I was recently asked how I choose a color to experience in meditation, and then experience it. At first, the question caught me off guard because it flips the order of events I experience, but after the conversation, it dawned on me that I do have an element of control once I’ve experienced the color vision for the first time.

Initially, I don’t choose a color to meditate on; instead, I meditate to ground myself and stay connected with Spirit, and I experience color as a result. At first, I just saw the colors, and they were mesmerizing. But some time later, the meditations deepened, and I began feeling the colors. Initially, I naively thought the emotions would only be comforting, supportive, and uplifting—that they were there to fill me with healing energy. However, after months of experiencing the same meditation on acceptance, new layers were revealed: painful layers that had much to teach.

My meditations are like swimming in underwater watercolor paintings. Imagine blobs of unmixed watercolor paint are dropped into an infinite sea, and they begin to disperse. There are different densities of color, ranging from transparent to sticky and thick. They expand with the water’s gentle movement. There are prisms of brilliant white light that are steady and unmoving, and I’m drawn to the places where the light pierces the color veils. Through journaling, I have come to understand that these are the areas where I’m to pay attention—it’s where the greatest lessons about life and embodiment exist. The colors are emotions, and the light is purity.

While I can’t choose a color to experience in meditation and conjure a vision, I can revisit my past visions. I’m able to go back to them—even while not in meditation—and explore them in different areas. I’ve been revisiting my meditation acceptance for over two years now, and it’s still teaching me.

I’ve meditated in all sorts of ways. I’ve sat with Quakers, tapped into that calming place during shavasana, listened to guided recordings, and, most frequently, practiced Vedic meditation. There are various ways to find the peace of meditation.

Lately, I’ve been weaving my ability to sit quietly and meditate with the desire to connect more deeply with my art. I’ve been visualizing art that I haven’t yet created. It’s become a sketchbook without permanence, but it’s allowed me to explore color and linearity.

I wonder if one day I’ll be able to choose what color to experience in meditation. I also wonder if there is a universality of emotional representation of color? Colors have distinct histories in distinct cultures. Is it the same for synesthetes? I have many questions, but for now, I will continue to explore what our continuum of energy has to teach me as it’s presented.

Thanks for following along! I love chatting meditation. Reach out to connect about it all—I’d love to hear about your experiences!

XO

Landis

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Related entries: Acceptance, From Cancer to Synesthesia, Go Slow

I’ve recently been thinking about acceptance and the emotional landscape one traverses through the process. Each phase of the journey is an opportunity to shift perspective, to release, and, ultimately, to grow.

I often discuss my mediation practice and how I see and feel colors while meditating. In the summer of 2023, I experienced a meditation in which yellows gently fluctuated from deep ochre to sunshine to straw as pure white light pierced the color veils. The color experience brought the message of absolute acceptance. It was a blanket of acceptance.

I often dip back into this meditative vision. It’s been a place of comfort for over two years, but recently I’m understanding the nuances of the colors that come.

At the inflection of acceptance, there is both contraction and expansion, loss and hope. It’s about letting go of what could be, accepting what is, and then going back to what could be—just in a different way, with other circumstances.

Accepting loss, settling into it, and grounding your experience of it are precursors to the expansion of possibility. It’s the expansion we seek, but we can not fully expand into possibility without accepting the loss.

The meditation came the same summer we moved from rural New Jersey to South Florida. Our children were 11, 9, and 6. The move was a big leap. We wanted to live where the weather was warmer—namely, to boost my health—but we were leaving my doctors and the region I’d called home for nearly 20 years and where my husband had lived his whole life.

But we heard the whispers. Something was calling us.

Looking back now, our move to Florida was the conclusion of what we’d started four years before. In 2019, a year after my first cancer surgery, we left our beloved community of Maplewood and South Orange, New Jersey, for rural farmland still within commuting distance of Manhattan. Our rural farmhouse was just a stopover, where we were meant to heal and find each other again, where, hopefully, our children would understand I was managing my cancer and would be fine for many decades. In 2019, we knew our path was different from the suburban life we’d created, but we weren't clear on what was next.

What I’ve gained clarity on recently is that we’ve been on a years-long process of accepting. To accept the tenuous nature of health and to live with purpose, according to our values, we had to grieve many aspects of our previous life.

I still struggle with this grief—albeit not often—but perhaps more time in this meditation, with these colors and visceral emotions, will strengthen me and allow me to accept these losses. And in accepting, maybe the possibilities that lie ahead will expand further.

The meditation I experience is like swimming in an underwater watercolor painting. There are different densities of color, ranging from opaque to fluid and transparent. The deep, earthy ochre holds the pain of loss. It’s muddy, sticky, and hurts when I near it, so I travel towards the light and the brightest yellow, instead, where the colors are hopeful, expansive, and enduring, full of possibility.

In the installation Absolute Acceptance, I explore the counterbalance of this contraction and expansion, this loss and hope. The rich, bright yellow is intended to reach out and envelop the viewer from a distance, across the gallery, with its expanding energy of hope—the hope that rises after the loss of acceptance. The work is hand-built from white stoneware and color-blocked with many layers of underglaze and glaze, creating the density of color that allows it to move forward with the expansion of hope.

This was quite a long share—thanks so much for staying with it. Writing helps me understand my meditations, experiences, and art, and how they’re intertwined. I still have a lot to learn from this meditation. I will continue on.

Happy Sunday!

XO

Landis

Absolute Acceptance, photographed above, explores a color vision that ceramic artist Landis Carey experienced in the summer of 2023, in which yellows gently fluctuated from deep ochre to sunshine to straw as pure white light pierced the color veils. The color experience brought the message of absolute acceptance and remains a place of meditation that the artist often taps into. Hand-built from white stoneware clay, ceramic artist Landis Carey glazed Absolute Acceptance to draw upon the densest yellow of her color vision, which holds the strongest feelings of absolute acceptance. The artist presents this message while juxtaposing it with the most earthy, grounding yellow she experienced during that meditation. The rich, deep yellows of Absolute Acceptance are intended to reach out and envelop the viewer from a distance, drawing them into the simultaneous feelings of momentary contraction and enduring expansion that mark the point of acceptance. For more of Landis’s art, follow her on Instagram.

I’m a ceramic artist, and I experience synesthesia. I feel color. When I enter a meditative state, color envelops me, and the feelings follow as they float through my being. My meditations haven’t always been this way—they deepened over the past seven years as I healed from a rare cancer. And, actually, just recently, I’ve been feeling color in my wakeful states. The more present I am, the more I sense.

In 2018, I was diagnosed with neuroendocrine cancer of the pancreas. The cancer had spread to my lymph nodes and liver. I was 37 years old and had three small children at home. My daughter was only a year and a half. I’ve never been through chemotherapy or radiation, but I have been through extensive surgeries, including the Whipple.

Lying in a hospital bed at Memorial Sloan Kettering in New York City in 2018, I had vision after vision of paddleboarding on clear tropical blue water and making art. I had been working in clay since 2001, at times selling a line of serving ware and others simply as a hobby. But these visions were different. This art was different. I felt that the work was my soul’s calling.

A cancer diagnosis is traumatic. Those words stay with you and alter the mental experience of even having a head cold. I knew I had to heal not only my body, but also rewire my brain from this trauma. I sought a hypnotherapist who came highly recommended, and it was after my work with him that my meditations deeply changed. I had been meditating for nearly 10 years at that point, but what came was vastly different.

The colors I see and feel are healing and convey to me a deep sense of connectivity with the universe. When I dip down into meditation, it’s as though I’m a heavy stone falling to the sand below the water’s surface. The colors are all around me. I’m part of a watercolor painting that’s below the surface. There are different densities of color. They move through my being. Prisms of white light pierce the color veils, and through spiritual journaling, I know this is what I’m to pay attention to and explore.

These ethereal experiences align with my human experience. If the colors are emotions and the white light is divine purity and enlightenment, then, yes, the light can pierce through any emotion of lesser vibration. Emotions are fleeting, and purity remains.

In my art practice, I experiment unendingly. I have hundreds of color tests that I draw upon when planning my work, as I try to replicate portions of the visual color impressions I experience.

I’m not cancer-free today. The cancer is still in my lymph nodes, but I take a monthly hormone injection that’s rendered the cancer inert. The medication was developed to treat a digestive disease, but today it controls my cancer cells.

It’s certainly because of my health challenges and my continued search for healing that I have come to experience color in the way that I do. My visions are a blessing to me—I know I’m meant to share these color experiences with others so that they can witness them as well.

Thanks for following along!

XO

Landis

Expansive Peace, photographed above, comprises seventeen ceramic surfaces glazed as a cohesive wall installation. The work aims to convey the grounding and reassuring meditative color experience that ceramic artist Landis Carey had in the spring of 2025, which fluctuated between lavender, eggplant, periwinkle, and a brilliant, pure white light. The artist experiences synesthesia during her color visions. She feels the color she sees. Her meditation, which inspired Expansive Peace, was one of pure peace and occurred shortly after she and her family experienced a house fire in late February 2025. The color experience was short-lived but is seared in her visual and emotional memory. For more of Landis’s art, follow her on Instagram.

A few weeks ago, I was chatting with two art pals about making art outside. The summer was ending, kids were heading back to school, and I needed to reconnect with my creativity. Making art outside seemed the perfect vehicle back to that flow, plus the ideal antidote to any impending doom the news cycle wants us to feel.

Also, making art outside seemed like an act of rebellion. Observing color in real-time atmospheric conditions feels luxurious—after all, no filters or screens are altering our view. It also feels really connected to be in nature with fellow creatives. Feeling connected right now while political chaos aims to separate us further from each other is absolutely rebellious.

And if that’s rebellion, it feels really right.

Making art outside is nothing new—plein air painting and studies are a natural tendency for artists. We draw inspiration from the environments we inhabit, but it took me at least five trips to the same location to understand what I was studying.

Each time I sat to observe and document, I would stare at the ocean. I’m mesmerized by how the water’s color changes with the angles of sunlight, passing clouds, humidity, and all the other atmospheric conditions that constantly fluctuate in this tropical place.

But it’s not the water I’m trying to understand. I’m concerned with the reflections dancing on the water, but I only understand what’s happening on top of the water if I understand the colors that make up what’s below. And even then, for me, it’s not about these landscapes as scenes or even elements.

Then it dawned on me. I love to paddleboard. I can spend hours out on the water. Besides looking for sealife, this is what I’m doing. I’m trying to understand the light and color, but up close. When I’m on the paddleboard, I’m in the middle of these atmospheric conditions. I’m experiencing them. I’m feeling them.

It’s the visual energy and emotions of the color and light that I’m trying to wrap my arms around. I feel color in meditation and in life, and I’m trying to capture the emotional and energetic impressions of what I’m observing when I make art outside.

These swirling thoughts transported me to MoMA’s exhibition, “Hilma af Klint: What Stands Behind the Flowers,” which I saw twice this summer. After spending a considerable amount of time studying botanicals in detail, she began painting evanescent watercolor washes to capture the plants’ aura, sensation, force, spirit, the exhibition notes explained.

This feels very familiar. I need to know more.

To be continued…

XO

Landis

For more of my art, follow me on Instagram.

263 days. January 1, 2025, was 263 days ago. It was also the last time I posted on Considered Clay.

So, let’s catch up.

If you read my last entry, Leaving 2024, I shared that I wanted to leave a few limiting tendencies behind as the year drew to a close. I wanted to balance my optimism with realism, say no more often, and allow myself to dream big.

Removing my rose colored glasses and seeing reality for what it was—not how I could make it better with loads of effort and struggle—was a critical lesson for me and allowed me to identify a problem that needed quick attention: we had chosen the wrong school for our children, and one of them needed to be homeschooled until we found a new path forward. It was a gigantic shift for him, me, and our entire family.

That was late January, just before our misalignments began emerging.

A big step forward, first: I’ve said no many times in the past 263 days. While declining many opportunities and invitations was a result of my son being at home, it’s felt great to protect my time and energy. The boundary feels good. It’s also been clarifying.

When deciding which aspect of my art practice to continue pursuing—my limited time limited my pursuits—it was undeniable: I had to continue interpreting my meditative color experiences onto clay surfaces. It’s how I dream and meditate. I live in color. And that’s the area of my practice where I’m dreaming big.

But wait—here’s the wild card.

The most challenging aspect of the last 263 days is that we didn’t face these trials in our protective home, where we could safely digest the shifts, continue to sleep in our familiar beds, and be surrounded by our belongings.

In late February, we had a house fire and were displaced from our home for 98 days. We returned in early June.

No people or pets were hurt, but it was a nightmare.

In many ways, this year has been more trying than my cancer journey. My cancer—and the poking, prodding, surgeries, and pain—all happened to me. My three children witnessed it, but this fire, displacement, school search, and so much more also happened to them. Witnessing their pain, sadness, anxiety, and depression was crushing, all while managing our own.

Many misalignments emerged during this time. I’ll never forget sitting in the back yard of our temporary housing and discussing every nuance with my husband. It was springtime, and the dry season was extended. The sky was the most calming of blues, but the issues were so complex.

The fact that we found new schools, continued our business endeavors, played sports, learned, created, and sold art while being displaced and watching our home being rebuilt is truly remarkable. It’s a testament to the strength of our family and our commitment to each other and our children.

There is still so very much to digest and heal. I still have flashbacks about that fateful Sunday afternoon when I heard my husband’s panicked voice. Somewhere, in the back of my mind, his words were familiar, like I’d heard them in a premonition. My first thought: Oh no, it’s happened.

I’m so grateful we live in South Florida, near the ocean, where the sky stretches in all directions, reaching the edges of the earth. I get lost in it all. The beauty fills me, and then I spend time in my studio with clay.

I will continue to write, digest, and, yes, make art!

Thanks for being here for it all!

XO

Landis

Collection 6, photographed above, originates from a larger body of work that responds to a color vision I experienced in 2023, in which I felt a sense of expanding, calm hopefulness. Deep aquas fluctuated in saturation and translucency, ebbing into calming blues and expansive greens. Collection 6 comprises six ceramic surfaces of floating landscapes that emerged as I paired the middle-toned hues of my meditation, transforming my calming experience into another, for you, the viewer. For more of my art, follow me on Instagram.

Balance my optimism with realism. Being an optimist and wearing rose-colored glasses doesn’t always serve me. I recognize the good and potential in everything and want to help improve whatever the situation. This is where I get into trouble. Often, I overcommit and wear myself out. I want to be more discerning with my optimism—use it as a superpower, but not try to fix every shortcoming or mismatched circumstance around me.

Say no. After my cancer diagnosis in 2018, I became good at saying no, but in the six-and-a-half years since then, I’ve become less disciplined about protecting my time and, therefore, my energy. It’s time to get comfortable with this powerful two-letter word again so I can create stronger boundaries and be intentional with my days.

Dream big. It’s time to dream big. I haven’t allowed myself to dream big since being diagnosed with cancer in 2018. Initially, I thought I would tempt fate, and I surely didn’t want to do that. But over time, planning small became a routine—one that was cemented by a cancer recurrence in 2022 and ongoing treatments. When your life exists on a 4-month MRI schedule, it’s hard to see beyond the following season. The cancer in my body has been stable for eighteen months thanks to monthly injections. And I can take the injections for decades upon decades. It’s time to dream big again.

Here’s to protecting our energy, cultivating good health, and dreaming big. There’s so much to celebrate! Thank you for joining me on this journey, friends!

My hands can read it. They know how to form it on a potter’s wheel. They know how much pressure to exert on the clay to its spinning speed. I know what the clay can handle.

I understood this long before I first sat at a potter’s wheel.

Yet, I have so much to learn.

So, what now? Where do I take this talent?

Each day that begins, I ask myself a version of this question. I’ve been doing it for years, completely unknowing.

It can be intense and confusing—there seems to be a sea of understanding behind a guarded wall. A gate may open, but only in time. This is probably good because it would likely overwhelm me too greatly.

So, what now?

Go slow.

The message is to go slow, just as it’s always been. Go slow in discovering this work and uncovering its meaning, just as I would if a pot’s walls were approaching their limit.

Keep breathing. Keep wedging. Keep building community.

Observe, and the flow will continue.

“Everything is art when you’re dressed for it.” ~ Paulus Berensohn

Paulus, a potter and educator, shared this wisdom as he spoke of a black jacket he purchased for $1 while shopping, a jacket he did not need but nonetheless desired. This jacket transformed mundane, everyday activities one afternoon into art simply because he wore it. Suddenly, time at the laundromat became a performance, motions in space. Berensohn, a dancer, assumed a new role.

Berensohn was a potter and educator who transitioned from his early dancing career when he asked, “How do you dance in life?” His solution was clay. His book Finding One’s Way with Clay is an inspiration and grounding force.

Paulus’ story is beautifully connected and sparked a memory. Fifteen years ago, when making and selling under the brand Mint Peach, I began making for family meals at the everyday table. The idea was to elevate the task of getting dinner on the table to a ritual with a layer of unique handmade.

What can I do to dress the part? To create new interpretations of my everyday?

Thank you to everyone who visited our open studios during Art Walk on Friday. It was a pleasure; there were so many great conversations and catch-ups.

He was lying in the curve of the bathtub, so relaxed, just looking at me as if waiting for me to speak. It seemed like he knew what I was going to say. Or maybe he knew what I needed to be reminded of. Hard to tell.

I explained to Pete that I had a lot going on but loved everything I was doing. I don’t want to remove anything from my life just because unexpected things, like hurricane days and broken fence gates, continually pop up.

Pete, of course, didn’t respond, but as I spoke, a knowing came over me.

Just operate from your heart center, the subconscious thought instructed.

I looked at Pete; I swear he winked.

Last night, this instruction guided me, yet I’d forgotten about it until today.

We were at baseball until 8:45, and my daughter was pushed into exhausted energy. She couldn’t keep it together as we drove home. She was lashing out at me and the boys. My husband was traveling. Somehow, I had to navigate the bedtime storm that was building.

By the time we walked into the house, she was in a heap on the floor, crying. My boys looked on as I slowly moved towards her and gently cocooned her body with mine. I explained that she was safe and asked her to put on her pajamas, brush her teeth, and get in my bed, not hers. I told her she could sleep with me. That’s all she needed. She slowly rose, and ten minutes later, I found her tucked into my bed with a book, nearly asleep.

What does this have to do with clay? Well, nothing, and everything.

If I continue to operate from my heart center, from love, I will understand the underpinnings of my work. I will grow as an artist and a human, which are one and the same. To be human is to be creative.

My daughter decorated the handle of my studio’s door. She wanted everyone to feel welcome and know happiness was on the other side. She woke up smiling this morning, and a few hours later, I thought of her as I trimmed pots.

More often than not, I’ve been better at the business side of my work over the years. I’ve enjoyed markets, researching trends, and marketing. But I’ve struggled with the deep, introspective portion needed for development. Understanding the why of what I’m doing. There were times when working in clay was enough. Just getting my hands dirty was enough. It signified that I was still connected, and my creative communication was lit.

But I’m in a different place now. I’m no longer afraid. I have a lot to process, and my work is expanding as I do so. That’s one reason I’m writing Considered Clay. Writing helps me understand how my work is connected to my experiences.

I recently began the series of essays by 40 working artists in Living and Sustaining a Creative Life. I love these first-hand accounts of how artists sustain creative lives, which I’ve realized is part of the creative process. Making time and space for introspection is the first step for that introspection.

“I am confronted with obstacles on a daily basis, and my job is to find a way to persevere regardless. As I have gotten older, I have come to realize the sacrifices I have to make on a daily basis. Sometimes those sacrifices come in the form of things, sometimes it is a social life, and sometimes it is people.”

Artist Amy Pleasant made me feel seen. She put into words my thoughts over the past year when I miss WhatsApp messages from other parents or realize I haven’t responded to an email or text. I can’t fit it all in. I can’t fit everyone in. I have to make choices, and that’s okay.

This week, I perused high-fire glaze samples at FAU for a current project. I haven’t worked with high-fire clay and glazes in years, so it was an absolute treat! I also visited Julie Evans’ ceramic work at the Boca Raton Art Museum in her exhibit Eating Sunshine. Her work felt relevant—I might just be one of her plants. I, too, need nourishment from the sun to survive. Relatedly, I hope the rains hold off today so my husband and I can spend time at the beach with our kids. We all need salt therapy today to prepare for a new week. Happy Sunday, friends!

But what does this have to do with clay pots?

I process life by working in clay. For me, throwing and carving are the most therapeutic clay work. Potters usually suspend their breath when throwing, but I slowly inhale into my heart center as I pull and exhale, forming the vessel that’s to come. It becomes a meditative practice. My life wouldn’t work without clay.

The considerations of motherhood I mentioned above are a fraction of what I processed while making these pots. The better question is, how many thoughts went through my mind while throwing these pots? It’s innumerable.

These pots are filled with thoughts of raising kind humans who will contribute to the greater good.

It's been a productive throwing session when I finish in tears of release. My mind has been so full the past few weeks as I dig into my art and navigate complexities that they were welcomed. As I was wiping my hands, freeing them from the drying clay, these pot-shaped words came into my mind.

Happy Tuesday, friends!

When you join Considered Clay, you’ll receive two posts a week from me: a Sunday edition, a casual check-in with studio photos, and an interesting read from my week. I love to read, so I set aside time every morning to do so. And my main share, every Tuesday, is the juicy stuff of life. It’s where I delve into the tough questions my life presents and the joyful moments of connection that transcend through my art.

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