved into it.  So, I hope that answers your question.

Ann

Gosh, it sounds like you were born, a born artist.

Anne-Marie

That’s really interesting, actually that’s quite beautiful to hear actually, because I would never have said that, but hearing it and I feel like where I am no with my development in art and of course I have a lot of people congratulating me on my artwork, I feel that I am.  I could not live without art.  I could not live without my art.  Every morning, there is a, I still allow people from the spirit world to practice with me, so I’m constantly drawing faces.  But  the artwork that I do is so varied, I will say this, I will share a story with you.  I remember being at my day job and it was a Friday and I kept hearing spirit’s voices, you need to use oils now, you need to use oils.  And that thought kept going in my head again and again, I was like I can’t use oils. So I was like a stubborn child, I can’t use oils spirit, because I would speak to them aloud you see.  They speak in my head, but I speak aloud. I can’t work in oils spirit, I don’t know the first thing to do, you know, you’ve got to use all sorts of different mediums in order to be able to work with it and they said, trust us, you need to work in oils.

So, like everything they give me to do, I always take my time on it.  So, I took two weeks and then I said okay I’m going to do it so I bought a canvas and I bought some oil paints.  I thought well if I’m going to go in, I might as well go hard, so I brought some expensive oil paints and away I went.  And I sat down and said, right what would you like to do?  So, I just allowed that free flow, and the first portrait I’ve done, I always managed, I always said I want to keep that, because when I look at that now to what I can do now, it is completely different.  But we’ve all got to start somewhere, right?  And that’s something I say to people, don’t compare yourself to what you see of others and their skill now, because they all had to start somewhere too.  And so, from using the oils, I’ve been able to paint beautiful pictures with them, but I know it’s hard to say, for me it’s hard to say I’m an artist, because for many years, I would always say, I can’t draw for toffee.  And I still feel that way, isn’t that weird, that I still feel that way?  I still feel I cannot draw for toffee.  If you asked me to draw something I’d start panicking. Oh, I don’t know if I can do it.  That would be my first thought but when I sit in that power with spirit, when I know I’m, I’ve sat, I’m sitting there with a canvas, or I’m sitting there to do some form of art, and I draw in on that power of spirit, then away I go.

Ann

Where do you think that comes from, you know, that thought, that many of us I’m sure listening, that will certainly idea and probably people listening have, that I cannot draw. Where does it come from? For you, where does that come from?

Anne-Marie

That’s a good question.  I, I think that it comes from a place of never having my art recognised by my parents.  I think that’s where a lot of our issues stem from.  Not having that praise and that recognition.  If the people most close, the people closest to you, your guardians cannot see anything in you, cannot recognise that beauty or that maybe they recognise it but they may not know what to do with it, but I feel it stemmed from there, because you look to your guardians for, am I good enough? Am I OK?  And you do a drawing and you show them and it might not be a Picasso, it might not be a Rembrandt but if you can see something and you say nothing, then someone like myself will just put it down and believe that I have nothing.  For many years I stopped doing psychic art, spirit art, I stopped doing that for a really long time because I believed that I don’t have it.  And all I can say is that through the power of spirit, listening to them encouraged me, gave me the belief, gave me the understanding and sometimes I look at my own drawings and I think, how on earth did I do that?  I know it sounds really weird because I have that thought. There is still that niggling doubt, is this good enough but, this is human nature. And I guess it’s part of me never wanting to become complacent. Always wanting to strive to learn more.  How can I

be better?  How can I be better for the spirit world?  And so, when I’m teaching other people, I’m trying to teach them to work on their individuality, and work on the naturalness of their art and their own communication with spirit, you know.

Ann

You, therefore, have become the guardian, you have become the parent and the encourager for the students that come to you, because I’m sure many people out there have had that discouragement, or lack of acknowledgement I suppose, which is a beautiful thing, and you speak about your spirit team, your spirit people talking to you in your head.  How do you know?  Because people will be listening, they will be possibly asking the question, how do you know that’s coming from spirit and not your conscious mind?

Anne-Marie

Oh, that’s a good question.  This could be broken down over time but I’m going to try and find the easiest answer.  One, because I know but I would say it’s, I spent two years at the beginning of my development of mediumship asking that same question every day, how do I know it’s me?  How do I know its spirit and not my own mind?  For two years and in those two years I was actually developing at the Arthur Findlay College.  And every time I’d go to a course, I’d always ask the question, but how do I know it’s not my own mind?  Well, you know it’s not your own mind, when you’re given information that you wouldn’t come up with, and you give that information out and then you realise actually that’s come from somewhere else, it hadn’t come from you.  I’ll give you two examples, one being, I remember from the platform in Elton church once, and there was a Nigerian lady that I was bringing forward a communication for her.  And at the very end I was shown a mouthpiece, you know, the mouthpiece organ, and in my mind, if you’d said who would I normally give that to? I would give that to a grandad with a flat cap, you know, my mind can make up and could picture this grandad, maybe with a walking stick and you know, going along the path and blowing his mouth organ.  That’s my mind, so when I was finishing off, and this person in the spirit world was saying, tell her about the mouth organ, the mouthpiece, and I, for a moment I battled that and I thought I’m gonna give it anyway.   And I gave it to the lady and she goes, oh my God, I’ve just bought one coz I like to play the mouthpiece.  And she related it to family in the past in the spirit also as well. So, something like that gave me the understanding that the way information comes in my mind, how it comes in, learning how it comes in, how to process that, whether it’s you or not.  Another aspect, the second point I will just quickly point out, how I first became aware of spirit,  I remember driving in my car and it was a Sunday, I was going to the hairdressers and I became aware of a presence on my left-hand side.  Now this is way before Arthur Findlay days, this is like, even before I actually was settled in a circle and I became aware of this presence in in the drivers, in the passenger seat.  And in my head, I said, hello, who’s there?  And the voice came back, hello and I said, oh what’s your name?  So, I was being a little bit, you know, cocky there and I said, what’s your name? And the voice said, Marcus.  And at that moment I was like, right this is just you Anne, you know, this is in your head, having a conversation, so I said, right, if this is not in my head and you are real person, tell me something about today that I can’t possibly know.  And the voice said, your hairdresser, Dionne’s left.  And at that moment I thought that’s rubbish, ‘cause I’m actually driving to the hairdressers, do you see what I mean, I’ve made an appointment, I’m going, so I said, oh, Anne, you’re just making this up.  I got to the hairdressers, the owner of the hair shop had opened up, her name’s Flo, and I remember sitting down and just looking around the room and looked at this lady who was doing someone’s hair, and at that moment she turned round, she said  oh by the way, Dione’s  left.  And I sat there with my jaw wide open, like my mouth wide open, and from that moment I said to them, you’ve got my attention.  And that went on, there is many cases you know, I was, at the time I was working on some phone lines, and I said right before the next call what’s the information?  They’d give me information, the call would come through, they would give me the name, got the name Lisa and the lady that came through’s name was Lisa.  Lots of different things I could say.  So, after a number of times of this communication in my mind, you then begin to learn what’s yours and what’s not.  So, it takes time and I think this is the problem students have, they want to get to this end point, but there has to be a journey in the process of you understanding what’s you. Because we’ve all got an imagination, we can all do a Once Upon a time story, can’t we? But the idea is to understand your relationship with your spirit team, and to understand when they are near you, when they are communicating with you, and how that’s done, and that can only happen through progression and through development and through the understanding.  Allowing the ego not to speak, because the ego wants you to say something so that you look good.  And so, for myself that’s how it developed.  So, when I was standing in my workplace and the voices said to me that you need to start working with the oil paints, I knew that wasn’t of me, because that’s, that’s nothing, nothing that I wanted to do.  I didn’t want to go and work with oil paints, it was the last thing that I wanted to do, messy, takes forever you’ve gotta learn thick over lean, or lean over thick, so you’ve got to learn all sorts of different things with these mediums and at that time I had no intention.  So, knowing what I can do now, yes, it is spirit, ‘cause I’ve listened to them, and they have more faith in me than I have in myself.

Ann

Yes, so beautifully explained, thank you Anne, for going through that.  So, at what point then, along our development along our spiritual path, is a good point a good time to start doing spirits art anytime

Anne-Marie

You can start from the moment you can pick up a pencil and you have the right intention. You can start spirit art any time.  I know there are many mediums, brilliant working  mediums who would love to do spirit art but their first line is, well I can’t draw, so they discount themselves from that pathway, because the fear of, they can’t draw.  What they are doing is, there looking at people like myself or other people who can draw very well and they’re comparing themselves.  But you’re comparing yourself at your beginning level to my 10/15 years’ level.  And so that’s where the problem lies and I try to tell people, we all have to start somewhere.  So even if it’s a circle, even if it’s two dots and a straight line and even if you let your inner child out, and that inner child draws like a 3-year-old, then so be it – Viva la pencil!  You know, you’ve got to allow yourself the freedom and the permission to know you don’t have to be perfect from the very beginning.  And so, you can start at any time, but what I would say is, my advice isn’t, it is just guidance and advice, because I see this happening a lot more recently, try to avoid going public too soon, because someone will do it for a month.  They’ve done a few pictures, oh, and they want to then, with their excitement and their enthusiasm of what they’ve been able to do, they then want to go public and I feel that sometimes it may be better to work behind the curtains, to culture, to nurture, to understand, to attune, to develop, allow yourself to develop the spirit world, and then one day open those curtains and showcase your work.  And that may be a year, two years, five years, but stay behind the scenes and nurture, you know, if somebody said to me, if I had to put it down in how many drawings before someone steps up, I would say do 200 drawings before you would even consider sitting for the public.  200 drawings that through those drawings, you have become stronger, you’ve seen the progression, so you’re not drawing how you did in the first 50, you can see that progression, and then as you start to work behind the scenes with maybe some friends or friends of friends, start to build up a portfolio of before and after for example.  You’ve done your drawing, perhaps they have a photograph that you can put beside your drawing and to really compare it and know that does it really look like this person, or is it a representation of a drawing that could look like multiple people.  Because that’s what a lot of people do, so we’ve really got to work behind the scenes before we go public.  That’s what I feel, because there’s many reasons why someone will say why they can’t understand that portrait. It may be that the drawing is not strong enough in the facial features and facial proportions for them to understand.  It may be that the drawing is done when the communicator wants to show when they were young, when they were younger, when they were at their best, and maybe that person hadn’t met them when they were younger.  There’s all sorts of different variables into it, but we must all have a moral code within us, that to do a spirit portrait, you have a huge responsibility, but if you work with spirit, if you work with that one pencil, and you do it on a regular basis, commitment, perseverance is the key, is the way forward.  Too often we stop just before success, too often we give up, but what we must do is never give up on spirit because they never give up on us.

Ann

Yeah, I think we do give up, don’t we?  If I start to draw a face, I might do two fairly okay eyes, maybe even get the nose, who knows, but then you’ll draw some wonky old chin and the bad hairline and then I just put a line through like, oh this is terrible, and you forget about it and then just, oh this is not for me whereas you are encouraging us to just work through that and that it’s okay just put that to one side.

Anne-Marie

Absolutely work through it, you know I teach this, I run various courses, speaker courses mediumship courses and of course spirit art.  One of the things I teach students is, is it the destination or is it the journey? Which is the most important to you?  Because we can all sleep all the time.  We can all go for a train ride, a real train ride and we can sleep through that train ride, get to the end and we are there.  But think of all the beauty that we’ve missed along the way, all the animals that we might see, the beauty of the trees, all sorts of different things.  And what about the person sitting across from us who’s on their own but this is the person perhaps who has a world of information waiting to give to us but we don’t even say hello, because we’re sleeping but had we been awake that person may have said, hello.  A conversation may have started, the knowledge that may have been passed over but too many of us missed that, because we want the destination before the journey.  So, the journey is something where we have to persevere on, that we have to do a drawing that doesn’t look good, again and again and again and again and again. We have to do practise drawing at different times of the day, not just always the same time.  Practise drawing in the morning, in the evening, I find that when I wake up at 4:30 in the morning I come downstairs, I’m not fighting any thought, I’m picking up that pencil, and I’m just drawing because my mind is still sleepy. Likewise, when it’s time to go to bed, I’m not trying to fight anything, and that’s probably where you’ll get your most naturalness, and I still can’t.  A lot of those drawings that I look at it now and I think, oh my God, those drawings are, you know, they should never see the light of day but I kept them to show people. We all start somewhere and if you don’t start then you will never get where you want.  So if you don’t get on the train, you’ll never get to the destination anyway, so pick up the pencil and draw.

Ann

Excellent advice and tell us then Anne about auragraphs.  What is an auragraph?  How do we do those?

Anne-Marie

Lovely jubbly, lovely subject.  Aurographs, they are wonderful.  OK auragraph in a sentence, is a visual representations of the mood, life, personality of the recipient.  So, where you tune into the auric field of the sitter, the recipient ,and create a visual interpretation of that as an auragraph.  So, if we separate the syllables, the aura being auric field of the recipient and the graph, we know graph is bar charts, line charts, but the graph is basically a visual timeline if you like, of different aspects of the life of that recipient.  And we choose whatever we feel best represents that.  So, we could do a number, the number 18, the number 16, the number 12, whatever the number is, and that number could represent different things.  It could be numerology, for example.  We could do flowers.  How many petal leaves are we drawing?  That number could represent something.  Are we drawing animals?  Are we drawing an eye?  Are we opening up to our, to the consciousness, are we becoming more aware? And we’re looking at also the colours, the vibration from the colours, you know, or the vibrancy should I say of the colours.  The yellow, is it a pale yellow, is it a medium yellow, is it a real golden yellow?  Blues, is it a pale blue?  Is it really dark blue you know?  Blue is about communication but also about healing.  Yellow is about optimism but also about education and growth and all sorts of different things.  And so, the auragraph we normally would draw a circle to represent the circle of life, and around that circle you would then start to draw images around that circle intuitively.  So if I was going to draw for someone like yourself, you’re sitting here with me now, I may draw a circle, and I might start, you know, straight away, and I’m getting the colour of blue, I just feel like I want to put blue on this auragraph, because it’s representing to me, communication and because I want to do loads of blue on it, and I want to do different shades of blue, you communicate with different people, on a regular basis.  Then I might want to add some red, the red representing the passion, but sometimes you get a little bit annoyed with yourself because you know you haven’t done things by the timeline you wanted to do, you know. All sorts of different things I could put in there.  Then I might put some steps or a ladder.  So, I would, if I  would put you on that ladder and you were in the middle, I may say that you are on the way up.  There are still some steps to go, so I would look at the rungs of the ladder, how many rungs do I have left?  And that would give me maybe a timeline for you.  Some people read the auragraph from the bottom half being you when you were younger, and as we go around the auragraph to your teenage years, early adult hood etc to where you are now.  There are certain ways that you can read your auragraph but I try to train my students, teach my students, let it be organic, let it be intuitive, let it be inspiring. The way that you get that information, just let it flow, but what it would cover, is the personality of the person the recipient, it would cover their moods, their hopes, their likes, their aspirations, it would also represent the soul journey of that recipient, so you can talk to them on a soul-to-soul level.  And so, there’s ways of creating that auragraph, there’s ways of learning how to do certain artwork for it, and that’s what I teach.  I have auraraph workshops, and I just absolutely love it.

Ann

Oh, my goodness I’d love to do that.  So ,the auragraph then, if you sit with your recipient, you draw your auragraph as you’ve just beautifully explained, and then you explain the auragraph to your recipient?

Anne-Marie

Yes, you give the interpretation.  You can… the best way if you’ve got a live sitter in front of you, is to give them an interpretation as you go along.  So, as you are drawing and as you are colouring in, and you’re giving them that interpretation of what you’re doing.  So, they are enjoying the journey with you.  If it was for someone I’m going to do an auragraph for who’s not present with me, I will paint the auragraph because obviously I paint rather than drawing, so I’d paint the auragraph and then I would give a written interpretation and that’s usually a typed interpretation and send it to them. So, they would have it by email and send it to them if they wanted it by post as well.  And there’s different ways to do it, you know, you can work with watercolours, coloured pencils, if you’re going to use the canvas you could use oils if you wanted to but that’s going to be the real expensive type to do it that way, or I do a lot of my auragraphs digitally, so I hand draw, but using a digital surface to create them.  Or I do the traditional and I might use the water colours and it just depends but they’re so beautiful and then they can hang them.  You can hang them up.  The one thing I like about doing the digital ones is that I can allow the recipient to print to their preferred size, and then I can print multiple of them, that’s why I prefer doing them.  And as soon as I’ve completed it, they get it the same day, rather than, I have completed it today well you know, then I’ve got to find the right packaging to get it sent out and so you might have another five days before you can get it, so there’s all these sorts of things/

Ann

It seems like for me, who’s not the most confident drawer yet, the auragraph seems an easier way to begin for me, because you’re just, you can draw symbols or colours or …

Anne-Marie

Absolutely yes absolutely.  I run at least four to five different auragraph workshops a year we’ve actually got one on tomorrow and I’m actually going to move them towards video training showing people how to do it and actually I’m also writing a book as well on that . And the idea is there are many different ways that people can start their art journey without feeling pressurised because when you do spirit portraiture, there is that pressure, isn’t there, supposing the person in front of me can’t take it, can’t take the drawing, or I’m not a fine artist so it may not be good enough but when you do the auragraph there’s only your interpretation and so with that I encourage all matchstick drawers to allow me to teach them. I love the matchstick drawers. I love those that, the matchstick men and women drawers, those who cannot draw for toffee and all their drawings are very basic.  Those are who I love to teach because I was you and my whole aspect is, let me help you become comfortable in your drawing.  And I’ve got so much students have left feedback on their art that they’ve done.  I mean I also teach people how to create and design their own Oracle cards.  That is another form of artwork.  I also get people to do all sorts of different things and I think for yourself Ann, and for your listeners, auragraphs are a wonderful way you know of starting your journey but there is this aspect of the freedom that it brings, you know, to be able just to put your stamp on it.  And also, with your sitter, give them some upliftment because whether it’s mediumship, whether it’s spirit portraiture, it’s auragraphs or more, you’re leaving your recipient with hope, you are leaving your recipient with upliftment, and if it’s not for that, then what is it for?

Ann

That is so beautiful Anne-Marie, really beautiful and of course, absolutely.  And so, when you, final question,

Anne-Marie

No problem, I’m loving this.

Ann

Bless you.  When we watch a spirit artist, well when I’ve seen spirit artists working in a demonstration of mediumship, there will be the medium doing mental mediumship, bringing forward communication from a spirit communicator…

Anne-Marie

Yes

Ann

And next to them will be a spirit artist drawing portraits.

Anne-Marie

Yes.

Ann

So how does that work? How do you tune in?  Are you tuning into the same spirit communicator as the mental medium or are you tuning into your own spirit communicator?  How does that work?

Anne-Marie

That’s another good question. I adore being a spirit artist when a medium is working, but I’m very choosy with my mediums, I have to be honest.  I have to know that you understand what spiritual mediumship is.  Not to give psychic mediumship, two different things. And so, when I’ve got a real good medium, it allows me to rest and relax my conscious self, to allow me to attune and blend with the communicator that they are speaking of.  So, what I tend to do is I let the medium begin. I’ve got a man here and I’m aware that this man passed etc, and before he’s got the yes or she has got the yes, I will then spend that moment blending, tuning, seeing, seeing the same things that they’re saying, feeling the same things they’re saying, becoming aware of that communicator’s energy, I’m now at one with that person, then my hand does the rest.  Then I’m no longer needed other than drawing.  A number of times I have written something down, Saint John’s Cross or something or another, a motorbike.  And the next sentence the medium speaks, and you would understand that this gentleman rode a motorbike or would you understand this cross, I believe St John’s.  And that tells you that you are both attuned and that happens with the right medium, that happens very well.  So that’s what I do, and then at the end, the medium may say, Ann do you have anything to say? And you know it’s at that moment, it’s not for me to go over everything the medium has just done, because obviously we are representing together, and we’ve got a time span, because obviously we want to get around as many people as we can. So, my job at that moment is to give significant pieces that maybe I’ve felt, seen, written down, etcetera and then I would say that to the recipient.  You would also understand this and hopefully, you know, they say yes, they can get it. And then we would offer out do you understand a resemblance to the picture?  I would say seven and a half, eight out of 10 people would normally recognise the communicator, but there are times when someone will say, nope, I don’t understand the picture.  And that’s absolutely fine, because I’ve done it long enough now not to be offended, you know, you think gosh, what a cheek, no manners, how do you mean you don’t know who this is?  But the idea of that is, I don’t question the drawing any more, because I know it’s a good representation.  I may question is the person a lot younger than what they remembered?  Is the person another communicator in spirit but because we’ve been talking about this one person, that’s where their mind is at.  So, when you open up, but would you understand this to be someone else’s? Oh yeah, yeah, because that looks like his brother.  And that happens often, and so working with a medium is a wonderful place for me because it’s bliss. I can just attune and spend time with the spirit Incarnate but the spirit discarnate as well. And the last one we did, I was working with a couple of mediums actually, and there was, we had 100 people in the audience.  And I’ve never done this live before.  I’ve done it plenty of times with me in spirit in our practise sessions, but the last portrait, they decided that was the best time in front of 100 people for me to draw with both hands at the same time.

Ann

Oh wow.

Anne-Marie

And I was like oh, spirit, but I said that, and then straight away, picking up the pencils and I drew this picture, both hands at the same time.  And yes, I can draw with my eyes closed, as in the training sessions we had, which I didn’t mention earlier, when I said get up at 12:00 o’clock in the afternoon, midnight, morning hours, they would often have me draw with my eyes closed.  I can draw faces with my left hand, I can draw faces with my right hand, I can draw faces with my eyes closed and a lot of my work is still done behind the curtains, can you believe that?  That work is not ready to be, for the curtains to open, and I’ve been in this for a long time.  So, in that instance, where they got me to draw with both hands, it was the curtains opening slightly, and so that’s where I’m at.  I know there’s things down the line that’s going to be produced.  I’ve done artwork in trance, just me with spirit here, and I’ve done a beautiful flower vase, flowers in a vase, and that’s not ready to go, be shown publicly, that has to be worked but it did, frighten is the wrong word, what it did, I was still in awe that spirit could work with me in that way.  And although they want me to do that on a day to day basis, like they were telling me to do the oil paints, this has been for the last year and I’m still pretending I can’t hear them, and they’re telling me to do that.

Ann

So funny.

Anne-Marie

So, I feel like I need to be in the right head space here,  and I know it’s coming, and they’re saying, you know, you can’t hide this forever.  So, the next bit is to do the trance like, you know, and we’ll see what happens, you know.  It’s that little girl in me that, but you know, this is the thing, we’re all learning, no matter the skill levels, that’s why if you never pick up that pencil and you, and you, you don’t start, you will never get to a place.  And I say to everyone I couldn’t draw for toffee, and now yes, although it sounds strange to say it, I can draw.  I don’t know if I’ll ever get comfortable with that, but I love it. And once you get gripped by the art, you just can’t let that go.   Can I tell you one quick thing?  Can I say one thing?  I remember having a dream and this was about, say about four and a half years ago, just before, the day before I went to a mind, body, soul, festival. And I had this dream and, in this dream, the Grim Reaper, that’s all I can say.  It was basically a gentleman, he had this big fur coat, and he was standing in the front room and behind him in the fireplace was a portal.  And as you looked out of that portal all you saw was the sea going up and down. And this gentleman said, it’s time.  And I have a lot of lucid dreams, so I’m in a dream and I know I’m having a dream, and it felt so real.  And I said I’m not ready, and he said, you don’t tell me when you’re ready, and I was like, I’m not ready to cross.  And he said it’s time.  And I said, just give me three, just give me three months, three weeks and I remember saying it because I can remember the dream vividly now.   And I don’t know what happened after that, but I woke up, and I remember going downstairs and at that time I had my easel up, and it was, it had a blank canvas on there for weeks, I hadn’t done anything with it.  And as I was coming downstairs and had that thought, if I was to ever leave this physical world, the one thing that I would regret, outside of, you know, family, and a list of people, was never picking up that pencil and drawing.  And from that moment, I’ve never stopped.  So, all I can say to you, if you have that calling, if you have that that sense of need, don’t let fear stop you.

Ann

That is such a great story, so inspiring as well.  Anne, I know outside of the artwork you hold a lot of free events, online as well, can you tell us what those events are?

Anne-Marie

Oh, absolutely one of the events I will mention, and again this is given to me by spirit and it has taken me two years to actually bring it to the table as it were, and it’s called The Assembly of Spirit Inspirations.  It is the Spiritualist Speaker Service, and what that is about is a place where we can speak on Spiritualism life and there is no sign of mediumship, mental mediumship being demonstrated, it is pure philosophy.  But it’s got a modern twist to it.  And the idea is to bring together community, i.e.  The Assembly of Spirit Incarnate, where we, the assembly, can be the bridge between the material world, those who are awakening to it and the bridge between the spiritualist churches, those that are too frightened, too scared to go into a church.  One, maybe  because of the stigma that they, you know, tell their friends, I’ve gone into a church, but also through some of those fears about the mediumship activity that takes place.  And so, by holding an Assembly Of Spirit Inspirations, it’s part formal service, part open mic.  So, in the first half, we start with a greeting, let all the audience know what the assembly is about, but we also explain that the assembly is for those people that have been in the movement a really long time, that are no longer needing or searching for a message, but may need nourishment for their soul.  It is also a place for trainee speakers to have somewhere that they can go, to listen to seasoned speakers give their philosophy, but also in the open mic, they can jump in and in the activities that I set for the audience, 2 minutes maximum per person, they’re able to jump in and participate.  And it’s broken into four different parts.  The first part being the formal service, so for example tomorrow, I’m going to have Minister Colin Bates come in, and he’s going to address the audience for 20-25 minutes unscripted, unrehearsed, inspiring, and he’s going to give his talk.  We have a Spiritualist reader, and then we have a lady who sings live, a young girl, and her singing is absolutely beautiful.  So, she comes in, and then the second part, the open mic part, is about the audience interactivity, so that as one we can come together, and if I quote that our last speaker, he said, his soul has been touched.  How beautiful is that? And then we have the last part.  If you’ve never been to the assembly, I never tell people the last part, the last 10 minutes, that is the magic of it all coming together, and I never tell anyone what that activity is, they have to come in and experience it.  And we run that twice a month, the second Sunday of the month, and the last Sunday of each month.  I have another host who runs the Monday night, so that’s the assembly, it’s free, it’s online, people can come in, you can invite your parents, you can invite your co-workers, all the people that you may feel that would genuinely like to hear uplifting words without the demonstration of the activity of mediumship.   The other one that I run, open platform, this is run the last Sunday of every month, I’ve been running this, I was one of the first few actually, to run this when COVID started, and the open platform allows people to come into to give, to share stories, to share poems, to share short spiritual readings, and then we have some music, and then we allow those who wish to demonstrate the physical activity of mediumship, they are welcome to come in, so those practicing on their CSNU, ew their PAS, even working mediums also demonstrate, because we can all learn from each other.  And so that’s what we have, and that also can be found on www.theportraitofspirit.com or people can use Facebook and just search for The Assembly Of Spirit inspirations and then they can join our group and get all of the information that way.

Ann

Oh, they sound like brilliant events.

Anne-Marie

Yeah, they are, wonderful. I mean we’ve got so many brilliant, seasoned speakers in and I I’m not saying I’m a brilliant speaker, but I had to give my, I had to be a guest speaker as well for my own one, ‘cause I can’t hold my own events and don’t be the guest speaker.  So, it was a bit, it was quite nerve wracking actually, you know, I’m Chairing the event, I’m also speaking as well, but it went down a treat, you know.  You relax, I loved it, the audience are so welcoming, they are so loving, and everybody is just there to recharge their spiritual batteries, and to nourish the soul.  It’s food for the soul.  Too often we are walking around starving our soul and if we want to enrich our soul, words can empower, words can bring hope, words can transform lives, and that’s what the assembly is about.  And that is generated from spirit, and so now I have a host who’s running his own Assembly of Spirit Inspirations, in his own way, so it’s the same structure, but he changes the music, we have different guest speakers, and next year I’m hoping to have another three or four, so people in different countries, different time zones, can always have access to an assembly, because the people that live alone on their own, may sometimes just need to be in a community of people, a gathering, where voices can be spoken, and they can participate and feel part of that gathering.  And the idea is to prove that through words, we can heal.

Ann

That is beautiful.   Nourishment for the soul.

Anne-Marie

Thank you, thank you very much.

Ann

And you’re a tutor at the Arthur Findlay College, so I know that you’ve got all kinds of classes.  So, people that are listening if they want to come and find out, or come and attend one of your classes, how do they get in touch with you?  How do they find out what you’re doing?

Anne-Marie

Well, I’m a newly appointed tutor, so I’ll just say that.  I am going to be running, I have been invited to be on a course in February.   However, I run a lot of my own private courses, so if people wanted to find out what I’m doing, and they wanted to find out how to get a workshop with me this weekend, next weekend, I’m running workshops mostly every weekend.  If they go to the https://www.theportraitofspirit.com, then they will get to my website and if they navigate to the events and workshops page, then that lists all what’s coming up.

Ann

Fabulous. And if somebody wanted to come and watch you working, either online if you work online, or in person doing your drawing in a demonstration, how would they find that out?

Anne-Marie

They would just go to the diary section, ‘cause I tend to write down where I’m at.

Ann

Fabulous.  Anne-Marie, thank you so much for coming and sharing all that with us. I’m sure everyone is going to be so inspired. I personally can’t wait to get my one pencil out.  I was going to say my box of paints, I’m like oh no no, it’s just one pen, isn’t it?

Anne-Marie

One pencil.  So, I’ll just say something else actually as well, because the art of drawing drawing is really about, if you can sign your name, then you can draw, that’s the bottom line.  Drawing isn’t a gift bestowed upon just one person, it is a skill that can be learned, like the piano can be learnt.   Some people may have more, I won’t say more ability, but they may be more attuned to that, so someone who could play the piano quite well, they have had lessons but they just seem to, like a duck to water, really take to it.  Where other people they could learn it and they could play, but maybe not as fluently.  And that’s the same with the art, you know, if you don’t get started, you will never know how fluent you can become. And so, you must know that there are different levels, but you have to get started.   I know we are speaking about art, and I know we are speaking about the auragraphs, etc., but I also run speaker courses every Friday.  And what they are about, is helping people to find and understand their communication, to find their ability to have their voice heard.  To give themselves the permission for their voices to be heard.  And so, I’ve written a book on that, The Spiritualist Address.  I know it’s not really about art, but the art is coming.  So, I’m going to have a book on psychic art auragraphs, I am going to have a book on spirit portraiture and that’s all coming, so some of the books I’ve got out now on Amazon and they can find them on my website anyway, so just to let you know that I do a range of things.  Art is my love; teaching is my love.  Merge them together, I know what my purpose in life is.

Ann

Thank you so very much for joining us.

Anne-Marie

Thank you very much for having me, it’s been an absolute pleasure, and I hope your listeners get something from it as well, so.

Ann

Anne-Marie Bond everyone, what an inspiring lady she is.  Don’t you just feel totally inspired to go pick up a pencil and start working with the spirit world? And don’t you just desperately want to go and do a workshop with Anne-Marie Bond?!  I know I do! 

All the resources for this episode, including a full transcript (laboriously typed by me) don’t forget to join Patreon! plus importantly, how to reach Anne-Marie Bond, are over on my website under podcasts, so do  head over there and you can pick everything up on the show notes. www.anntheato.com. 

Do explore my website while you are over there, I have some wonderful courses coming up that you might enjoy and there are some great meditations on there too, that you might like.

Now this is important – Don’t forget to subscribe to the show – you can do that on your favourite podcast listening platform – just press the SUBSCRIBE button, so you don’t miss out on any upcoming episodes.  Something very interesting is happening with Psychic Matters for the month of November!  I have a very special guest joining us – all my guests are very special – but this chap is giving us his time, for the entire month of November!  Who is it, I hear you ask?  Aha.  You will have to tune in to find out! Don’t forget to subscribe – you really don’t want to miss out on this fascinating up-coming mini-series!

Have a great couple of weeks everyone, let’s all give our communal thanks to Anne Marie Bond for so willingly sharing her knowledge on Spirit Portrait Art with us all – I’m sure you are all hugely inspired, so pick up that pencil – just the one remember, and ask Spirit to guide your hand.

My name is Ann Théato and thank you so much for listening to Psychic Matters!