Julie Hilsen (00:10.141)
Hello, dear friends, and welcome to another episode of Life of Love. We gather every week to explore our hearts’ curiosity, to look at how we’re living our life of love, whether it’s a bumpy day or a clear, soothing, soaring day. We honor each day as it presents itself and bring forth any messages for the highest good. And today, we’re getting creative on Life of Love. And it’s been fun. This season, we’ve had several artists and inspiring 

Julie Hilsen (00:38.141)
stories about how to follow your creative path. You know, and every day you realize there’s a creation when you really get into it. It doesn’t matter if you’re holding a brush or you’re playing music. It doesn’t have to be a traditional creative mode, but it can be the way you’re creating your life and showing up to create a life of love. So as I ramble, just have to explore that. And I have Heather Eck with me today. 

Julie Hilsen (01:08.457)
I said it right, right? Okay, good. Heather’s a dear soul. She’s not far. She’s up in Raleigh, North Carolina. So she’s joining us from there. And on this date, we’re having the the tropical storm, Helen coming through. So everyone’s sort of on, you know, this alert that things are gonna happen. But luckily we have good internet signal and everything’s great. We talked a little bit beforehand and I know everything’s just crisp and ready to go. 

Heather Eck (01:09.49)
You did, yeah. 

Julie Hilsen (01:38.835)
Without further ado, Heather is, she’s an artist. She has a multimedia abstract artist and a writer and she’s working on a book. She also teaches people to create from their intrinsic, their ability to feel what to paint. And I’m gonna let her talk about that. She’s an intuitive artist and painter and she can interpret people, places and experiences through color. And she’s gonna talk to us about what that’s called. 

Julie Hilsen (02:09.2)
Synesthesia? Okay. Yeah. So welcome, Heather, to Life of Love. We’re so happy to host you today. 

Heather Eck (02:11.326)
You got it. Good job. 

Heather Eck (02:18.59)
Well, thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it. 

Julie Hilsen (02:22.435)
Well, it’s just an honor, like I said before, because you questioned the way you were showing up in your life from what I was reading. You’re in corporate. You had checked all the boxes. And it sort of parallels to my story where I was like, wait a minute. I should be so happy. And there’s something missing. And you went for it. You always had the call to paint. And you answered it. 

Julie Hilsen (02:49.816)
But yeah, how did you know that you had this synesthesia? 

Heather Eck (02:54.014)
It’s so funny. I didn’t know what it was called, but I knew that when I took in food or drink or smell, something in my mind like created an image or created movement or color. And so when I was younger, I would lay on the floor and draw the music that I was listening to and the shapes that it would make and things like that. And so it wasn’t until about a year or two ago that I learned that it was called synesthesia. And it’s basically where your senses cross in your brain. 

Heather Eck (03:23.69)
And so you might, and there’s like 80 different forms of it too. There’s something like mirror touch synesthesia where you feel somebody’s pain in your body or like days of the week where you see those as color or you take in numbers as a color or sound to color. There’s all different kinds. So I have a lot of them. And I just kind of had to kind of Google it and found out that only about 4 % of the population have it, but a lot of people have it they don’t know. 

Heather Eck (03:53.564)
You 

Julie Hilsen (03:53.823)
It’s like something they suppress because it’s never been explained to them as a gift or a superpower. I love that. I have a friend and she was looking for something on her phone and I’m just thinking of her because I noticed that all her apps were grouped by color on her phone. So I bet she has it in some form. 

Heather Eck (04:01.566)
Yeah. Yeah. 

Heather Eck (04:12.028)
wow. 

Heather Eck (04:16.476)
She probably does. 

Julie Hilsen (04:18.601)
I was like, Dee, well how do you, I can’t remember the, you know, she’d be like, the blue ones, all the blue ones are here and I can tell. 

Heather Eck (04:26.014)
really good way 

Heather Eck (04:26.744)
to do it though. 

Julie Hilsen (04:28.939)
I just love it. I love our idiosyncrasies, these gifts and celebrating them. It’s just so much fun. And then you made me think of, remember the movie Dumbo? It’s like they go on that trip, you know? And it’s just like, I just remember all the colors and the shapes and it looks like a, it almost looks like an acid trip. But I’m wondering if, yeah, when the elephant goes, yeah. 

Heather Eck (04:41.758)
Yeah. 

Heather Eck (04:53.012)
The elephant, yeah, I know exactly what you’re talking about. Yeah. 

Heather Eck (04:57.384)
And there’s a scene in Ratatouille too, which is like my favorite Disney Pixar movie about a chef, a rat who’s a chef. But there’s a scene at the beginning where he takes a bite of food and over here there are swirls and colors and things and that’s like a really good visual representation of synesthesia. 

Julie Hilsen (05:17.319)
Okay, okay, because that’s what I was thinking, that kind of thing. That is so cool. So you started just seeing and experiencing what was there all the time and painting it with acrylics and glitter and gold specks and multimedia? Yeah. 

Heather Eck (05:20.904)
Yeah. 

Heather Eck (05:38.59)
I did, yeah. 

Heather Eck (05:39.971)
I was, you know, like you’d mentioned my corporate career and feeling like I had checked all the boxes but wasn’t real happy about anything and started working with a spiritual teacher. We kind of said, okay, what were you like as a kid? And my childhood was all about art and creativity and creative expression. And so that was always there. So I sort of pivoted and you know, right before my 40s, like my late 30s and said, I wanna get back into art. And I kind of dove head first in it. 

Heather Eck (06:07.88)
And that’s when I think something opened up and I said, I actually take people in as color. I see the color that they are and then started making paintings about what color I saw for them. And it sort of started to evolve into this practice of painting the spirit portrait for somebody and their colors. 

Julie Hilsen (06:31.339)
So did you see a parallel when you like say you’re painting your neighbor or your child, did you see a parallel in like maybe their chakras and the colors that came out that you’re seeing or spiritually is there some kind of, I don’t know, pattern to it or is it just depending on the day and that person’s mood and different people, do have different colors on different days depending on their mood? How does that work? 

Heather Eck (07:00.478)
Yeah, I instantly associated the color that I saw with the chakras without even thinking about it. I just sort of knew like, if I see light blue and light pink for you, that’s your throat and your sacral chakra or like a peach color, that’s your sacral. So I knew right away that that was associated with the chakras and then started to kind of go, okay, well, there’s physical, spiritual, emotional aspect of the chakra. 

Heather Eck (07:26.098)
associated with that color too. And then I would say, okay, are you someone who’s experiencing trouble expressing yourself or being able to communicate something or, you know, are you struggling with your creative expression or relationships? And that’s when it started to become like a conversation about not just the color that I saw, but where that person might be spending time in pain or might be spending time feeling blocked or just not able to sort of get over the hump. 

Heather Eck (07:55.282)
of something. So it kind of happened like serendipitously, I guess, that way where my gift, I think, just started to open up when I made space for it because I hadn’t made space for it before. 

Julie Hilsen (08:08.745)
And you asked, you asked to have the intuition present because you’re tuning into that person and saying, how can I help this person? I’m sure maybe it didn’t happen immediately that way, but then you were like, I’m here and I’m gonna help someone see. Because that’s the tricky thing about emotions. We’re not always ready to see the emotions or feel them. But if by you painting, 

Heather Eck (08:34.206)
Mm -hmm. 

Julie Hilsen (08:37.833)
You take the linguistics, the brain out of it, and you can just feel it through the colors. So that’s what sparked me about it. It lets you feel without having to be so up here in your brain. 

Heather Eck (08:43.516)
Yes. Yes. 

Heather Eck (08:50.888)
I think that’s one of the best ways I’ve heard it described. I think you’re exactly right because sometimes we are so, we just don’t know what we don’t know about ourselves. And so when you are able to see yourself, your spirit or your essence represented through color, through a painting, through form, I think you give yourself permission to sort of look at yourself differently. And then you can kind of hear. 

Heather Eck (09:14.738)
Okay, maybe you have been feeling blocked creatively or maybe your heart doesn’t feel like it’s able to admit as much as it wants or maybe you don’t feel as much self love. And so when you see it that way, you kind of go, okay. Well, now that I know that I can move on from it or find a way to work through it. And it’s just a different, I think color is a different kind of language that we didn’t know we could all speak, if that makes sense. 

Julie Hilsen (09:41.843)
Yes, I love that so much and on so many levels because we’re just so trained to label things and identify them. And I’m more of a claire sentient where I know what I feel, I know what it is, but I can’t always say it. And in fact, if I get in a fight with my husband, I can’t really tell him what I’m mad at him about right away. Like I need space and 

Heather Eck (10:08.724)
Yes. 

Julie Hilsen (10:08.811)
then I can process and try to… 

Julie Hilsen (10:11.485)
identify, but now you’re thinking, you’re making me think I should just get some big markers or colored pencils and just start drawing instead of trying to be up here to think about it. Maybe that would help me work through it. What a great, I mean, I know there’s art therapy and things, but this seems like a, seems more spiritual. This seems more in tune with our guides is sort of what I want to say. 

Heather Eck (10:40.162)
Yeah, it’s definitely more spiritual. think what you just said about being able to draw your emotions is part of therapeutic art, I think, where you can say, what I’m feeling right now, if I had to give it a color, if I had to give it a shape, if I had to draw what it looked like, it allows you to, like you said, disconnect from the brain and go, okay, let me just feel my way through this. And I’m strongly Claire sentient too. So I totally… 

Heather Eck (11:08.028)
understand that. I think that’s why art is my gift because it enables me a way to express the things I may not have otherwise been able to express because it just isn’t in my wheelhouse to be able to describe like what I’m actually feeling. 

Julie Hilsen (11:25.673)
I honor that, I honor that. and you mentioned you help teach other people how to paint with the intuitive. So I would love for you to share how you started that and then a little bit of the process. So if someone could, I’m sure you do some Zoom call, Zoom trainings or whatever, but it’s such an open world as far as connecting. I’m just curious how that works for you. 

Heather Eck (11:26.73)
MWAH! 

Heather Eck (11:34.911)
Yeah. 

Heather Eck (11:54.342)
Yeah, that’s so true. I’m doing, at the beginning of the year, I did a workshop where I had the art of letting go and the art of manifestation. And it was all centered around this idea of if you had to put a shape or a color or a form to something you wanted to let go of, what would it look like? And then allowing the participant to just sort of sit with it and let it become whatever it wanted to become. And so for some people, it would end up being a beach. 

Heather Eck (12:23.624)
You know, for some people it was largely abstract, but it was sort of giving yourself the permission to just sit and go with what feels good to you. And that’s, think, the thing that I try to stay closely attached to is what does it feel like to move through this? Does it feel restrictive? Does it feel loose and free? Do you feel like you have to make it look a certain way? Are you comfortable just letting it be? 

Heather Eck (12:50.282)
ugly, know, are you comfortable just letting it be something you wouldn’t ever want to show or share or sell and just kind of moving through the process of creating, creating for creating sake. And so those workshops, I think, allow you to kind of disconnect from your day to day and just sit for 30, 40 minutes and draw or paint or scribble and sort of restore this playful, creative essence that we don’t always get to. 

Heather Eck (13:18.334)
get to have. And I think that’s where we get to connect with our intuition more when we sort of surrender what we expect something to look like. 

Julie Hilsen (13:27.107)
Like you said, creating space for that expression. I think that’s one of biggest challenges to just say it’s okay. It’s okay to just turn off all your to -do list and just immerse yourself in the creative process, however it looks, because it’s going to benefit you no matter what, because that’s what’s trying to come out. 

Heather Eck (13:47.092)
However it looks, yeah. Yeah. Right, right. I 

Heather Eck (13:53.234)
love when somebody’s like, ugh, this is so, it’s so not pretty. And I’m like, that’s okay. You want to get out of you what you want to let go of. And so maybe it’s not pretty. so, you know, make room for the things that you may not be in love with, you know, make, let them go and then make space for the things you want to invite in. And so what do you want to invite in this year? Well, let’s draw or write or. 

Heather Eck (14:16.914)
know, paint that and see what comes out for that. Cause then your energy shifts and you can make space for allowing those things to come in too. It’s really powerful. I think when you create, whether it’s with a pencil or with paint or crayon, but just the act of making is healing for people. 

Julie Hilsen (14:35.455)
And I think that it’s sort of lost that we are creative beings because we get stuck in the matter and the density of relativity. But God, force, goddess, you subscribe to, it always comes back to being, you are creator and it’s all inside you. And we try to stuff it down to show up and to give validation. it’s like, no, it’s just. 

Heather Eck (14:45.78)
Mm -hmm. 

Julie Hilsen (15:05.237)
you’re perfect, whatever comes out is perfection, because you did it. try not to judge yourself about it. I know my late, well, she was my husband’s grandmother, Grandma Eve, and she was a great painter. I have her painting, I have one in my kitchen. We have them like speckled around her house, and she was, I mean, she was really good. But before, 

Heather Eck (15:11.626)
That’s exactly right. 

Heather Eck (15:29.565)


Julie Hilsen (15:35.273)
before she died, she moved up here to Atlanta, to Georgia from Florida, and we’d take her to those paint classes. It would be like a family trip. And it was so funny, because we’d all have the same thing to paint, but it all looked different. And the judgments, I’m like, why are you guys judging? Why is it a competition? Who looks most like the teachers? That’s not what we’re here for. you you. 

Heather Eck (15:44.031)
yeah. 

Heather Eck (15:51.092)
Yeah. 

Julie Hilsen (16:02.751)
You’re used to getting grades and art. It’s just like, throw that away. Just throw it away. 

Heather Eck (16:07.277)
Throw it away. Yeah, it’s so true. So true. 

Julie Hilsen (16:11.956)
have to be. my goodness, I want to look at my questions here. I don’t want to forget to ask you anything. 

Julie Hilsen (16:21.353)
These are the things I take out when I edit. we talked about all this stuff. 

Julie Hilsen (16:33.483)
Okay, we talked about everything that I was gonna ask you. It just came up organically. I know. 

Heather Eck (16:37.184)
my gosh, I love that. 

Heather Eck (16:42.09)
You had asked 

Heather Eck (16:43.413)
me about whether somebody’s colors changed or stayed the same, and I didn’t answer that question. Do want me to answer that one? 

Julie Hilsen (16:51.787)
yeah, yeah, okay. So Heather, when you get the opportunity to spend time with somebody and you do their first intuitive portrait, because you said it’s a portrait, it’s not a painting, all right, you do portraits? 

Heather Eck (17:06.076)
It’s an abstract, my friend Amy came up with this name, so I have to give her credit for it. It’s an abstract painting, but because it’s of their soul, we call it a portrait. So it’s a portrait of your spirit. 

Julie Hilsen (17:19.721)
Wow, that’s 

Julie Hilsen (17:20.673)
really cool. Okay, so if you get a chance to do their soul on different occasions, have you had a chance to do that? 

Heather Eck (17:25.385)
Mm 

Heather Eck (17:28.316)
I have, I have. That’s really fun to do because when I start with somebody’s energy, I’m looking at the place where they spend the most time, where they dwell. And so there might have been pain there or wound there, or it’s just something that they’re spending time working on. And so I have a friend who, Lee Tease is the largest private collector in America, cause she’s got a lot of my paintings. 

Heather Eck (17:53.16)
And a lot of them are portraits of her through a period of time, and they’re all different. And so what I see for somebody is like a snapshot in the moment of where they are. And so if you look at where she was at the beginning versus where she was a year later, it’s completely changed. And in positive ways, because then she’s able to work on whatever she wants to work on. And what I like about using color in this instance is that I think when you learn to understand how color benefits you, 

Heather Eck (18:22.664)
emotionally, spiritually, physically, you start to want to bring different colors into your space or into your home to minister to you. And so her home went from reds and grays to blues and yellows. And so she kind of pivoted from root and lack into being able to speak and understand exactly who she was. So that’s really powerful. 

Julie Hilsen (18:46.539)
of being more heart centered, you know, like. 

Julie Hilsen (18:51.019)
That is so cool. 

Heather Eck (18:52.65)
It’s really cool. 

Julie Hilsen (18:54.837)
That is really cool. You made me think of something. 

Julie Hilsen (19:01.195)
Yeah, because we forget how intuitive and sensitive we are as people. And this is another example of things that you expose yourself to can either help you or be neutral or harm you. And that’s something that, it’s more of a conscious living. So you could pay attention, my gosh, my whole… 

Julie Hilsen (19:27.209)
My whole wardrobe is like gray and black. No wonder I feel drained all the time. And then you get the feng shui in your wardrobe. You can work on your soul through colors. That’s what you’re saying. Ugh. 

Heather Eck (19:36.02)
Yeah. 

Heather Eck (19:38.588)
Yes, that’s exactly right. Yeah, 

Heather Eck (19:41.139)
totally true. was doing laundry and I had hung a bunch of stuff to dry and so I was getting ready to hang it back in my closet and I stopped for second and looked and almost every single hanger had something striped on it. And I was like, okay, what’s going on? Because over that period of like a week or two, I had worn stripes nonstop. so horizontal stripes are about surrender. 

Heather Eck (20:08.338)
And so I could sort of see myself trying to move into a place of surrender in almost every single color. And so I was trying to surrender in my root. I was trying to surrender in my heart. I was trying to surrender in my throat. It was just surrender. I think like you’re right, we self -con… like subconsciously choose things around us and they’re telling us something that we may not be aware of. But then once you start to pay attention, like you said, 

Heather Eck (20:35.754)
my gosh, I’ve just worn black this whole week. What’s going on? You know, I’m sitting in a place of trying to protect myself. Maybe I’m trying to, you know, save myself from something that’s going on or I’m trying to blend in a little bit and not be seen. And so you can kind of ask yourself, okay, what’s going on here? And check in and figure out what it means. It’s pretty cool. 

Julie Hilsen (20:57.706)
I love that because you’re not saying this is definitely what it means. You’re like, check in, see if a message comes, get quiet, start drawing and see if something comes forward. And those are the most beneficial because it’s your soul talking to you, right? 

Heather Eck (21:04.372)
Yes. 

Heather Eck (21:08.617)
Yeah. 

Heather Eck (21:13.226)
That’s 

Heather Eck (21:13.376)
right, that’s exactly right. Yep, yeah, that’s exactly right. And it’s fun. 

Julie Hilsen (21:16.617)
What a gift. But you have seen 

Julie Hilsen (21:20.178)
patterns like horizontal stripes is surrender. What would you say grief would be? Like you think you’ve gotten beyond, you know, like because grief has so many stages and there’s so many people grieving. like you grieve when relationships change. might not even be that somebody’s left to another plane. It could be. 

Heather Eck (21:23.124)
Mm -hmm. 

Julie Hilsen (21:42.517)
you know, your child left to college and you don’t see him or her as much, you grieve the loss of that relationship being that day to day. Is there a pattern or something you see for grief? Does anything come 

Heather Eck (21:55.77)
Yeah, I do. see grief in people as like a gray -blue color. So it’s kind of like a muted blue -gray. So I associate the blue with the throat and the gray with… Gray can be a neutral color because it’s between black and white, but I also associate it with a feeling of lack or a feeling like you’re missing something. And so I feel like there’s both the inability to sort of express and there’s a gap. 

Julie Hilsen (21:55.791)
up? 

Heather Eck (22:24.732)
somewhere where you feel like you’re missing something. And it’s interesting to see how people move through stages of grief and how that changes with them depending on what you like, where they are in the process of grief. And, and thinking that there are ways to help them get out of that or not get out of it, but to move through it with a bit more ease with color and with 

Heather Eck (22:54.686)
therapeutic art and with music and finding different modalities that’ll help elevate the spirit or to just bolster the energy a little bit more to give you something to look forward to. I would like for people who are in that grief space, I tend to kind of prescribe colors that are more uplifting, like an orange or a yellow that are more optimistic, they’re energizing, or they’re going to help bring in a little bit more energy to pull that feeling back up again. 

Julie Hilsen (23:25.449)
I love it. And also recognize where it is because it’s valid and it’s, it’s a, you know, you’re moving through it. You’re not running away from it. You’re starting where you are. And the metaphors are crazy or the similes because it’s like when you mix the colors, you get, you get a blending of them. And so it might be that you’re, you’re starting in one color and you just sort of changing to another. it’s just, it’s so wonderful. I can, I can see how much fun it is to be. 

Heather Eck (23:32.934)
Exactly. Yeah. 

Heather Eck (23:51.87)
Yes. 

Julie Hilsen (23:55.371)
playing with these colors and experiencing everything through, through the color or the friend. 

Heather Eck (24:01.778)
Yeah, exactly. My friend color. Yeah. 

Julie Hilsen (24:06.975)
Yeah, my friend color. man, this is so cool. So it goes beyond what’s on your walls. It’s your clothing. It’s what you look at. It’s what you’re focusing on. Okay, this really neat. 

Heather Eck (24:08.308)
Mm -hmm. 

Heather Eck (24:19.624)
Yeah. Yeah. 

Heather Eck (24:21.956)
Or even to watch the trends, the trends that enter into stores or home trends, where you see like in the last couple of years, a lot of our homes have pivoted away from color that to become more white or gray. And so it’s interesting to see that some of those colors have been taken out. And even in kids clothes, they are a lot of baby clothes now are in muted tones. They’re not these bright, vibrant colors anymore. So from like a higher 

Heather Eck (24:49.194)
like a collective consciousness component, can watch like trends of colors move us through things too. Like during 2020, the two, I think the two colors of the year from Pantone were gray and yellow. And I thought that was so interesting because a lot changed for us. We lost a lot of connection. We lost the ability to be in person. And so that gray to me represented this general feeling of lack. And then yellow, which is all about your 

Heather Eck (25:17.948)
identity, your self -worth, your confidence. So it was so interesting to watch those two colors sort of like lead the path forward because they represented something that was happening in a bigger way for a lot of us. It’s fascinating stuff. 

Julie Hilsen (25:26.474)
Yeah. 

Julie Hilsen (25:33.287)
It really is. And who did you said it’s collective consciousness? But is it does it come from fashion designers or how do they determine? I know I like to go to the paint store and see what the colors of the year are at Sherwin Williams. You know, it’s sort of fun to look at those and be like, you know, that one came back, you know, because they always come back. 

Heather Eck (25:48.937)
Yeah. 

Heather Eck (25:57.874)
It’s like fashion, right? Like all the 80s and 90s clothes are back right now. It’s so interesting. But yeah, we cycle. I think we go through cycles as individuals and as a collective. so watching color cycle through, watching fashion cycle through has been interesting to see. I’m not sure who comes up with that, but I’m assuming, I feel like it’s all of us sort of like moving in a specific way and it’s sort of we. 

Heather Eck (26:27.05)
kind of communicate to each other through our energy somehow, if we’re not aware of it. 

Julie Hilsen (26:33.151)
Yeah, I believe we are one, that everything, every thought, we’re all, we’re affected by everything. So that resonates with me so much. And so working through these things makes a big difference. I honor, I honor this, it’s so fun. So have you done, like families, have you had a chance to do like, 

Heather Eck (26:42.28)
Yeah. 

Heather Eck (26:51.186)
It does. 

Julie Hilsen (27:00.425)
a mom and the kids and the dad, or you know, like is there a commonality between lineage or is everyone as different as, you know, I’m just wondering like chromosomal. 

Heather Eck (27:12.242)
as they can. Yeah. 

Heather Eck (27:14.524)
I have done family portraits, which is so interesting because they all sort of, sometimes they’ll sit within the same kind of color scheme or sometimes they’ll be a little bit different. But I’ve done them for couples too. So you can sort of see one person kind of come up in one color and another might be complimentary to that. there are sometimes they meet in the middle with another. So it’s always interesting to see how those 

Heather Eck (27:40.17)
portraits turn out because I think they all sort of influence one another, but you can see the way they sort of connect to each other too. It’s kind of fascinating to do it that way. Or for a new baby, to kind of see like what’s the energy of the new baby that’s coming in, what color are they inviting in, or what energy are they bringing to the family. It’s kind of cool to do something like that too. 

Julie Hilsen (28:03.229)
Yeah, and what a great way to pick out a nursery color, like something complimentary to their soul color. it sounds like a great gift. So can you do it from a picture of somebody or do you have to physically see them in person? 

Heather Eck (28:06.129)
Yeah. 

Heather Eck (28:09.972)
Totally. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. 

Heather Eck (28:19.752)
I work from a picture usually, and I’ll spend some time just meditating on somebody’s energy in their face. And typically for me, it’s like a quick one to three colors that’ll come in and then I’ll sort of meditate with, okay, what’s their message? I’ll do like a chakra scan and kind of see where are they in each of the chakras and then start to work on their painting for them. 

Heather Eck (28:47.658)
pretty cool. 

Julie Hilsen (28:47.827)
And have 

Julie Hilsen (28:48.177)
you ever done where they’re in a place that, like you said, they might want to move through and to visualize where they could be? And do you think it helps them move through it faster? Do you think that’s a possibility? 

Heather Eck (29:02.802)
I do. That’s a really great question. I worked with somebody whose portrait was blue, so it supported their throat chakra, but there was a little bit of the deep blue for the third eye. the messages that came through for her were all about different stories of her life that had to be stitched together. And so the primary message for her was stitch the story together. And… 

Heather Eck (29:29.096)
When I, so after I do the portrait, I’ll schedule a Zoom call and we’ll sit down and we’ll talk about the colors and the messages and songs or different things that have come up throughout the process. And when we talked about her portrait in particular, she was in the middle, I didn’t know this, but she was in the middle of writing a book and she was having trouble connecting the dots from the different things that had happened in her life. So the stitch, the story together was especially meaningful for her. 

Heather Eck (29:56.19)
because she felt like she was getting clarity on how to actually connect those pieces for her book. And so she keeps her portrait in her office so that she can, you know, look at it and have it be a reminder to her about being authentic and vulnerable and sharing parts of her story that were intended to help other people heal too. So, 

Julie Hilsen (30:20.843)
that’s cool. 

Heather Eck (30:22.085)
yeah, I think that they’re meant to… 

Heather Eck (30:24.084)
help you heal, I think they’re meant to help you learn something different about yourself and also just to be able to kind of go, okay, this is me, look at my beautiful spirit. And it’s just a reminder that you’re not just a body, you’re a spirit and you’re meant to do big things and to be supportive to one another. 

Julie Hilsen (30:46.943)
Yeah, to me it’s reminding people their divinity, their intrinsic divinity, and how we’d show up if we all walked around like gods and goddesses of our divinity, you know? Like, what a difference. 

Heather Eck (30:50.259)
Yes. 

Heather Eck (30:53.266)
Yes, absolutely. 

Heather Eck (30:59.466)
with no fear, 

Heather Eck (31:00.508)
right? Truly, yeah, that’s so true. 

Julie Hilsen (31:06.237)
And to see that in each other person, their God and goddess inside them. It’s elevated. I’m going to hold space for that. Just love it. Okay. And I know we’re getting to a point our time, but one last question. Do you also see colors around pets and animals? 

Heather Eck (31:16.127)
I love that. 

Heather Eck (31:24.616)
I do, yeah. 

Heather Eck (31:25.327)
So I’ll do pet portraits for people too, it will, so I do two things. One, I can do a pet spirit portrait where I can show you the color that I see for the pet. But usually pet colors are higher chakra colors, because they have such unconditional love energy for us that they dwell in the upper chakras, which is so nice. Or I do like, 

Heather Eck (31:54.034)
It’s like a realistic pet portrait, but done in the colors that I see for the pet. So it’s like an abstract, colorful painting of your pet too. And those are really lovely, especially if you’ve lost a pet, because it’s just a nice way to honor the love that they gave you when they were here. 

Julie Hilsen (32:12.325)
yeah, and so many people, you know, if they have to let their pets go, it’s just such a hard… I had, I have, sat next to someone on an airplane last weekend and she’s just, she lost her old English bulldog and she could barely talk about him. I was like, it’s okay, you know, it just takes time, you know? And she’s like, I can’t get another dog because I’d be betraying his memory, you know? It’s like, you just can’t move on because they have such a piece of your heart. And yeah, it’s… 

Julie Hilsen (32:40.755)
It’s definitely something. It’s something. I was wondering, like, if someone had a really bad dog, if you could be like, well, this is a bad dog. 

Heather Eck (32:51.978)
You know, my own dog, Rudy, he’s a really good boy, but I tease all the time. like, I love you so much, but you make me so mad because he can just be such a pain. But I think he’s here to teach me something. I think when we get those naughty dogs, they’re here to teach you a lesson of some kind. And so anytime he’s naughty, I’m like, whatever. I don’t know what our sole contract is here, but you get on my nerves. But I love you so much. 

Julie Hilsen (33:17.235)
I 

Julie Hilsen (33:17.355)
did see a picture of him. He looks like a little smartass. He looks like he would chew on wires. 

Heather Eck (33:20.446)
He is! 

Heather Eck (33:24.734)
He chews on shoes when he was a puppy. I didn’t think we were gonna make it through that first year with him because he was naughty. He was so naughty. Ugh. He’s a good boy. 

Julie Hilsen (33:35.999)
He’s just out of control. 

Julie Hilsen (33:38.325)
Well, his ears were like, he’s got such personality. I can see in his picture. 

Heather Eck (33:41.52)
He does. he’s 

Heather Eck (33:44.051)
got this, he’s only six years old. I guess he’s kind of getting up there now, which is hard to say because we’ve had him since we were puppy, but he was a puppy with a little gray beard. So he’s always had this little gray beard. Yes. Little dog. I love him so much. Man, he gets on my nerves sometimes. He’s such a scaredy dog. He’s afraid of everything. I’m like, if you’re mirroring for me, I’m in trouble. 

Julie Hilsen (33:55.583)
Love Fu Manchu. 

Julie Hilsen (34:09.724)
Hahaha! 

Julie Hilsen (34:13.077)
Yeah, because we do, push it down because they’re not supposed to be scared. We’re supposed to show up with bravado and confidence and we’re not supposed to be intimidated by anything. Well, I’ve just enjoyed this so much. How can people connect with you? I mean, there’s so much and your book is coming out, right? Is that getting close? 

Heather Eck (34:15.922)
Yeah. 

Heather Eck (34:24.074)
too funny. 

Heather Eck (34:33.258)
Writing something, I’m actually about to release a course called Amplify Your Inner Rainbow, which is about using color and art to help yourself heal. So that’s coming out. But I love to connect with people. You can find me at heatherac .com slash thank you. I’ve got a bunch of freebies and goodies on there for you, including a discount on a spirit portrait. If anybody feels so moved, that’s on there too. And I’m on Instagram at heatheracartist. 

Julie Hilsen (34:43.177)
Nice. 

Julie Hilsen (35:00.875)
Thank you for that offering. I’m sure the community would love to check that out. And I’ll send them, I’ll put it in the show notes too, so that it’ll be easy to find. Heather, this has been a delight. I just love this. 

Heather Eck (35:09.176)
Thank you. 

Heather Eck (35:12.286)
Me too. I’ve loved chatting with you. Thank you. I feel like we could chat another hour or two. 

Julie Hilsen (35:18.188)
Anytime!