Paula Barkmeier · Visionary Artist · Encinitas, California
You are now entering the portal
“Educating the mind without educating the heart is no education at all.” — Aristotle
Browse my medicine“Everywhere we look, the complex magic of nature blazes before our eyes.”
Paula Barkmeier
The Work
Creatures of living energy
Lions, leopards, owls and kin — each one arrives through dreams and deep feeling, drawn line by line until the animal’s energy looks back at you.
Through the Darkness
Some things only glow in the dark
Layered into Paula’s paintings are inks and pigments that stay hidden in daylight — and come alive when the lights go out. Under ultraviolet light the work reveals a second painting living inside the first: energy made visible.
It is the heart of everything she makes — the darkness was never empty. There is always more here than the eye first sees.
In Her Own Words
Spoken medicine
Poems and transmissions in Paula’s own voice. Press play — these are meant to be heard.
About Paula
Painting what the heart survives
Paula Barkmeier is a lifelong artist and vivid dreamer living by the ocean in Encinitas, California. Her work begins where words end — in dreams, in grief, in awe — and returns as animals stitched together from light, leaves, feathers and flame.
Loss came early in her life, and it cracked her heart open rather than closing it. Out of that grief grew decades of healing work — for herself, and for a world she believes is moving through its own intense awakening. Every canvas is part of that offering: art as medicine, for the new earth and the rising of human consciousness.
“Dream delivers us to dream, and there is no end to illusion. Life is a train of moods like a string of beads, and as we pass through them they prove to be many-colored lenses which paint the world their own hue…” — Ralph Waldo Emerson
In loving memory of Tonya — whose light still guides the work home.
Spoken Word
Stories for the new earth
Longer transmissions in Paula’s own voice — press play and let them carry you.
Find Your Way
“If light is in your heart, you will find your way home.”
For original works, prints, and commissions — or simply to share what the work brought up for you — Paula would love to hear from you.