Medicine Festival 2026: Finding My Place Among the Visionary Artists

Artwork for the 2026 Medicine Festival poster

Painted by Autumn Skye

What does it take to BE an artist?
Do we consider this path to be a normal job?

I certainly don't. It ebbs and flows in ways that make it difficult to contain within the usual ideas of work, and I often ponder the fact that this is not a job I will one day retire from. It is part of my very ecosystem. To create is as natural to me as breathing, and I think my sanity would have been long gone if I had not learnt to offer myself to the Muse on a regular basis.

Despite this, trying to make a life as an artist within a world that is itself struggling to find equilibrium can be a difficult path to walk. The way art is consumed, discovered and supported has changed enormously, and over recent years there have certainly been moments when I have questioned how on Earth I am supposed to continue doing this.

This has perplexed and baffled me at times because, through my eyes, art and all forms of creative expression are some of the very things that make being human worthwhile.

Art awakens something in the world.

My heart will therefore always hold a deep prayer for the musicians, singers, writers, painters, makers and creatives of all kinds, that we each find our own way of continuing through changing times. Perhaps some of what we create is not even entirely for the eyes of this time, but for those who are still to come.

We are part of an interconnected web of life, and what we choose to create, say and participate in reaches far beyond the small circle we can immediately see.

Your art is needed.

I speak these words to encourage myself too, because I know how lonely the path of an artist can sometimes feel.

After a difficult period of questioning how I could sustainably continue bringing my art into the world, I found myself pleading for a new way of working, for different ways of engaging with people and allowing my paintings to exist beyond the walls of my studio.

I was speaking with a dear friend, herself a fellow artist, about the strange ways of the creative path when I said quite naturally, “I've been thinking about live painting at a festival. I think I'd like to give that a go.”

It wasn't something I had tried before, but something in me wanted to see how I might manifest it.

No sooner had I spoken these words than, literally a week later, an email arrived inviting me to consider displaying my artwork alongside some of the top visionary artists in the UK and internationally at Medicine Festival.

Well, my goodness.

Spirit was listening!

My heart pounded with excitement and then, almost immediately, panicked with fear.

I can't show up to something this big and prestigious.

No, really. I was scared of showing up.

You might think that with all of the published work I have done, exhibitions, books and years spent putting my creations into the world, I would somehow have all of this figured out.

I don't.

As a gentle hermit, the thought of being launched into a gathering of thousands of people while displaying some of the most intimate expressions of my inner world is incredibly intimidating.

But as my helping Spirits have reminded me many times, showing up to our sacred appointments is the first step towards allowing the Soul to fulfil its deeper purpose in life. We don't always know where the path might lead, but sometimes we simply have to muster enough courage to place one foot upon that royal road and see where it takes us.

No one said it was going to be easy though...

So I did it.

I said an unequivocal YES and allowed the lay of the land to begin revealing itself before me.

As is often the case when I say a wholehearted yes to something, there were hiccups and rough rides along the way, alongside other moments when I felt I was being guided to do absolutely nothing except be patient and wait.

This was the biggest exhibition I had prepared for in recent years, and creating a beautiful display of original artwork requires considerable investment. I am a watercolourist, which means mounting, framing, preparing prints and cards, maintaining stock and somehow anticipating what people might be drawn towards.

It brought me face to face once again with one of the riddles that can so easily capture an artist:

“What do people want, and how can I give them what they want?”

It sounds like a perfectly sensible business question.

But honestly, I don't believe that is entirely what artists came here to do.

We didn't come here simply to fulfil the needs of someone's kitchen wall.

We came here to give form to things that sometimes cannot be spoken. To channel potent visions that reach into places words cannot touch. To feel into the collective as well as the individual, transforming, questioning, witnessing and making visible something of the times we are living through.

We came here to meet the Muse of our times.

Not just to paint sweet moonlit bunnies or apples in a bowl.

Although, to be fair, I'm sure the world has room for those too.

Preparing for Medicine Festival therefore became an act of trust. I chose to invest deeply in the opportunity and trust the guidance I felt I had been given by Spirit.

And along the way, my Earth angels appeared.

These are the physical people who have consistently offered a steady hand throughout my life, and during those weeks they arrived with their own honeyed gifts of practical help, encouragement and support. I allowed myself to receive it because I knew that this too was part of the path being carved before me.

Don't give up.

Keep going.

Shortly before the final plans for the exhibition came together, everything became very real and I hit a wall of overwhelm.

My nervous system felt exhausted and my heart struggled to believe that everything was going to be okay. Somewhere deeper within me I knew that the sun would rise another day, as it always does, but anyone who has walked through those darker nights will know that seeing the way forward from inside them can be another matter entirely.

I reached out to my friend Jennifer Hawkyard, an accomplished illustrator and creative who has a wonderful ability to root down into the simplicity of practical guidance and grounded action.

She helped me find the path forward again.

Some of this involved remarkably ordinary things, like helping me choose and purchase a card stand. Some of it involved talking to the frightened parts of me until the mountain became a collection of smaller things that could actually be done.

I am a hermit by nature. Solitude and the comfort of my own space are not simply indulgences to me, they are an important part of the balance from which much of my deepest artwork emerges. As the festival grew closer and became increasingly real, every frightened part of me seemed determined to produce another reason why I couldn't possibly pull it off.

The ego can become an incredibly convincing force when it is frightened.

So I allowed myself to be supported by my Earth angels and fell into the arms of blind faith and trust.

All will be well.

And then, suddenly, it was August and Medicine Festival had arrived.

My artwork had already been sent ahead to the curator and was being installed within the Visionary Art Gallery, right beside the Indigenous art exhibition.

The fear I had carried for weeks had somehow shrunk into a small ball in my pocket. It was still there, but I was loving it so fiercely that it had little choice but to come along for the ride.

I approached the festival grounds by car. It was hot and dusty, the grass burnt to a crisp after one of the most sun-beaming summers I can remember, and even the car attendants had cloths over their faces and glasses protecting their eyes from the clouds of dust rising from the ground.

I was there with my soulmate in this lifetime, Larimar, who became my rock throughout the entire experience.

Larimar and I outside the Visionary Art Gallery tent at the Medicine Festival

Neither of us had attended Medicine Festival before, and we were incredibly excited. Music runs through both of our veins, so alongside the exhibition there were performers we were longing to see and an entire landscape of music, ceremony, creativity and community waiting to be explored.

Eventually I approached the Visionary Art Gallery, a great beige tent with fairy lights and its sleek sign standing outside.

Some of the artists, including Autumn Skye and Maxim All, had already set themselves up outside and were live painting for everyone to see. Outside our gallery sat a Tibetan Buddhist, Geshe Lama Ahbay Tulku Rinpoche,  like an illuminated guardian, blessing this creative space.

I felt as though I had landed in very good company.

When I entered the gallery, I wanted to remain undercover for a little while.

I wandered around looking at everyone else's work before revealing myself as one of the artists.

Wow.

There are very few words that adequately describe the immensity of the creative energy running through that tent. The artwork moved from deep psychedelic visions to gentle, whimsical and wistful feminine illustrations. There seemed to be a vessel of inspiration for every heart.

And then I found mine.

Six original watercolours, The Grandmothers, hung together upon the wall, with a collection of prints and greeting cards displayed opposite them.

I stood there taking it all in when I noticed something.

One of the paintings had no label.

This could mean only one thing.

She had already found her forever home.

And ironically, do you want to know which painting had sold?

Her title was:

She Who Returns Power.

I could not have written the synchronicity more perfectly if I had tried.

The first painting to leave reflected the very journey I had taken simply to get myself there. Through the fear, uncertainty, investment, vulnerability and every temptation to retreat back into the safety of my nest, I had been gathering my own power back into my heart so that I could wholeheartedly take up my space within this exhibition.

And there she was.

She Who Returns Power.

Gone before I had even arrived.

This painting is one of the previously unseen works from my upcoming oracle deck. I had wondered whether displaying these paintings before the deck itself had been published was too pre-emptive, but it was the Spirits of the deck who seemed most insistent that I bring them.

These paintings are the seeds of the deck and, for whatever reason, they needed to begin travelling beyond my studio.

Clive Hedger: Curator of this years Visionary Art Medicine Festival

Eventually, I met the other artists, the curator and the wonderful people helping to hold the gallery together.
And my heart knew something.

It had found home.

Not because these were people I already knew well. Most of them weren't.

But the shape of them felt familiar.

They were artists, through and through.

One of the lessons life seems determined to teach me repeatedly is that we must come to know something of our own shape so that we can recognise the places in which that shape is able to thrive.

When we spend too long surrounded by people or environments that do not understand our expression, it can begin to feel suffocating. Eventually we may even start believing that WE are somehow the wrong ones.

Perhaps we are not wrong.

Perhaps we simply haven't found the right ecosystem yet.

That is something I found at Medicine Festival.

I will be forever grateful to the curator, Clive Hedger, for somehow hearing the call and reaching out to root me into this beautiful gathering of artists.

I came home with one of Clive's artworks too, a piece in which I personally perceived the presence of an Aboriginal man, although its actual story comes from somewhere entirely different.

As I often say to people who adopt my own paintings, there is the story held by the artist and then there is the relationship that begins between an artwork and the person who receives it. Sometimes the viewer discovers something within an image that belongs to their own unfolding.

At the time, I simply knew there was something in this particular artwork that spoke very strongly to me.

Only afterwards did it feel like a gentle nod towards what was still to come.

Within days of returning home from Medicine Festival, I found myself receiving one of the most profound healing experiences of my life from Ngangkari women visiting from Central Australia.

That, however, became another story entirely.

You can read my experience of receiving Ngangkari healing here.

During my time at the festival, I also had the opportunity to sit in circle with some wonderfully big-hearted people and Elders visiting from different parts of the world. There was so much happening that it would have been impossible to experience everything, particularly while spending time talking with people and tending to my work within the gallery.

I did manage to sit in one of the Shipibo-Konibo circles with Don Mateo Arevalo Maynas, where he spoke about the healing songs known as icaros.

The sun beamed down upon us during those days and there was a gentleness amongst the people that I found deeply moving. Song and dance seemed to ripple naturally through the festival, and somewhere amongst it all I began to feel as though I had returned to a great hidden community I had been longing for without quite knowing where to find it.

The music and performances were extraordinary. We moved between tents and stages, past lovingly crafted earthen altars and gathering places. Because of the extreme heat there were no fires burning, so the fire spaces had instead been formed with earth and water, remaining as places where people could pause, make offerings and give thanks.

One of the performances that moved me most deeply came from Snow Raven (Suor) – a Sakha (Yakut) vocalist and sonic innovator bridging the worlds between her ancient Northern indigenous roots with that of futures’ music.

There was something about her presence, voice, drumming and relationship with the natural world that brought the entire experience into a place I could feel within my body.

As she came onto the stage, I watched a heron circle overhead. Not long afterwards a great cloud gathered above us, and through my own eyes it seemed to take the shape of a raven.

Of course it did!

These are the moments when my own relationship with Spirit becomes very alive. I experience the natural world as constantly communicating, and whether another person would have seen simply a bird and a cloud did not really matter. For me, there was something happening in that moment that I recognised.

I felt very blessed to witness Snow Raven and the power of her performance.

Photograph of Snow Raven on stage

You might just make out the shape of me, kneeling, head bowed, with my palms against the earth at the fire altar.

It was here that I chose to make one of my own offerings to the land.

I had been waiting for a moment that felt right.

Night was beginning to fall and darkness was spreading across the festival while Snow Raven remained luminous upon the stage. I reached into my bag and found the little offering pouch I had prepared before leaving home.

Whenever I travel somewhere that feels significant, I like to carry a small pouch of offerings for the land.

Inside were two of my beloved spirit plants: lavender flowers that I tend each year in my garden, and dried tobacco leaves that I had also grown at home in my Soulbird garden.

Both had been grown with love.

There is something important to me about offering plants I have actually tended with my own hands. They carry something of my home, my relationship with the Earth and the story of the place from which I have travelled.

As Snow Raven's drumming rose in volume and power, I stood and approached the fire keeper, the one tending the altar to ask whether I might leave my offering.

They welcomed me forward, breathing in the sweet and musky scent of the lavender before gesturing towards the entrance of the circular altar.

And so I offered (as seen in the photograph above).

Prayers into the Earth, plants from my own garden, gratitude for the land holding all of us there.

∞

By the time I returned to the art gallery, evening had fully arrived and with it came an entirely new crowd of people.

The tent was full.

So I got to it.

I tended to my little corner of the gallery, chatting, talking and sharing, and oh what a joy it was to speak with so many like-minded souls.

I thank each and every one of you who came over to speak with me.

You thrilled me with stories about where the artworks were heading, who they were being gifted to and what you had seen or felt within them. You reminded me of the impact an artwork can have once it leaves my hands, something I so rarely get to witness when a painting or print is purchased quietly online and disappears through the postal system into a life I may never see.

There I was able to witness some of those threads connecting.

Artist.

Artwork.

Person.

Story.

And then the artwork goes onwards and becomes part of something I may never fully know.

Eventually the final day of Medicine Festival arrived.

I stayed until sometime after two in the morning before packing the remaining paintings, prints, cards and all the little pieces of my temporary art world back into their boxes and beginning the journey home through the darkest part of the night.

By the time I finally climbed into bed it was around five in the morning, and dawn was already returning to the sky.

I lay there with an enormous smile upon my face.

All of it had been worth it.

The preparation, the fear, the investment, the moments when I wondered whether I could do it at all.

Of course there is a business side to being an artist and yes, that matters. Artists need to eat. We need roofs above our heads, materials in our studios and enough resources to continue creating.

But what I carried home from Medicine Festival was something much harder to place a price upon.

Connection.
∞

To other creatives and artists. To people carrying knowledge and stories from very different parts of this Earth. To music and creativity. To the people who stood in front of my paintings and allowed themselves to feel something.

And simply to the people.

The people.

People like you and me, each one of us a single moving part within this strange and holy whole.

Perhaps that was what I needed reminding of most.

The great wheel of our world would not turn without you.

Yes, you.

It would not turn without you.

∞

A note of gratitude

For my Earth angels

I would like to name my Earth angels here in written form, so that my thanks may resound in firm places in this world.

Thank you, Alex, dear Clan brother and elder, for seeing me through the eyes of Love, and for being my Medici!!

Thank you, Jenny, for bringing my heart back into a place of balance when I believed myself to be sinking. Your friendship will forever brighten my heart.

To Judi, Clan sister, thank you for being the guardian of my artworks when I could not be, and for helping me reclaim my power by reminding me to take matters into my own hands rather than leaving them in the hands of someone else.

To Larimar, thank you for holding space through my ever-changing emotional states of being, for helping me navigate them, and for loving me just the way that I am.

To both of my biological sisters, Susannah and Davina, thank you for believing in me and for helping me go for gold! Your belief in me has carried more weight than you may ever know.

To Clive, thank you for seeing something in my art that allowed a pathway to be drawn between my studio and the festival.

And to the land of Wasing Estate, thank you for holding me and the thousands of people who gathered there with such grace, and for teaching us something of a sacred way forward.