The Legend Lives In Her Heart – Acrylic on Canvas This painting is inspired by the core philosophy we teach at our school – that each of us has access to our own information and can choose to transform our stories through conscious choice. You can see by her scroll she is carrying her own story – her legend of herself and her life and what is possible for her. Often we are limited by our stories of who we have been in the past, and who we have become. Through working with our stories using intentional creativity, we get to create new stories. She is in charge of her own path and is guided by her heart.

– Shiloh Sophia McCloud

Shiloh Sophia McCloud

For more than twenty years, Maestra Shiloh Sophia has been working with women all over the world to bring their ideas into form through the Intentional Creativity Movement. She is a published author, poet and artist and draws her practice from a long lineage of renowned creatives. She teaches all over the world including at universities like the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology in the Masters and the Global PhD program. She has spoken for two years at the United Nations on her work of using art as a tool of healing. She has owned art galleries and featured over 100 women artists from all over the world. She was trained by Sue Hoya Sellars who was trained by Lenore Thomas Straus.

She believes self expression is a basic human right and her work focused on revolutionary education that makes art available to all beings. Through her classes on visionary business, intuitive painting, and sacred practice, Shiloh and her community of Cosmic Cowgirls serve between 300-500 women per month month. Her global teacher training Color of Woman educates women to use these methods intentional creativity to heal trauma and transform their lives. You can find her most mornings having tea with her muse in the Red Thread Café.She lives in Northern California with her husband, Jonathan.

Shiloh Sophia McCloud’s Soul Art Hall of Fame Interview

How would you describe your art?

My paintings are devotional in nature. They are either prayers or ideas or intentions brought into physical form within the canvas. I think of the canvas itself as a portal and that the image that needs to arise to provide me with information is coming through the particles of fabric itself. This is both physical, and also quantum. We are actually transferring energy, thought, idea, love, healing through our bodies into the work of art. I call this kind of art making, intentional creativity.

Each of my paintings holds the message of what I was grappling with at that particular point in my journey. I strongly believe this kind of creating has the power to heal wounds that almost nothing else can reach. And the cool thing is, when I teach this way of painting, the student becomes their own healer. I am not doing the work, they are. I just show them where to look and what materials to use and point them in the direction of a powerful inquiry but the transformation happens in their own hands. I like this very much.

What are the biggest challenges you faced as an artist, and how did you overcome them?

As a working artist for over twenty years I would say that the biggest challenge is actually getting in front of the people who want to buy paintings. When I have art galleries on main streets, I sell, and was in the top 4% of grossing artists in the United States. But if I have a cycle of not having a gallery my painting sales go to less than 10% of what I do when I am in the gallery. This is kind of obvious right, it’s about showing up where people can find you. But one would think after all these years and millions of dollars of sales the clients would keep coming – they don’t. So combining one soul work with actually making a living with their art proves challenging for working artists.

I have taken a break from galleries, and am now in a cycle of teaching. I still show, and have my paintings in my gallery classroom and in churches and other venues, but it isn’t like it was. I don’t know where I will go in the future in terms of my art.

What role do you feel an artist plays in our society today?

The artist is the alchemist of the impossible. Bringing idea into form. Speaking specifically of painting, I work with images of the feminine. So the role my work plays in society is guiding women to see themselves differently. If we can see ourselves differently we can re-imagine who we want to become. If we become who we truly are and desire to be, I feel we will be more inspired to act on behalf of all humans and our earth.

The artist who creates from love, not just art for art sake, can bring into form what the collective is feeling, seeing, desiring and shows them what is possible. In this way the artist imagines the future.

What is most important to you as an artist?

What’s important to me is creating becoming a normal part of our lives. Not for the talented gifted ones, but for everyone. Art shows us who we are as a people and a world – so when we take art out of the schools and make it either elective or inacessible we remove the child’s capacity to create who they are. I would like to see art making, creativity, be available to all beings in education, and in our lives. That we SEE it for what it is, a way to wake us up, create peace and insight, and connection to our own source.