Venus Rising Magazine

Lotus Rose Paints Portals Through Time and Space

  At 27, Lotus Rose, the visionary behind Art Faerie, speaks about creativity the way some people speak about love. It isn’t something she does. It’s something she is.

   Born in Sedona, Arizona, and now rooted in the mystic lands of Mount Shasta, California, Lotus has always felt intertwined with nature, movement, and the unseen. “The forest inspires so much of my art… I’m very grateful to have always lived somewhere immersed in Mother Nature.”, she shared. Pisces sun, Virgo rising and Leo moon, she laughs lightly at the poetry of it, “I’ve felt like a faerie my whole life.”

   Her story is one of resilience and devotion to craft. Her paintings are portals through time and space; giving us a glance into another dimension. 

  Long before Art Faerie became a brand, there was a five-year-old girl drawing something she called “Whacky World”. Alien beings and strange creatures that didn’t follow earthly rules. While other children colored inside the lines, Lotus invented new ones. She saw the world through a different, more colorful and curious lense. 

   She grew up surrounded by spiritual and fantastical imagery. Her mother placed books by Alex Grey and Brian Froud in her hands, two artists known for otherworldly art. “I think having that in my consciousness from a young age planted seeds for my creations… anything that is out of the ‘norm’ has always really inspired me and spoken to my soul”, she explains. Psychedelic realms, spirit channels, beings beyond the veil, these weren’t abstract ideas. They were familiar terrain, even to a child. To a child, maybe more than any of us as grown people. 

   Still, like many young creatives, she stepped away from art between ages 11 and 15. Life became busy and the ego tried on many hats. Then came her first festival at 16: Symbiosis Gathering, something changed during that experience. Surrounded by immersive art, bass music, and radical self-expression, she glimpsed a future version of herself. A vision of  painting elaborate, colorful worlds. The vision wasn’t fully formed yet, but it was alive.

   At 17, she began working with watercolor. At 18, she committed to acrylic painting more seriously. She calls herself a slow learner, not with shame, but with radical honesty. “It’s taken a lot of patience and consistency,” she admits. “And I still have so much to learn. It’s a forever journey.”

  That humility may be one of her greatest strengths, something to be admired by artists of all levels. Her craft has grown into an incredible business. You will see her logo designs in every corner of the festival small business community. Her originals hang in many of our homes. Whether you need a personal commission or a psychedelic worldscape, ArtFaerie has the gold.

   Her work pulses with psychedelic bass frequencies. Often created while listening to experimental dub, psytrance, and deep, wonky rhythms, “The weirder the better,” she laughs. Those sounds conjure visions, tapping her into what she calls a “faelien frequency.”

   Nature is her cathedral. Trees, flowers, mushroom networks, and river currents shape her visual language. She needs quiet mountain days, but equally influential is community; especially the community found on dance floors, amongst other creatives and where the music flows. She has live painted at gatherings both intimate and expanding: Totality Gathering and Starvibes in 2019, and later at Cascade Equinox Festival and Ohm on the Range in 2024.

   Live painting, she says, is a teacher of its own. It demands preparation, presence, and surrender. “Set and setting is everything,” she explains. “…and ask for help if you need it. More than likely, people want to see you succeed.”

  That lesson applies far beyond a festival. Learning to lean on community is something we should all practice more. Building each other up is a collective experience. 

   There is a softness in Lotus’s voice when she speaks about gratitude. Something that comes only from experience. During her junior year of high school, she and her mother lived in their car for six months in the Bay Area. There were many factors. She does not blame her parents. She jokes gently about the economy, but the experience altered her understanding of reality. She dropped out of school while battling anxiety and depression. The structure she knew dissolved.

   When she eventually moved to Mount Shasta, she saw how much she had once taken for granted: a bed, a roof, running water. After going without, gratitude became embodied, not for show. Emerging successfully from this kind of hardship gives a person a special set of innovative skills. “That experience was really hard,” she says. “But I wouldn’t trade it for the world.”

   “Find what you’re grateful for and ring in that vibration.”, she explains. It’s not spiritual bypassing, its survival of the brave. It’s ancient and in our DNA. It’s the recipe to peace. 

Painting isn’t her only portal. For nearly nine years, Lotus has practiced flow arts, particularly hula hooping, almost daily. This embodied healing practice keeps her mind at ease through the trials of being an artist. Through dedication, her relationship with her body transformed. The tension she once felt softened and confidence blossomed. “Movement is so healing,” she says simply.

   Community has been just as transformative. Though an only child, she speaks of sisterhood with reverence. Her Native American heritage connects her to a lineage of artists, including a great-grandmother who was a renowned totem pole carver. On both sides of her family: women created, crafted, gathered and led. An epic lineage. Her grandparents ran craft shows for years, bringing artists together. The legacy of communal artistry is in her blood.

  Today, she is surrounded by women who uplift and inspire her and she is intentional about returning that support. “I don’t know where I’d be without the women in my life,” she says. “It’s so important and healing to be around feminine energy.”

  I asked Lotus when she knew she was an artist, and she didn’t hesitate: “Since the moment I gained consciousness.”

   She believes all humans are born artists, that life itself is art. Children understand this instinctively. Somewhere along the way, many forget. She works to keep the spirit of curiosity alive in all of us. A standing example of what it means to inspire others with dedication to the creation of another world. A holder of another dimension. 

Her work is not about perfection or virality. Though she navigates the tension of turning passion into livelihood, working part-time as a budtender alongside her art business, she does it for the love of it. She sets aside time to create freely, without expectation, because for Lotus Rose, art is not a product. It’s a way of connecting, expressing and embodying her own understanding of the universe. A remembering of forests and frequencies of feminine lineage. A divine gift granted by the gods in favor of her valor and resilience, her ability to conquer dark times. Her paintings are not escapes from reality, they are invitations to see it differently. Perhaps that is the most radical expression of them all. A faerie and her paints, showing us a world in which only she holds the key. 

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