This month we feature Mandy Peterson, a multi-talented woman when it comes to the creative arts genre.
By Belle Salisbury
Not only is she one of our Bellesprit columnists, but she is also the inspiration and creator of our original 2012 magazine web site layout. The Cards from the Bellesprit’s Card of The Week are drawn from two healing divination decks Mandy has designed: Path To Emotional Freedom Deck (for use with EFT and Chakra Clearing) and The New World Healing Deck.
Mandy has been connected to her creative energies since she was a young child and enjoyed expressing herself through her drawings. She said, “As a kid, I always knew that I wanted to be an artist when I grew up. I felt so happy when I was doing art.” Her love of the arts continued through her young adult years.
Her early passion was with anything magical. She was drawn to “Xanadu”, “I Dream of Genie”, Unicorns, Pegasus, “Bewitched;” anything that allowed her to embrace her love of the fantasy realm. Mandy was widely known for her love of art that, by her senior year in school, she was voted student’s Counsel Arts Representative among her peers.
Upon graduating from high school Mandy really wanted to attend Ryerson University to pursue Art and Design. However, her parents were not willing to pay for this type of schooling. Her mother wanted her to focus more on academic studies, so Mandy agreed to study history at Queen’s University instead. While at University, she stopped working with her art for a short time in order to focus on her studies.
All would not necessarily go as planned. After her third year of university Mandy became quite exhausted, burned-out, and unable to continue her studies. It was during this time that she turned to her art once again, which she feels was a large part of beginning her own healing process allowing her to do something she felt was worthwhile. She combined her love of spirituality with her desire to work with others in their own healing process utilizing her own inner gifts that lay dormant throughout her childhood.
Mandy attended a pastel workshop and fell in love with the modality of pastels and her art began to flourish again flowing through her as if channeled by some unknown desire. Her renditions were displayed in several locations; the Town Hall, small various restaurants and the Merrickeville Gallery.
Mandy combined her artistic talents with her love of writing and began creating greeting cards. She entered her greeting cards in an art contest in The Artists Magazine and won first place with an award of $1000. This led her to really open her creativity and rendering more greeting card designs.
Since about 1990, most of Mandy’s art and poetic writings have been focused on spirituality which is demonstrated in her creations displaying Angels, church scenes, light houses and her love of water. She does prefer drawing scenes with people over landscapes, yet often blends the two.
Mandy met a woman who was a Reiki Master who became instrumental in her path of healing. Julie Desmarias was very into animal totems and asked Mandy to create a collection of totem animal greeting cards for her clinic. This evolved into doing portraitures of people with their animal totems displayed around them as a living affirmation for each subject. She learned she could heal people with her art.
By 1998 she had created three collections of greeting cards: Mouse Tales, Totems Cards, and Simply Samantha, of which a few have been published by greeting card companies. She dreamed of doing more with her artwork and greeting cards and began freelancing, visiting galleries, submitting her work to greeting card and children’s book publishers, marketing and a lot of promotional leg work in hopes of getting her work noticed. She soon realized that her interest began to flow more toward her love of healing and helping others. With the help of referrals, her psychic business began to take off. Her ability to do readings and heal others spread quickly within her circle of friends bearing fruit for her labor of love.
Mandy enjoyed writing children’s books for her daughter and adding the illustrations to accompany her story. Because Mandy had no money at the time, the books were printed in limited quantities using Mandy’s home printer.
Mandy still renders her artwork with her favorite modalities: pastels and acrylic pointillism (a method of designing art with dots). Writing continues to be a strong focus on her spiritual path often sharing her musings on her web site: www.mysticmandy.com.
As a columnist with Bellesprit, she has shared many of her inspirational writings in our magazine. One of my favorites is The Rainbow Bridge and the White Buffalo Calf Woman found in our May 2012 issue. This article included a piece of her original artwork titled “The Rainbow Woman.”
Mandy has turned her focus to writing a book with channeled messages from spirit as a guide for mankind as we continue along our path of spiritual growth and evolution. She has not given it a title as yet but feels that will unfold as her work continues on the book.
After establishing her business as a psychic and an EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique) practitioner it is no surprise that Mandy’s keen eye for art began to flow into building web sites, creating banners and other design elements for her friends within the spiritual community. She has done a beautiful job with our own web site insuring that it flowed with the concept of our logo; beautiful spirit. It certainly resonates with exactly who Mandy is!
About the Author:
Belle Salisbury is the owner and Editor of Bellesprit. She has been a Spiritual Counselor for 41 years utilizing Clairvoyance, Clairsentience, and Clairaudience in her sessions bringing you guidance in your daily life. As a medium she is able to see and communicate with your Spirit Guides or departed loved ones bringing you communications of guidance, healing, validation, and closure. For more information or to book a session, visit her website at www.bellesalisbury.com.
