Heart Visions

Heart Visions is a beautiful and evocative book of visual and poetic images. The body of work delights the aesthetics, stimulates the intellect and invites the heart to step into heightened visions of creative and spiritual potency. The book enlightens and saddens. It offers hope and encourages actions toward an egalitarianism that includes the honoring of humans, nature and the environment. The book traverses paths from early consciousness of creativity and indivisibility with nature through tribulations of grief and loss to notions of hope and tenderness. It guides the reader on a journey from the wellspring of author's creativity, to the birthplace of her spiritual and socio-political consciousness expressed through more than sixty poetically annotated paintings. The book is a must read for those interested in art and the development of consciousness.
About the Author: Yasmin Sayyed hails from New York City of Cape Verdean and Caribbean heritage. Since early childhood, she has known that she wanted to be an artist, that she wanted to express the marvels of educating the intellect and psyche and being in relationship with the mysteries life, as well as, expressing those things that both illumine and hinder social justice. She says, to wear the honorific title of artist is to be in co-partnership with cosmological forces beyond her ability to express its magnificence in any other form than making art. Heart Visions is a journey from the birthplace of her creativity to spiritual realities and socio-political consciousness. It is a praise song and a mourn-wail, expressed in visual and poetic formats. The book is about love of nature and dignity and hope. Of hope, the author says: Hope inspires my rising in the morning Visits my tongue and consciousness urges pen to hand and paint to brush. Spreading beliefs of restorative justice and consciousness of reconciliations without reprisal, flourish hope Emanating whispers of righting injustices-individual and historic, mature hope. Hope nourishes agency, and agency hope in return And so I rise awakened with expanding anticipation of limitations arching towards opportunities to sit at the table of inclusivity in awe and honoring of the sacredness of creations and the earth that supports us all. Her art is deeply committed to expressing a beatific joy of indivisible connections, a cry against that which diminishes dignity and decency and a yearning for peace wedded to justice. Yasmin Sayyed studied art at a specialized art high school, and universities, and holds undergraduate and graduate degrees in art and art therapy and a doctorate in international and multicultural education. She has taught at the elementary, secondary, adult ed. and university levels, as well as, community based and public organizations. Dr. Sayyed currently works as a consultant training social service providers and educators in the use of expressive arts with traumatised populations, deconstructing violence and issues of cultural responsiveness. She has exhibited her work in the SF bay area, Los Angeles, New York, Santa Monica, Hermosa Beach, North Tahoe, Nevada and in South Lake Tahoe, CA, where she lives and paints.