Exploring the Intersection of Creative Expression, Dreams, and Ecological Storytelling.
Detail of "Mandala - Seeds of the Dream Teacher" ink and waterclor. 2023, Ed Tajchman.
Detail of "Prana Hawk" watercolor and acrylic. 2020, Ed Tajchman.
Edward Tajchman: intuitive and embodied creativity guide, visual artist, storyteller, dreamworker, yogi, and mythopoetic ecologist.
Ed Tajchman is an art-based soul-language facilitator. Dreams, creative expression, and connection to the living Earth are three of the concepts he works with most; acting as a creative guide for people to uncover their own paths to centeredness and well-being.
Storytelling both oral and visual, relationship to community, our environment, and our deepest selves are indelibly intertwined and can be developed into what can be called a language of our souls. We work together to weave strands of intuition, imagination and symbolism that can lead us to direct experience of our individual gifts and the wholeness that resides in each one of us.“It’s like magic, you see a vision in your dream, and in a contemplative state recreate this image into creative expression in a new moment. And then the image is here in this waking world acting as a kind of bridge. A living entity coming from soul, the soul that is imagination and connected to the soul of the world”.
About
Edward Tajchman is a visual artist, aspiring art therapist/mental health counselor, writer, researcher, yogi and ecological storyteller. His experiences working and living on organic farms helped shape his understanding of our food system, perennial & regenerative agriculture, nutrition and the value of community.He completed a 200 hour hatha/foundational yoga teacher training program at the Circle Yoga Shala involving various meditation, breath-work, movement and alignment practices. He has an associates degree in liberal arts, and is currently an interdisciplinary major studying ecology, psychology and art therapy at Naropa University.A visual artist his whole life, he started practicing art more fervently while discovering his love and talent with visual arts in high school. He studied sculpture at Johnson County Community College which led to a large on-campus installation that remained on display for more than five years.His style contains elements of bold color, fluid concise design, storytelling, symbolism, playfulness, myth, ecology and storytelling. He has studied with artists in the Netherlands in addition to having more than ten years experience as a professional custom picture framer.He currently lives in Colorado, is originally from Shawnee, Kansas and has also spent time living in Missouri, Pennsylvania, Minnesota, Nairobi, Costa Rica, and the Netherlands. This diverse set of experiences has helped shape his world-view of seeing humanity as interconnected to plants, animals, each other and as integral parts of our landscapes and ecology.His approach to life and education involves a holistic, intuitive, interdisciplinary, and embodied model that sees all life and matter as an extension and expression of our local landscapes and the universe.CONTACT:
email: [email protected]
Instagram: @edtajchmanart
"1,000 Lotus Petals of the Sykes' Monkey". Watercolor and acrylic. 2020, Ed Tajchman.
"Elephant Breath". Watercolor and acrylic. 2021, Ed Tajchman.
Major Influences on Edward's Work:
Mythologist Michael Meade in the video below speaks of logos and mythos. Logic, analysis, and quantitative statistics as being only part of the ways of perceiving reality. As humans we have narrative intelligence, mythos; we have vast potential in the realms of imagination and emotion. This is a mythological way of thinking embodying heart, the feeling of being alive, “When you feel the story you are living, the electricity in your life goes up” Meade tells us.There will be moments of our life that we are called into, where one fully awakens. In those moments the full electricity of life is present, as well as mythos, instincts and imaginal knowledge. This is a view of the human soul as the power of imagination. We need imagination now, more than we need studies and analysis, and Meade tells us - “soul is where imagination arises”.Cultivating soul in a time of mechanical thinking, and in the face of multiple looming crisies is part of this weaving. We find the thread, the part of the tapestry we are called to weave, what Meade calls “the individual connection to the soul of the world”, where soul is "bringing together".Michael Meade’s work in the realms of mythos, soul, and the deep potential of the imagination within us, is an ever-present reminder to the work I seek to do and to invite others into. To be able to expand this imaginative soul potential for the sake of cultivating wholeness within and unity in this world.
Stephen Harrod Buhner (1952 -2022) was an herbologist, author, and researcher. In the video below, “Living Touch of Wild Earth” he speaks of exploring soul threads. He explores the wisdom of the people of the Kalahari to explain soul threads as being ropes forming a grid of connection between living things.These can be heard as songs, lines of connection that take us to various places. We develop the ability to see and feel and hear these ropes, these lines of connection by developing a feeling sense. This is what can be called second eyes and second ears. These threads, are connected to our soul. And like fishing, sometimes these threads will be pulled upon by external forces and resonances.We feel these pulls not with the mind, but with the heart. This is attentive noticing of the soul. These pulls, are something important to who you are and developing feeling sense, we learn to track meaning through the world based on these resonances. Cooperation is a fundamental way that ecology and life operates, not competition. So at the root of our conceptions needs to be this understanding.This work resonates deeply with my own. By developing contemplative creative practices we learn to tune into the chords, the threads present in our dreams, around us and in our environment. These threads lead us to the work we are called to do and leads us to cooperative community structures.
Cecilia Vicuña is an artist and poet. In this short video she speaks about nature being where her art comes from. She also speaks about how the creative powers of women, their libraries and art studios have always been around her and have been a big influence on her life. Women are the ones who care for water, earth, air and soil. The wind moves and caresses and senses us as much as we are sensing the air. Nature is alive. We are nature.She acknowledges the precariousness of life and beauty. We are nature and we are not just individuals. We are the environment, we are a group as humans and a group with the Earth, and this is a fundamental way to tune into the reality of who we are. Much more so than viewing ourselves just as individuals. Her work could be called eco-feminism.This is a concept that explores how historically both women and nature have been grouped together, and made subordinate to men and analytical ways of knowing. So we work to construct new conceptions where women and nature are both valued as the essential keepers and sources of life that they are, that we all are. Holders of deep, essential wisdom. Her work is a form of ecological storytelling in this sense, that comes into this world as visual art, paintings, and poetry.This work relates to mine in that ecological storytelling through creative expression involves understanding that women and nature are at the core of who we all are, the source of life.
"Golden Buffalo". Watercolor and acrylic. 2019, Ed Tajchman
"Winged-Tiger with Blooming Lotus". Watercolor and ink. 2020, Ed Tajchman.
Coursework and Experiences:
Shawnee Mission North High School, 1996. Studied in a broad foundation of the visual arts.Johnson County Community College: Associate of Liberal Arts
2022. Studied the humanities, sculpture, philosophy, environmental science and ethics, world cultures, psychology, eastern religions and anthropology.Circle Yoga Shala, Jaspar, Arkansas, 200-hour Hatha and Foundational Yoga Teacher Training, 2021.Current - Naropa University - Interdisciplinary studies: psychology, art therapy and ecology. Coursework including contemplative art, gaian systems, psychology of dreaming, design thinking, and psychology of mindfulness meditation.Lived in Kenya for one year, also traveled to Rwanda, Cote d'Ivoire, Ethiopia, Spain, the Netherlands, and Costa Rica 2021-2022.Land Steward at the Organic Compound, a regenerative organic permaculture farm in Faribault, Minnesota, 2018 - 2020.Farmhand at Open Hands Organic Farm in Northfield Minnesota, 2018-2019.Artist-in-Residence of Toyisme Studio in the Netherlands, 2015, and 2022Research: Studies of the origins and function of mandalas in Eastern religions, ecological function of early storytelling of homo-sapiens, spiritual components of Sàmi, Ojibwe, and Māori cultures, various dreamwork modalities of psychology and world cultures.
In this short video, Edward Tajchman explains what being a creative soul language guide means.
© Edward Tajchman. All rights reserved.
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