The Fascinating – And Rare – World Of Spirit Artists
These Mediums Can Talk to Your Deceased Loved Ones and Draw Their Portrait as Well
by Mary Ann Bohrer
I have recently written a book about intuition and highly gifted psychics and mediums (which my agent is currently sharing with publishers) but I’ve never met anyone with the set of intuitive skills that Nancy Smith has. Nancy is a gifted psychic medium, and a trained graphic artist. During a reading with one of her clients, she can draw a perfect likeness of someone who has passed on. Although I have interviewed some of the most gifted intuitives in the world, I’ve never met anyone with the unique set of intuitive skills that Nancy has. Spirit drawing is a rare talent.
The portraits of deceased loved ones often astonish both Nancy and the person she’s reading. “When I start connecting with spirit during a reading, I’ll get a glimpse here and there of the shape of their face, and if they were heavy or if they were thin, but I don’t always get the whole image. I get the information as I draw – sometimes the pencil goes where it wants to go,” says Nancy. “I remember reading for somebody that I had never met before, and she lived way out West, so we had only contacted each other through email. During her reading, I drew her boyfriend, who was Asian – I had no idea that he was Asian before the reading. She was amazed, and I was amazed!”
Many times, the portrait Nancy is drawing during a reading is highly accurate and looks exactly like the deceased spirit she’s picking up on. “Sometimes I just get really quiet, because I have to focus and let the energy flow through me. And then the drawing presents itself,” Nancy explains. “And sometimes the drawing is just absolutely spot on – it looks exactly like the person I’m connected to. That always amazes me, because I’ve never seen a photograph of that person.”
But other times, the image might be of a different deceased loved one, or a composite of several different spirit energies, all collected together in one image.
“On some occasions, the client will say, ‘Oh, that’s not her, that’s not my grandmother. That’s my great aunt,’ or this other person,” says Nancy. “And I’ve even had instances where I’m bringing through multiple people in a reading, and the drawing ends up being be a composite of several loved ones who’ve passed on. In those cases, the client will say, ‘Oh, that’s my mother’s eyes,’ or ‘That’s my father’s mouth, that’s how my grandmother wore her hair, and that’s actually my grandfather’s nose,’ that kind of thing. When that happens, it’s really very wild!”
For all of her success with channeling images and drawing portraits of her clients’ deceased loved ones, Nancy occasionally will draw a portrait of someone her client does not recognize at all.
“Sometimes, if the client doesn’t immediately recognize the image I’ve drawn, I’ll have to tell them, ‘This is not a Kodak moment. I want you to take this drawing home, sit with it, and see who comes through for you.’ And I have to just trust that that spirit will reveal itself. I’ve had people write me at a later time, and they say ‘I’ve been thinking about this, and I realize who this person is. It’s someone I knew earlier in my life, and I’m just amazed that she would show up now.’ So usually, I would say that about eighty to eighty-five percent of these unidentified portraits are eventually understood by the client. And that makes me really happy. But spirit drawing is not a perfect thing. You want it to be perfect, but it’s not.”
However, one of Nancy’s clients, Aimee Kent, did have a “Kodak moment” that she didn’t expect. Aimee had recently lost her mother to cancer, and she consulted a medium named Mariah to try to connect with her deceased mother. “Mariah told me that my mother was going to send my great grandmother to me soon,” said Aimee, who didn’t really know what that meant. A few months later, Aimee went to see Nancy and, during the reading, Aimee’s mother came through with messages for Aimee, but the portrait that Nancy was drawing was definitely not of her mother.
“Nancy was talking to me about my mom, but she was drawing somebody completely different, and I was kind of dumbfounded for a minute,” remembers Aimee. “And then the light went off in my head and I thought, ‘Oh my God, that is my great grandmother.’ So my mother did what she said that she was going to do after all. When I got home, I found the only picture that I have of my great grandmother, and that picture and Nancy’s drawing were absolutely identical. It was spot on…I was just blown away!”
While spirit drawing, or “psychic art” as it is sometimes called, may not always be 100 percent accurate, there are some highly gifted individuals who have become psychic art legends due to their uncanny ability to capture the exact image of a deceased loved one.
One of the most celebrated spirit artists is British medium Coral Polge, who traveled around the world giving lectures and demonstrating her gift of spirit drawing before large audiences. Polge, who wrote a book with Kay Hunter entitled Living Images: The Story of a Psychic Artist,” was dedicated to sharing the message that the soul lives on and survives after death. She helped comfort many bereaved people who were having difficulty after the death of a loved one, and her uncanny, accurate portraits of these deceased individuals amazed and delighted her clients and others who heard her speak.
Polge, with her amazing gift of psychic art, was revered by many people around the globe. After she died in England in April, 2001, her colleague, psychic medium, healer and author Stephen O’Brien wrote a tribute to her work in Psychic News: “She raised the spiritual awareness of her audiences. Huge crowds of people sat entranced as, from out of nowhere, their loved ones faces’ appeared again before their tearful eyes. Mourners were comforted; broken hearts were mended; and her delighted recipients were always thrilled with their sketches. Her mediumistic skills will be praised as highly as they will be missed. Coral Polge has earned her place as one of the twentieth century’s most outstanding psychic artists.”
Another pioneer in the field of psychic art was Frank Leah, who was born in Ireland in 1886 and who died in 1972. Leah was a trained portrait and landscape artist, and he also worked as an illustrator and art editor for a number of journals in Dublin, including the Weekly Freeman. Eventually, he moved to London and opened a studio, where he focused his attention on using his mediumship and psychic art abilities to connect people with their deceased loved ones.
In 1943, Paul Miller wrote a book about Leah entitled Faces of the Living Dead: The Amazing Psychic Art of Frank Leah. The book includes numerous examples of Leah’s highly accurate portraits of deceased individuals who “posed” for him during readings. In the book, the spirit drawing is situated alongside the actual photograph of that person that was later given to Leah by the family of the deceased person. Due to the astonishing detail and accuracy of his spirit art portraits, Leah is considered to be one of the greatest psychic artists of all time.
With their unique gift, spirit artists offer clients a rare opportunity to connect with a loved one who has passed on – and to catch one last glimpse of their image in a beautiful and accurate portrait from the afterlife. Nancy Smith is one of these rare and amazing people.
About the author:
Mary Ann Bohrer is a PR consultant and author of a new book about intuition, highly gifted intuitives and the power of our own inner voice. Mary Ann became an expert on intuitive ability after she held a press conference in New York City in April 1997 — one thousand days before the year 2000 — to promote a Millennium Clock in mid-town Manhattan that was counting down the days, minutes and seconds until the year 2000. The event, which was called the Millennium Festival, featured 24 highly gifted psychics and mediums who shared their Millennium predictions with over 75 journalists who came to cover the event. The press conference received national and global attention, and Mary Ann became friends with a number of the gifted intuitives who attended the event. These friendships inspired Mary Ann to write her new book, which her literary agent is currently submitting to publishers. http://www.maryannbohrer.com/
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