About Ann Beeching

I believe that each of us receives the call of our purpose in our lifetime. Mine, The Path of Sacred Animal Companions and the Grandmother of Time, has come from the Goddess through the Earth and her sacred stones.

I still feel the call from the fossil filled stone in the woods on the Indiana farm where I grew up. I feel it's call to slip out of my bed and over the window sill, down from my second story window, skimming over the grass, past the barn and the smells of cows and horses, on through the pastures where the blue snake lives, and down the lane to the farthest field. There tucked into the woods is my sacred fossil filled stone. I kneel beside it and place my ear on its rough surface. I listen to the voices telling me of the creation of the Earth and sky.

I feel the call from the black stone by the big tree. It sits on the edge of a hill by the road. The black stone is split as if by lightning, and when I sit on it I feel the changes in the weather. The sound of the wind in the leaves and its crisp caress on my cheek tell me of the coming of fall in late August. The feeling of soft mossy moisture in my nose and a tingling in my body is the first sign of spring in February.

I feel myself standing on the pasture gate looking back to the woods, knowing I have to go to school and can't go back to hear the stories.

Marriage took me to the mountains of Utah. There the voices called me to husband, family and The Feminine Mystique. It was another 20 years before the Earth stones called me back to my art.

At 45 I traveled to Teotihuacan, Mexico. I can still feel the great stone pyramids opening me back to my passion. Painted birds with beaks flowing with bountiful creation, stone carved owls, macaws, serpents and My Jaguar speak to me of animal companions and bring me home with my tears. I was asked in a meditation to paint twenty-five American Indian paintings. In these, I felt the beginnings of the animal human relationship.

More trips into Maya temple cities called me to take a deeper look at what animals represent to this ancient culture, and then what they mean to me. My own jaguar came to me in the spots in the fossil stone, in the murals and carvings of the ceremonial cities and in a meditation. I have created more than one hundred Sacred Animal Paintings from this energy.

My relationship with the stones is a very personal one. I still feel the celebration in my body as the sacred stones of Copan, Honduras take me into a ritual of the transformation of menopause, by calling me to a holy tree on the side of a mountain to give my blood back to the Earth, and then proclaiming my sacrifice through the streets of the city.

Now as I begin my forth twenty-year cycle my dreams show me the stories of the Grandmother of Time and the Keepers of the Jaguar Wisdom. My paintings and writing bring these stories to the world.

The stones of the Sacred Maya ceremonial sites call to me to be a voice of their vision for new generations.