The Healing Power of Intuitive Painting – An Interview With Whitney Freya

What if transforming your life started with a single brushstroke?

Join us as we meet Whitney Freya, whose journey from feeling like a wannabe artist to establishing a transformative Creative Fitness Center is nothing short of inspiring. Sparked by the wisdom of Zen and the Art of Making a Living by Lawrence Bolt, Whitney shares how she found the courage to embrace her inherent creativity and now empowers others to do the same. Her story redefines what it means to live life as an artist, turning the ordinary into extraordinary by nurturing the right brain’s creative potential. (Interview has been edited for readability.)

Let’s say you’re on a plane, and someone says, “Hey, it’s great to meet you. Tell me about you. What’s life all about for you? What do you do?” What do you say to them?

Whitney Freya: I coach people on how to live as life artists, that’s the short answer. I mean, what started my whole career and passion is this idea that life is meant to be lived as art, that without an artist mentality you will not be able to create the life of your dreams. This idea comes from a book called “Zen and the Art of Making a Living” by Lawrence Bolt, which I highly recommend. I had always been such a wannabe artist my whole life. It was one of those things that I thought about a lot. I coach people that if you’re passionate about something, you’re meant to do that thing.

I was a very vocal, out-loud wannabe artist, and it was constantly in my awareness. I would see art that felt loose and free and think, “If I gave myself the chance, maybe I could do that.” When I was nine, an art teacher told me that drawing wasn’t my thing. That’s all it took for my nine-year-old brain to think, “Oh, I didn’t inherit that artistic DNA.” So, since the beginning, my focus has been on how making art can connect us to what we need to break some rules, buck the system, not care what other people think, and risk failure. This artist mentality has always been my focus.

In college, I saw they taught a mixed media collage class, and I thought, “I could probably do that.” Then I saw the prerequisites: Drawing 101, 102, Painting 101, 102. And I thought, “I can’t do that.”

I called the community art center in Charleston, South Carolina, and the nice old lady told me the next registration deadline was in 14 weeks. I thought, “Fourteen weeks? I don’t know if I’ll be living in this state in 14 weeks.” It was so hard to take an art class, and that led me to opening the Creative Fitness Center, which was like a gym to work out your right brain muscle.

It was all about this imbalance we still have as a collective. I believe the balance is slowly but surely coming back. More people are aware of intuitive painting and anything that involves art and creativity as a non-product generating activity. Your overall wellness is going to be partially dependent on how you connect to your creative self and express your creativity. Everyone able to get beyond basic survival will become more aware that to be well, especially these days with all the frenetic energy, you need to be creating somewhere—whether it’s in the wood shop, the garden, or elsewhere.

Alongside that, we have to accept that what we are doing is creative. There can’t be any more of this “I’m not creative” mindset. If you’re listening to this, let me tell you, if you take nothing else away: You are creative. It’s what gets you out of bed, it’s what problem-solves, it’s what helps you imagine what you want to say in a meeting or to your child. It’s how you live, how you set the table, how you plan meals. You are creating in every moment. You’re not an automaton, not programmed by someone else—at least, not entirely. This is where we’re heading.

I’ve always been passionate about this very practical role that creativity wants to play in our lives, which has nothing to do with the finished product. Although I love finished products and beautiful paintings and selling things, it’s really a lifestyle.

Soul Art Day with Laura Hollick

Take us back to the art center you opened. Tell us the story.

Whitney Freya: I was reading Zen and the Art of Making a Living, and in the notes, in the margins, I remember reading a quote by Nietzsche that art is the proper task of life. The author said most people would think this has nothing to do with them, but the book insists throughout that unless you adopt an artist mentality, you won’t be able to create the life of your dreams. At the time, I was selling books door-to-door, which made opening an art center less scary by comparison. I knew I wanted an exceptional life and felt like I was supposed to do a job that didn’t exist. I wanted life to be more than the nine-to-five for 30 years, then retire. I knew that in my bones.

I realized that in college, when I felt out of balance, I often found myself doing something creative. I used to do magazine collages in college to bring myself back to my center. We live in a world that’s off-center and off-kilter. I believe that we, as infinite beings having a human experience, created this scenario to rediscover our creative nature. The capitalist system depends on us looking outside ourselves. I once had a father who brought his kids to my art center and said, “You’re either a creator or a consumer,” and left. That stuck with me. You’re either looking outside yourself to fill a gap or filling it from the inside out.

Filling it from the inside out is where personal freedom and liberation come from. It’s where you access your truest expression, authenticity, and inner wisdom. It’s recognizing that life is an inside-out job. That’s the journey I’m taking people on.

It doesn’t mean you don’t consume or need money or specific physical attributes, but it means you can generate any feeling or emotion from within. That’s what my book “Rise Above” is all about. You can generate feelings of abundance by focusing on abundance and nurturing that energy, which attracts more abundance. It’s so fun once you get into this sandbox, so to speak, onto the canvas of your life.

I bought a house that had been owned by a slumlord, renovated it, and opened the doors without ever having painted on a canvas since I was nine. Initially, the idea was that it would always be open for people to work out their right brain muscle with painting supplies, clay, a kiln, and different rooms for different activities. On the first day, everyone who walked in asked when the classes would start. I quickly adapted and said I’d have a schedule ready for the grand opening in two weeks.

Art teachers just showed up, and I took it as a sign. I produced a class schedule with one-time workshops to make it accessible. The students and I learned together. I began a metaphysical journey without even realizing it. Students became creatively fit, moved out of fear-based mentality, and started doing things differently. Some redecorated rooms, others moved or quit jobs. We realized the art class was the catalyst for change.

The center had different rooms for various art activities, and people felt successful because I didn’t hold up a standard of “good art.” Kids loved the freedom to create, and many ended up in art school or kept sketchbooks for life. The center ran from 1996 to 2004, then I rebranded and focused on painting, which is where people had the most fear. Painting on a canvas helped them overcome their fears, and once they painted, they weren’t afraid of creating anything else.

The creative process is not about the finished product but about experiencing the freedom to create. The canvas is a modality that helps you observe and balance your logical and creative sides. You learn that life is an inside-out job, and you can generate any feeling or emotion from within. This journey is about living as life artists, creating the life you want.

What do you mean by “it’s close,” and when people make the effort, they “go under that”?

Whitney Freya: I’m used to speaking enough science left-brain to help those who might be skeptical about a comment like that understand. They’ve proven that even a cell has consciousness. They put cells in a Petri dish next to something toxic, and the cells move away from that. This planet is sentient. Trees and plants respond to positive vibrations. The Masaru Emoto studies around water show that sending positive vibrations into water or plants affects them. We live in a sentient universe. The earth, which we’ve been polluting and mining, is aware.

The energy, the frequency, that is creativity only knows possibility. On this planet right now, we have solutions to every single problem. They’re all there, but we’re focused on the problems, not the solutions, and we’re criticizing. Everything wants us to focus on what’s possible, and that’s what creativity does. Cindy Dale, who wrote the Encyclopedia of Energy Work and the Encyclopedia of Chakras, says we are here in this lifetime to heal and to create, and creativity is healing. So, right now, as opposed to the fifties or sixties, you go to the canvas to paint, and you’ll find a personal breakthrough. It doesn’t matter at all what this looks like, it feels good. Like, oh, I want magenta, I’m going to put that on. Oh, I see an owl, I’m going to paint that in.

It’s easier to learn. I remember a gentleman who used to run sweat lodges here, who learned from a Navajo teacher. He spent seven years in that training for the Navajo to certify him to do sweat lodges. Now, that same teacher is certifying people to do sweat lodges within seven days. It’s like this ancient future wisdom, this way of being is accelerated, it’s easier to access because it’s so dramatically needed right now.

Soul Art Day with Laura Hollick

When someone looks down at a canvas for the first time, what could they expect to come into their brain and how would you process them through it?

Whitney Freya: There are a couple of things. One, the first thing to understand is that for all of us, that stage you’re describing, you are still tapped into the old story around creativity, which is product-oriented, which is some people have talent but most people don’t. It’s very judgmental. So that’s where the fear and the embarrassment come in. The art stores and art products haven’t really helped because you’ve got cadmium red hue and phthalo green, and it’s like, what the hell is that? So things are kind of confusing and not as easily accessible. It promotes this art and artists on a pedestal kind of thing. The new story around creativity is that we’re creating in each and every moment. The only question is whether you’re doing it with awareness. That is Don Miguel Ruiz, the intro to The Four Agreements. The Toltec word for human was actually artist, which is also in the foreword of Don Miguel. If you haven’t read The Four Agreements, please do.

First, recognize that any fear around painting, creativity, or drawing is the old story. The new story is that this is available to you, and just like everyone signs their name and has a different fingerprint, everybody makes their mark. We want to see your mark, not somebody else’s mark. The second thing is to understand, and again where I start people, is just putting paint on the canvas, like playing with color, layering, making mud, and being like, oh, that’s how you make mud. And then I want it to be brighter, add white. It’s playing with the color and the experience, without any attachment. You don’t have to know what you’re going to paint, you don’t have to know how to draw, you don’t have to know anything other than paints, brushes, water, things like that. And then that begins the openness. That freedom. In my book Rise Above, it’s the freedom chapter: do anything you want, you don’t have to know where it’s going.

Understand that, and this was the original focus at the Creative Fitness Center, the kind of right-left brain, which the brain is infinitely more complicated, but we have a dual processor form of thinking. Our brain is a dual processor. If you watch the Dr. Jill Ted Talk, just Google Dr. Jill at TED.com, she’s a neuroscientist who had a stroke, lost a lot of her left hemisphere, and she describes this dual nature of our brain. This dual nature has the logical, linear, rational, fear-based ego, sees myself as separate from the whole. I have to protect.

That side of your brain is responsible for the past future. It takes your experience up until now to project into the future. Great, that’s an awesome thing, right? We learn from our past. We want to prepare for the future. Logical, you know, we better all drive on the same side of the road, right? So we’re not colliding into each other, things like that. This is the mind, the mental, the thinking I got to figure this out kind of energy. The other side of our brain, the creative side, is intuitive, is open, and relishes the mystery and the unknown. It gets curious. It leans into that because it’s love-based, it’s not fear-based, and it sees you as one with everything. When you first go to the canvas, you’re coming from that logical, linear, rational ego, fear-based past future. If you haven’t been painting, you’ve got nothing to project into the future except nothingness.

And the logical mind does not like nothingness; it likes productivity. Add to the fact that this isn’t cleaning the house, this isn’t paying for the house, or, you know, this isn’t going to get you any money in the bank. It’s not ticking things off the to-do list. What are you doing? So that’s all logical, rational, left brain. If you are living just from that awareness, you’re living in fear and you are probably familiar with feeling stuck, overwhelmed, like your dreams are not available to you because that logical, linear, rational part of you has a very specific job description. It’s not the part of you that is going to follow your heart. Following your heart is often very irrational and illogical, and we’ve been trained that when we get these, like, oh my gosh, I want to do that, like that feels super exciting.

We’ve been conditioned to turn to that logical, rational mind and say, can I do this? And I picture our poor, overworked, stressed-out left brain being like, are you really going to keep asking me can you do this new thing that you’ve never done before? Because all I can tell you is no. But you have this whole other department. You have this whole other part of you that loves these wild and crazy ideas of yours. But you’re not talking to that side of you. You don’t even know that side of you exists. I would like to introduce you all to that side of you and bring it into balance. This is connecting to that quote, which I have to find the exact source, but it’s that whole, the mind makes a terrible master but a wonderful servant. We’re meant to follow our hearts. That’s why the energy frequency field of the heart is like a hundred times greater than the mind. The heart is pulling from the whole, and when you get that excited feeling, those feelings of inspiration, of excitement, of curiosity, that’s your heart being like, yeah, tune into this, this is a new road that we want you to take. This is like a higher level of consciousness that isn’t fear-based, guiding you, but we shut it down with our logical, rational, linear part of us because we’re not even aware that we’ve got a choice.

So that’s the first thing that I’m doing with people. We go to the canvas for the experience of intentionally triggering these two personalities that we have within us and recognizing the logical, linear, fear-based side, and then also recognizing the desire to create and express. And then when you do that, who is it that’s observing? This is the inner witness, and the inner witness can now choose. So we’ve all heard that, like, it’s a choice, you’re choosing. Make no doubt. If you’re in fear, I get it, it’s rational, it’s logical, it’s justified. But you’re choosing to nurture and focus on the things that generate fear and I’m just inviting you to get curious about that. Why would I spend my life focusing on things that generate fear?

Let’s do something to bring myself into balance.

The non-product-oriented nature of the creative practice balances the doing. It’s the being and the doing, and you can go to the canvas and the prompts and the things that I love to offer people is like go to the canvas and be your own cheerleader and you’ll see how maybe little you do that in your life you might not even realize. And it’s like, okay, I’m gonna practice being optimistic for just this five minutes while I’m painting and you get to observe yourself going all over the place and it’s like, wow. And then again, from a place of non-judgment, what do I choose? And then be that at the canvas, right. So the canvas is just a modality. It creates the experience, it makes visible how you’re creating our reality in each and every moment. You know you can’t read too many things without reading about how we are called, or you want to take responsibility for your thoughts and your emotions and your feelings and all that.

Well, at the canvas, people will say initially they’ll say things like it’s not working. I’m like, where is it? Where is this “it”? You are it. What do you want? Oh well, I want it to be lighter, I want it to be bigger, I want it to be this or that. Then me as the teacher, or the teacher in your head, can offer you things to do, prompts, techniques to get to where you want.

If you’re focused on everything that sucks about your painting, all the teacher, the inner witness, can do is agree. I mean, you just feel into that: it’s too skinny, it’s too dark, it’s too fat, it’s too messy, it’s too muddy, whatever you think, you’re right. What do you want? I want it to be this way. Now we’ve just opened up the doors, we want something different. What can we do different? Whatever you think, you’re right. What do you want? I want it to be this way. Now we’ve just opened up the doors, we want something different. What can we do different to get there? So the canvas just makes visible and literally helps you to create new neural pathways. So when you get to that place of it’s not working, what do I want? We’re just training ourselves to live again as life artists, the art that is your life. Whatever you’re experiencing, you’ve created, and so let’s create more of what we want.

What is it about painting sacred symbols or the same images over and over again that somehow unlocks more of this self-awareness, more of this mindfulness inside of us?

Whitney Freya: The first step is always what we just talked about: the left-right brain, the different awarenesses, and how painting is a modality that can be empowering. Once people are like, okay, right, I get it, I’m not afraid to paint on the canvas, there’s the canvas as a mirror, allowing the canvas to reflect back to you rather than like a fender bender or a sprained ankle where you might be, you know, wanting to expand. Then the third step is to begin to consciously paint either symbols that you are getting, that you’re seeing everywhere. Like we’ve all said things like, wow, I’m seeing lotus flowers everywhere. I’m seeing infinity symbols. Or I’m seeing owls or bears, or whatever, you know, hummingbirds. I had three hummingbirds this week come up and fly right in front of my face. Paint yourself a hummingbird, and the process of painting the hummingbird, it’s like tuning into the frequency of the hummingbird.

If you look up the symbolism of hummingbirds, every animal, every symbol you can think of, there’s so much meaning to it. Hummingbirds are a huge symbol of joy. It’s vibration because they flap their wings so quickly. As you paint, you’re going to magnetize to yourself thoughts or musings or guidance for yourself, basically from yourself. Instead of looking outside of yourself for the answers, go within and you’re going to be offered a guarantee, like different things you could do to generate more of the vibration of joy, how to focus on the sweetness in life.

The other thing is that you can be painting at the canvas and all of a sudden, it’s like there’s an elephant. Oh my gosh, there’s an elephant. So I’ll tell people a lot of times, just keep painting that freedom layer. I do have watercolor courses and love watercolor. Acrylics are my main medium because you can layer and paint over and over. So we’re layering words of intention and sacred symbols and numerology and all kinds of things into the painting to energetically create into our life experience what it is we want to expand, to attract whatever. If you want a new house, paint the house with words underneath it like I love my house, it makes me feel safe and secure, it expresses me. I see nature from my window. That’s going to help you attract the house because what we focus on expands and what you focus on becomes magnetized to yourself. Sometimes you see a symbol from within the canvas, sometimes it’s coming at you. Sometimes, and I’ll do this not infrequently, but I’ll put out to people like ask for a sacred symbol that will help align you with what you want. In my book, Rise Above is full of symbols for that reason.

If you want to access more of your own inner wisdom, conviction, like, why am I here? I want to understand this. Painting an owl might be a great prescription for you because owls can see things in the dark that nobody else can see. It’s going to help you perceive. It’s also a symbol of wisdom and empowerment. Working with symbols tunes you into all the ways that we’re all being guided through symbols. The logical, rational brain is more like a language, spoken word, written word. The intuitive, creative, oneness, love-based side of us that loves the mystery and is the part of you that’s going to take steps into new life experiences processes more symbolically.

If you’re seeing hummingbirds everywhere, you might also be someone who’s been thinking like, I need change in my life, I want something different. The hummingbirds are coming to you to say you want to raise your vibration, you want to do things that light you up, and then you will attract more and more of that. If something in your life is out of alignment, don’t focus on the thing that is out of alignment. Focus on all the things that are in alignment, including like, wow, going to bed at 10 PM, that is super in alignment. Opening the refrigerator door to get what I’m wanting to cook for dinner is super in alignment. You just nurture those feelings of alignment.

Symbols connect you on a much broader level to this feeling of being guided and supported. Our brains, of all the millions of data that we’re processing every second, 80-85 percent of it is visual. What you’re attracted to colors, symbols, images, animals, is information and it’s not logical. You can listen to your logical brain and be like, okay, whatever, try it. It’s pretty incredible. You can just say, show me how this simple thing works and just pay attention to what comes up. In quantum physics, they’ve proven that if something repeats itself more than once, you’re being called to go that direction, whether it’s reading a book, calling somebody, or exploring, searching something online or whatever.

That’s been scientifically proven. Nothing’s random. Tuning people into that, you can feel how mentally, emotionally, spiritually, going from this separate, fear-based, I have to protect myself, this dual us versus them, good, bad, how that could wear on a nervous system, as opposed to like my gosh, I’m seeing mice everywhere. What is up with mice and Googling it and being like it’s just about so-and-so. All of a sudden, it’s like wow, there’s more going on here, I’m not alone. It happens over and over. It’s just exercising this part of our awareness.

As someone is reading today…how do they get started? What would you suggest for them?

Whitney Freya: On my website, there’s the Life Artist Masterclass. That’s a free class. You don’t even have to paint in it. People have journaled. There are five symbols that I take you through, so you’re learning about these symbols and how they can guide you. The videos are me out in the snow next to a creek. I live in this beautiful area, so it’s super entertaining and it introduces you to kind of this language of symbols. People have watched it and may feel called to doodle the symbol, maybe pull out those watercolors, whatever, but that’s a great first step. My YouTube channel has an open studio playlist you can watch. The Rise Above Transformational Painting Challenge is my new online course. It’s $88. It takes you through painting. I invite you to paint on a large canvas because that’s so triggering.

It’s easier painting big actually. With the acrylic practice that I have, I encourage you to paint over and over the same canvas, so you don’t have to paint the thing perfectly and then the canvas is done. I have a canvas behind me that has hung in my kitchen since 2012. It’s probably been 20 different paintings, and we just keep painting over and over. I used to have my kids, my son. I have three kids, my youngest who turns 21 today. There would be paints that I’ve been using on the kitchen island, which was also the studio, and part of how I kept him creatively fit was I’d be like, Mason, go put this leftover paint on the make your mark canvas, and he’d just go over there and like, just paint, just paint to get rid of the color. I was nurturing his creative spirit just by doing that. Expanding your creativity, this is another really important point, to develop your creativity, doing anything creative is going to expand your creative capacity.

Your creativity does not judge. That’s the logical, linear, fear-based side of you that’s judging. Your creativity loves everything you do. Just doodling with color, you could get a canvas and do nothing but, I’m feeling magenta today. Get out magenta and white, magenta and yellow, and just paint magenta on the canvas. That is literally doing the exact same thing as if you’re trying to paint an owl or trying to paint something. It’s so easy to nurture. We’ve been told this story that you got to go to art school, you got to learn how to draw, you got to have things in perspective, you got to know how to shade where the light source is coming from. Great things to know. You don’t have to know any of it to get the benefits that will directly impact your life.

I’m all about practical magic. None of this is just for fun. It’s fun, but I want my clients to experience radical change in their lives, little radical, big radical, whatever. It wants to impact your life. It’s so easy to do. It just takes putting the brush to the canvas or the paper.

You have a new program called Creative Frequency Coaching Training. Talk to us about that. Who is that for? What would they learn? When is that coming out?

Whitney Freya: Any of you in the life coaching, business coaching, anything like that, any self-improvement, I’ve had yoga teachers, reiki masters, yoginis take this course. It is for you who are also passionate about empowering and supporting people on their expanding, transformational self-reclamation journey. It’s a modality that you can use in working with clients one-on-one, group clients, retreats, anything like that because it’s an experience. We learn infinitely better, deeper, we integrate teachings more when there is an experience connected to it. So you can take anything. Over the last 28 years, I’ve painted to Deepak Chopra’s seven spiritual laws of success. I’ve got a course that I’m offering as part of another event right now painting the seven laws of the universe, working on being more detail-oriented. If you’re working on being more wild and free, if you’re intending to love yourself, self-love, any of those things, you can do that at the canvas. You take it to the canvas and, intentionally, the practice is not complicated. It doesn’t depend on painting techniques or skills.

The people I’ve trained in my coaching up until now are often people that just themselves found this painting practice had so much positive influence in their own lives that they want to be able to turn around and offer it to others. I did start the Creatively Fit Coaching Training in 2010. As of 2024, the Creative Frequency Coaching is the newly expanded rebranded. It’s actually a completely new training to reflect more of another passion of mine, which is inseparable around energy and frequency.

Any final encouragement?

Whitney Freya: I feel called to say this: I don’t paint every day. I’m also a paraglider, and I’ve raised three creative kids. Many people where I live don’t even know I teach painting online. They just know I have a flexible schedule and I’m often flying in the sky and doing various things.

This isn’t about painting to get better at painting. It’s about painting to get better at living. It’s about loving your day, loving what’s in your head, loving the people you’re attracting, and feeling the courage you have. That’s the result of this painting practice. So lean in, and get curious.