Louis' intent is to light the fire of creativity that is already burning in all of our hearts. In the past this has meant creating a body of artwork inspired by some of the world?s leading visionaries as well as the views and aspirations of everyday people that will inspire humankind to leap from the edge of global chaos into a world of greater harmony and integration. Louis believes art and creativity have the power to transform how people see themselves and the world. The art that emerges from SoulScaping provides a “jumping off point” for each of us to explore our own interior SoulScape. Louis' experience has convinced him that the images we hold of ourselves, our world, and each other, completely govern everything we do. If we can find a way to change these images, we can change everything.

The Balance

Beyond the Opposites

Caught in the Flow of Grace II

Caught in the Flow of Grace III

Realization of a New Beginning

The Human Story Nine

The Human Story Six

The Human Story Ten

The Human Story One

How do you describe what you do?
I have developed a process called SoulScaping. As a professional artist, I have what I call Soulscaping Circles. Each circle has six to eight people. We work around intentional themes such as how you feel at a moment when you are fully alive, how you perceive your unique way of being, or discovering your authentic resilience. We make the return journey, capturing the images and feelings with paint, honoring the subconscious. Sometimes it’s good for those subconscious elements to be observed and not neglected any more. The best way to explore this is what is now known as The Soul Alignment Programme.

SoulScaping is a creative process that allows you to reimagine yourself and recreate your life. You don’t need an artistic bone in your body to do so. You need no artistic experience. You may not be attracted to being an artist, you may bypass creating art due to anxiety, but you can’t escape being a creative being. There’s a difference between creativity and artistry. Even noticing is an act of creativity.

I’m excited about the work, because of the value in capturing and documenting the images and feelings that come to mind when exploring the themes. What is revealed is invited to be integrated and allows people to recreate themselves. That integration and recreation is especially transformative for spiritual practitioners.

How did you connect with Jeff Carreira and The Mystery School?
I was familiar with Jeff’s work, and when I heard about a 7-day silent retreat in Copenhagen, Denmark, I signed up and went. At the time, I was in the middle of a 10-panel project called The Human Story Collection. The theme of the project was human evolution and I couldn’t envision panels 9 and 10. I knew I had to have something released inside me to see those panels. I experienced powerful imaginings during the retreat. It helped me understand how closely related imagination and mind are.

The connection with Jeff’s work is that, in the art process I work through with people, I give them permission to make as many mistakes as possible. In a way, it’s the practice of no problem. It’s impossible to make a mistake in the creative process. I believe that we are all natural-born creatives. We all experience the joy of creation when there is no attachment to the outcome.

I feel called to active imagination, and to spread the transmissions that occur in the SoulScaping process of creating art. The number of people exposed to the process matters less than that I am getting opportunities to practice articulating the ideas behind the process. Shaping the articulation is the same as shaping a piece of art. I trust the flow of evolution as I practice articulating the process. I’m excited to share my process with the Members Circle.

How do you define SoulScaping?
I developed this by my own series of happy accidents. My dad was, and is, an artist. He taught me techniques, and pointed out nice things in my art when I was a kid. I was kicked out of art college, so my methods are self-taught. When I was 23 and a manager at a website design firm, working in IT, I had a massive upwelling, and realized that was not what I was here for. The company was in a downturn and was bought out by another company. At the time I was living and working with my boss, who was also my mentor and spiritual mentor. He suggested I move to Scotland along with him, but I decided to take another path. I handed over my phone, keys, and laptop all at the same time. I realized I was free to travel, and for two years, I went to Thailand, Australia, Sumatra, Bali, and other countries. I tried to become a dive instructor, and through that experience, I learned the parallels between diving to ocean depths and plunging into the depths of one’s subconscious and one’s soul. At that time, I began making simple art. I also noticed and pondered many works of art, and felt deeply that most art ‘didn’t do it for me’. I then started asking people what a piece of art would look like that would ‘do it for them’. I’d ask them about the experience they wanted to have. If they wanted to feel passionate and alive, what color the painting would be to express that. I’d ask them what word they’d use to express their interior landscape. I’d then create the art that they described, and called the pieces ‘inner portraits’. People would tell me the pieces were amazing.

I began to explore personality types, color matching to Jungian typologies, and Ken Wilber, that sort of stuff. As my art evolved, I asked different questions, such as ‘what would light you up?’, and I’d create the work of art as an act of service. I experienced spiritual states, and the more I understood those states, the more I could put them into my art.

The next step was to work with companies. I was pushed to make money, and painted live at company events. Somebody asked me if I could run a corporate event and have the participants try SoulScaping. At first I said no; I felt protective about being ‘the artist’. I reconsidered and agreed to try a pilot session at a corporate leadership event, and it went extremely well. It was unexpected how people reacted to their own art, and unexpected the places I was then hired to run events at. It hit me and my wife profoundly when we found ourselves at the Four Seasons Kuda Huraa in the Maldives, then at the Four Seasons Serengeti. It was humbling to move from not knowing where the next month’s salary was coming from to making the effort to stand in my own value in being able to get the idea across to people about the potent value of their inner selves.

This trajectory was interwoven with my path of inner transformation. At 18, I was an Evangelical Christian, and realized I was in service to the divine. I had thought the art I had created then was expansive, but, in retrospect, I realize how much more expansiveness I am now aware of. My image of God evolved – which feels like sacrilege. When I was growing up, the people around me conveyed the message that you had to worship a certain image of God. It takes sustained courage and heartbreak to shed that belief. That’s been my journey the last 20 years. When I was younger, I would have said that my religion is right and yours is wrong, and it’s been terrifying to work through that. Your imagination and your creativity, exposed in art, can serve to evolve the picture you have of yourself. Creativity shines the light through the prism of yourself.

In what ways has the process you discovered shaped individuals and the world?
So many aspects of the world are stuck today: government, education, religion, for example. Creativity frees up those areas and gets them to flow. Kids today as adults will need to be adaptive, come up with new ideas, manage their energy, and solve complex problems. There is so much depression and anxiety related to our picture of the world…there’s potential in teaching young people how to access their imagination. Art is a ‘chinese doctor’ approach to anxiety and depression. By looking at a piece of art and finding meaning in it, you complete the painting.

To experience a slice of my work, get a timer and look at the image on this page (soulscaping.co) for 60 seconds, and then write down what you see in the provided text box. Click the link below the text box, and you will be sent to a page that walks you through the imaginal process. If you do create an image using that process, you are invited to post it to the page, and another person from The Mystery School who visits the page will comment on it. The images submitted by The Mystery School will be compiled into a mosaic. (Louis has previously compiled mosaics of art created by participants in his classes.)