Art and Personal Transformation: What If Fear Is Pointing Toward Your Breakthrough?
- 7 days ago
- 6 min read
I woke up in the middle of the night completely rattled.
In my dream, I was being relentlessly pursued through my house by a giant black-and-white snake. I ran from it, tried to remove it, and even called Todd in for reinforcements, but no matter what I did, it kept coming back.
This is important context: I am terrified of snakes. Always have been. I respect Mother Nature deeply, but reptiles are strictly not my varietal.
Once I was fully awake—and reasonably certain there was not a giant snake loose in the bedroom—I did what any curious, slightly frazzled, 53-year-old artist would do: I looked up what the dream might mean.
One interpretation suggested that a black-and-white snake can represent opposing forces, stark contrasts, transformation, and the shedding of an old phase of life. Whether dreams are messages from somewhere beyond us or simply our minds sorting through what we have been carrying, this one felt less like a prediction and more like a mirror.
It made me think about the connection between art and personal transformation, the season of expansion I am experiencing, and two paintings from my newest series that suddenly felt even more alive: Open Circuit and Conduit.
When Fear Returns Just as Life Begins to Expand
For much of my life, fear and scarcity were my default settings. I worried about money, panicked about my health, questioned whether I mattered, and tried to fix everything for everyone around me. I became very good at shrinking myself to fit inside rooms that were never designed to hold all of me.
Chronic illness eventually changed the direction of my life and led me to retire from teaching in 2023. At first, that change felt like an ending. Slowly, however, it revealed an artistic life I had not yet allowed myself to imagine.
The transformation did not happen because fear disappeared. It happened because I stopped allowing fear to make every decision.
Even now, as new opportunities arrive and my work moves into larger spaces, an old voice occasionally whispers, “What if it all goes away?” But I no longer mistake that voice for truth. I recognize it as an old protective instinct—one that may have served me once but no longer fits the life I am building.
That is the skin I am shedding.
I am learning to trust the artist I have become, the life I am creating, and the possibility that abundance does not have to be followed by disaster. I am learning that I can be grateful without bracing for loss, ambitious without apologizing, and visible without making myself smaller for the comfort of others.
Damn it, I am enough.
Art and Personal Transformation: The Story Behind Open Circuit and Conduit
My series, Through Me: Where Wonder Finds a Way, emerged from a growing understanding that I do not need to control every part of the creative process. I can listen. I can respond. I can allow the work to become a conversation rather than forcing it toward a predetermined conclusion.
Two paintings in particular hold the energy of this transformation.
Open Circuit: Choosing Possibility Over Protection
Open Circuit
60 × 48 inches | Acrylic and Mixed Media on Canvas
Through Me: Where Wonder Finds a Way
For years, my inner circuit was partially closed by worry and self-protection. I wanted possibility, but I also wanted guarantees. I wanted to grow, but I wanted to know exactly where that growth would lead before taking the first step.
Unfortunately, wonder does not operate by appointment.
Open Circuit represents the moment we choose to remain receptive—to ideas, connection, intuition, creativity, and possibilities we cannot yet name. Its expansive scale and energetic movement reflect the charge that becomes available when we stop guarding every entrance and allow something unexpected to reach us.
Opening the circuit does not mean abandoning discernment or pretending fear no longer exists. It means fear is no longer the only voice allowed to speak.
Conduit: Allowing Something Larger to Move Through
Conduit
16 × 40 inches | Acrylic and Mixed Media on Canvas
Through Me: Where Wonder Finds a Way
If Open Circuit is about becoming receptive, Conduit is about allowing what arrives to move through us.
This painting speaks to surrender—but not the passive kind. Creative surrender requires attention, courage, and trust. It asks me to step out of my own way without disappearing from the process. I am still present, still making choices, and still responding to every layer, but I am no longer forcing the painting to prove that I know where it is going.
Conduit carries the visual pulse of that relationship. It reminds me that I do not have to manufacture every answer. Sometimes my work is simply to remain available, listen carefully, and respond honestly.
The Breakthrough May Begin as Discomfort
That snake in my dream was not quietly resting in the corner while I admired its symbolism. It was chasing me.
Perhaps that is what made the message feel so clear. The parts of ourselves we are ready to outgrow do not always leave politely. Old fear can become especially loud when we are standing at the edge of something expansive.
Recently, I have stepped into a season filled with opportunities that once would have terrified me: a six-month ArtsFairfax showcase at Springfield Town Center, invitations to lead community art experiences, the opportunity to place work with Consignment House Gallery, and another appearance at the Glen Echo Park Labor Day Art Show.
These opportunities did not arrive because I waited passively for the universe to drop them into my lap. They required me to make the artwork, send the message, enter the room, ask the question, and risk being seen. But they also required something subtler: the willingness to believe I could participate in my own expansion.
Sometimes what feels like fear is not a warning to turn back. Sometimes it is evidence that we have reached the boundary of an old identity.
The breakthrough may be waiting just beyond it.
What Original Art Can Hold for Us
One of the most meaningful things about abstract art is that the viewer does not need to share the artist’s exact experience to feel connected to the work.
You may never dream about a giant snake. You may not see a circuit or a conduit when you look at these paintings. You may instead see a threshold, a surge of courage, a memory, or an energy you cannot quite put into words.
That is where the relationship between artwork and collector becomes deeply personal.
Original art can become a visual anchor inside a home or workplace. It can remind us of a promise we have made to ourselves, a season we survived, or a possibility we are finally ready to pursue. The meaning does not remain fixed inside the canvas. It continues unfolding through the person who lives with it.
Open Circuit and Conduit began with my story, but they are not limited by it. They leave room for yours.
What Are You Ready to Outgrow?
Maybe the thing frightening you is genuinely asking you to proceed carefully. But perhaps it deserves a second question:
Is this fear protecting me—or is it trying to keep me inside a life I have already outgrown?
Growth rarely arrives looking tidy or reassuring. Sometimes it looks like uncertainty. Sometimes it feels like standing in front of a blank canvas without knowing the next mark. Occasionally, apparently, it looks like being chased through your house by an enormous black-and-white snake at three in the morning.
But art and personal transformation rarely move in straight lines. Both ask us to listen, respond, release control, and remain open long enough for something new to emerge.
I am still shedding. I am still listening. I am still learning how to trust what wants to move through me.
And for the first time, I am not running from the life that is trying to find me.
“Growth requires us to shed the comfortable skin of who we used to be so we can fully inhabit the extraordinary being we are becoming.”
Discover the Art
Explore Through Me: Where Wonder Finds a Way and discover the painting that speaks to the transformation unfolding within your own life.
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With gratitude, joy, and peace,
Precious Burger
Contemporary Mixed Media Artist
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