Aloha Yvetta

Aloha Yvetta Biography

The merging of art and healing in Aloha Yvetta’s work has been unmapped territory.

It all started with a friend having a dream of Yvetta painting a healing image. The same

friend was diagnosed with breast cancer a year later. This is when, to assist her friend,

Yvetta painted her first healing image. It was the year 2002. Since then she has been

painting Mandalas on a full time basis. In 2005 she also started to facilitate Mandala

classes and workshops.

Yvetta studied theater at the National Academy for Film and Theater Arts in Sofia, Bulgaria

from 1984 to 1990 and film at Ryerson University in Toronto from 1993 to 1997. Her

professional background includes writing and directing theatre productions in Bulgaria as

well as in Canada. She has also completed several short films as a freelance director, writer

and director of photography.

Yvetta has received several grants and awards for play writing, directing and

performing from the Toronto Arts Council and received a writer’s award from

Multiculturalism and Citizenship Canada. In Bulgaria she’s received awards for best

directing, best set design and costumes, unique theater form and best children show

production.

Aloha Yvetta’s personal interest in healing, led her to study and practice pranic healing

in 1997-1998. That experience opened new horizons and she started an exploration that

continues to this day: different forms of alternative healing, art therapies and

counseling, world religions, sacred geometry and spiritual practices.

Her special interest in Hawaiian healing and spirituality brought her to the islands of Hawai’i

on several occasions. She has been working on a therapeutic film and a documentary about

traditional Hawaiian healing and spirituality.

Yvetta also has produced and directed a 30 minute video called “Wicked . . . The Ghost

and Magic” with eight children who uninhibitedly expressed their thoughts and feelings

about the educational system. Under Yvett's guidance they wrote the screenplay, did the

casting and designed their costumes. The film was conceived, rehearsed and shot within

a 5 day period - as a summer camp project - with the intention to show children's

immense hidden potential for thinking, emotional expression, creativity and to help them

voice their points of view.

Aloha Yvetta is doing spiritual and therapeutic art counseling as a private practice and in

the form of classes and workshops. She is working with adults and children to help them

connect with their talents, with their souls and the spirit.

She is a founder of OHANA HOUSE for Art, Creativity and Healing.

In 2011 Yvetta started to facilitate OUT OF THE BOX Creative Projects Program.

The premise is to assist artists in different Media (theater, film, sculpture, photography,

creative writing, dance, music) to realize their talents and develop their creative

ideas into art projects.

Mandala Art Shows

Mississauga Central Library - 2013

Sutherland Hall at First Unitarian –Toronto, 2012

Altered Ego Gallery – Sofia, Bulgaria, 2013

Mind & Body Integrated Medicine Clinic, Toronto – 2009

Altstadthalle Zug - Switzerland, 2008

Tatsu’s Bakery Café – Toronto,2008

401 Gallery - Toronto, 2007

Rustic Cosmo Café, Toronto – 2006

Mandalas Variations

Hand Embellished Prints and Cards:

private commissions

ACA Gallery

Tibet Shoppe

Make You Look Jewellery Studio

Gallery;Mind & Body Clinic

Mandala Art Classes and Workshops

OHANA HOUSE for Art, Creativity & Healing

Mind & Body Clinic

Centre for Ayurveda

Youth Without Shelter

St. James United Church

First Unitarian

Springmount Sessions

Creative Projects Programme

OUT OF THE BOX - OHANA HOUSE for Art, Creativity & Healing

ARTIST STATEMENT

THE BOWL OF LIGHT

In Hawaii, where the knowledge to live in love (aloha) is still remembered, there is a

belief that each child has at birth a bowl of perfect light. If he tends this light, it will

grow in strength and he can do all things - swim with the sharks, fly with the hawk,

know and understand all things. If, however, he becomes envious, or fearful, doubtful,

desperate, or jealous, he drops a stone into his bowl of light, and a little of the light will

go out. If he continues to put stones in the bowl of light, the light will go out and he will

become a stone. A stone does not grow, nor does it move. If at any time he tires of being

a stone, all he needs to do is tilt the bowl and the stones will all fall away, and the light

will come back and grow once more.

Creating of a Healing or a Soul Mandala is like tilting the bowl of light to help the stones

to fall away and allowing the light to come in.Usually I start working with soft pastel

which allows the raw emotions to flow freely on the paper or the canvas. Then comes the

next step - the transformation. For that, I use acrylic paint or color pencil to work on top

of the first layer. Then layer after layer is interwoven with each other until the desired

transformation - realignment with the soul and the spirit is achieved. During this

alchemy, the title forms itself as a very clear statement. Once a distinctive pattern occurs,

I can use it in different situations as variations of the same spiritual matter.

Fascinated with Nature I started looking closer and closer with my camera at the

intricate patterns in flowers that reminded me of the patterns that were emerging in my

paintings. This is how the macro photography of the flowers was created. I called them

Nature Mandalas.

Then one day when I had the paintings and the photography all spread out I was struck

by the way they were connecting and enhancing each other. Since then I exhibit the

Healing and Nature Mandalas together.

From using the mandalas in my workshops and classes, I came to believe that they can

also be a wonderful tool for meditation and contemplation. The viewer can tune into the

specific spiritual aspect of life revealed in the title and experience its transformative

energy. That led me to develop the Mandala Guided Meditations.