Carol Dearborn is a visual artist, initiated shaman in the Peruvian Inca tradition, President Emeritus of the Sufficiency Foundation, Reiki Master Teacher, and trained facilitator of the Pachamama Alliance Awakening the Dreamer, Changing the Dream Symposium. Carol has more than 30 years' experience teaching art and many forms of energetic healing. She is the 3rd generation of women painters in her family to use art as a force for healing, transformation, and world peace. Her mission is to help awaken modern cultures to our freedom and responsibility to create a sustainable presence on Earth through the evolution of human consciousness and particularly our connection to the sacred in all forms.

Carol gives gallery talks, classes and workshops for artists, educators, spiritual groups, and the general public. Offered in conjunction with her exhibits, these talks and workshops often center on Earth-honoring principles and practices, tools for exploring human creativity, and the importance of art in an evolving human consciousness of reverence and responsibility for all life. 

To see a list of currently scheduled exhibition talks or workshops, please click here.  
To schedule a new event please contact [email protected].

How is art essential to sustainable life on Earth?


From earliest shamanic stone carving and cave painting, the history of visual art is the history of humans depicting both consensual physical reality and the invisible world of myth and spirit.  Artists have shown us the sacred and the mundane; they have both exalted tradition and attempted to destroy it.  Bringing into form that which has never existed before, art is the intersection of the known and what could be called the Great Mystery—an infinity of unknown and unknowable cosmic forces. This intersection is the inspired place of play in a third domain of receptivity to the forces of change.  Imagining and working in this domain, artists in any medium become shamanic practitioners, opening the door to a new consciousness.  Particularly today, when old orders are failing and Earth herself is in flux, art has the responsibility to reawaken us to an evolving relationship with all life on our planet.  This exhibition talk explores how, from the choice of materials used to the role of the artist in giving voice to new thought, artmaking is essential to the human endeavor of creating an ecologically and socially sustainable, as well as spiritually expansive world.

How do Earth’s sacred places offer us access to the power, inspiration, and vitality to shift consciousness and create an epoch of responsibility?


This exhibition and talk documents research expeditions to sacred places and explores their vital relationship to human consciousness and the future of all life.  Whether a remote mountaintop or a great cathedral or mosque, places that have received sustained human reverence over hundreds or thousands of years are uniquely potent portals between worlds.  Human consciousness, the mirror and voice of an ever-evolving Universe, interacts in these places with spirit and the innate energies of our planet to create channels to the divine and sources of inspired action now and in the creation of an enlightened tomorrow.  Where Heaven Meets Earth awakens audiences via the exhibit, talk, and workshops to a multi-sensory experience of the power and possibility inherent in our interactions with sacred centers on Earth, and our responsibility to revere and protect sacred wildness everywhere.

What is the role of shamanic technologies in shifting the consciousness of the modern world?

How can we of the modern world begin to shift into a consciousness of sustainability that will lead to Earth-honoring actions?  Simple shamanic exercises help us embody such ways of being, re-awakening our natural ability to feel, intuit, and connect with all aspects of the world around us.  Exercises such as creating outdoor mandalas, learning to converse with natural life forms, the use of meditation or journeying, and many other practices are offered—either as a 2-3 hour class or a series of workshops according to the needs of participants.  These workshops are particularly effective for embodying ideas and sensations awakened by the exhibition talks.  Such experiential opportunities allow participants to bring their new or expanded awareness into daily practices that enable a shift to conscious actions in support of sustainable living, intimately connected to an awareness of the need for the preservation of and reverence for the natural world.

As humans, the act of creating—from the smallest aspect of our day to long-range projects of wide significance—is both our birthright and our greatest responsibility.  The Creativity & Shamanism© series is an ongoing exploration of the crucial role of indigenous knowledge, art, and shamanic celebration in the future of life on Earth.

What does it take to live a life of ongoing joy—in continual connection with Universal energy and participating fully in the expansion of human consciousness?  How can we best fulfill our essential nature:  loving, serving, and contributing authentically to our communities and our world?


For thousands of years people have explored the intersection between life’s natural creative processes and the creative capacity of the human mind.  When these mighty forces work together a state of continual miracle and magic is available to us.  Over the course of this weekend we’ll use modern and shamanic tools to explore our dependence on Source, the context of sufficiency and radical gratitude, the everyday practical tools of creation, and the revelation of a balanced life of creation, devotion, and action.

How do artists live and create from a consciousness of ecological responsibility that is simultaneously committed to the principal of Beauty?

Artists in all mediums are faced with the ongoing challenge of conceiving and integrating subjects, ideas, and feelings with physical materials in ways that have never existed before.  What will be the means for any new message?  How will it be effectively conveyed?  How do fundamental principles of Order and Beauty, exemplified by the sacred geometry of natural forms, affect our lives and vision?  In intuiting and evaluating these questions it is important—now more than ever before—to consider the impact our choices may have on the future of our world and other life forms. In this workshop the techniques of textile painting invented by Carol Dearborn are taught within an atmosphere of awareness of these implications, as well as our overarching challenge, as humans, to live in Beauty and appreciation of all life.

Ten percent of proceeds is given to organizations that support global sustainability, such as the Pachamama Alliance, the Sufficiency Foundation, Andean Research Institute, and the Trustees of Reservations.

Few things power the human imagination more than a sense of mystery.  Mystery inspires reverence, and terror, bringing us to vitality and life through a feeling of utter awe at the forces of Earth and cosmos,
-Lauren de Boer - "The Shamanic Response," Earthlight