ARTIST & CREATIVE INTERVIEW SERIES,
Unlocking the divine, Deconstructing the American Girl and art for the sake of art, Chloë Rain.

I’m pretty giddy about this creatives interview series for various reasons. Mostly because it has very little to do with me and very much to do with the intriguing stories of OTHER fascinating human beings. It gives me a chance to leave the funky, if not somewhat deep and firework-y depths of my own brain and enter the amazing worlds of others.

As completely COOL as the last interview with Jessica Mack was (and believe me it was pretty darn cool.) THIS latest artist continues to uphold the high standards of excellence in creativity. Here’s the kind of speedy Scooby Doo flash back as to why this interview with Chloë Rain is so cool, for me in particular.

A few years ago I was running my art & photography businesses, finishing various plant based nutrition certifications and creating plant based recipes with accompanying drool-worthy photos for a swank fashionista magazine.

I had been vacationing on the beach in the little fishing and surf town in Mexico I adore. Although things were blissful the little voice in the back of my mind couldn’t help but wonder if this was the path I was meant to take, if this was truly my authentic path or was there just something a little bit more?

Several months later through networking with other contributors to the women’s magazine a brilliant spark of a woman named Chloë Rain caught my eye. She was passionate, fearless, living life to the fullest, her name was divine and her story resonated with mine.

A year later I contracted Chloë to guide me through her Explore Deeply™ process (which was ah-mazing). Flash forward a few years and I find out, to my absolute delight, that not only does Chloë create, and facilitate life changing programs. experiences and retreats; she’s also a FANTASTIC photographer. At this point I wasn’t interviewing artists & creatives but I knew I was going to AND I knew that when I did I would HAVE to interview Chloë.

*Scooby Doo flash back to the present* So, now that the back story is established and you know all the deets, I’m more than happy to introduce; Chloë Rain. Let’s jump in to the interview …

shari: WHEN DID YOU get your creative start? 
chloë: Well according to my third grade school folder, I wanted to be a writer and a photographer from the very beginning, but it wasn’t until my mid thirties that I remembered that declaration to self.

I would have claimed that I was not a creative person, and that furthermore there are people who were born creative, but I was not. Until I had a vision on a Spiritual Journey in Peru that showed me “Creativity is the Key to Unlock the Divine” and from that moment I understood that all living human beings are creative beings, it just depends on where you focus your “creative energy” that determines what “Art” you produce.

The Gateway Drug to Englightenment, Chloë Rain

shari: HOW DID YOU come to love photography?
chloë: It was totally by accident, I had gone to the Lofoten Islands in the Arctic Circle of Norway and took over 700 photographs. When I came home from that trip I serendipitously moved to Seattle, Washington from the east Coast of the US.  Something had broken open inside of me. The mountains were speaking to me and I started spending a lot of time in nature by myself. Once I sat on the beach for eight hours in February wrapped in multiple blankets waiting to see an Orca whale go by. I never saw any whales that day but I took one of the best pictures of the sunset I have ever taken. I kept finding myself in nature, walking off some cranky mood, or escaping to the mountains to get away from myself, and often I would find myself stunned by some breathtaking image that nature would allow me to witness, as I was fumbling along through my life.

Musee D’orsay, Chloë Rain

shari: WHAT IS YOUR PERSONAL philosophy when it comes to art?
chloë: I have decided that if art can make you stop and have a conversation about it then it’s beautiful. This last month I was at a gallery show opening and I found myself standing with my nose about ten inches from the glass on the picture framed in a tiny corner made by two standing walls in the gallery, one large and white, the other, only big enough to hang this tiny picture on that I’m standing too close as to be appropriate, but I couldn’t help myself. I was thinking… Art is anything that moves me to FEEL something…. Music, poetry, painting, photography, video, sculpture, dance, food, sex, whatever….

Art is what moves me. While looking at that piece on the wall and simultaneously listening to the live music that was being played by the band a few feet away… I could sense there is a place in the world for anything that elicits this type of emotion. There is a beautiful reason for anything that moves me to feel my own humanity.

Even if it’s not the greatest shit you’ve ever seen, if it moves you, it is Art. It is worthy. If it moves you, it is magnificent.

shari: HAVE YOU ALWAYS worked in photography or did you get your start with another medium?
chloë: I have dabbled in other forms of Art, I once did an encaustic painting (in wax) that I am very fond of, as well as sculpture metal forms, drawing, writing, but strangely photography has been there from the very beginning. I have a great respect for true technical photographers, my art, however, is less technical and more about what I see and how I see it… my art, have you, is my life and the touch of Spirit upon everything. The way I am Being in the world, is very important to me, more than “who” I am Being, is HOW I am being is that is the Art.

The Final Moment of Hopelessness, Chloë Rain

shari: DID YOU TRAIN FORMALLY with any photography classes or did you take a more organic, non academic approach?
chloë: Yes, I’ve never had any formal training, and that bugs me to no end, how often I wish I knew “what to do with my camera” to make it take the picture I am seeing in the world. However, I also feel that my “ignorance” is what helps my images retain their emotion. I’ve seen a million photographs of the sunset, and I’ve take a few hundred, it always amazes me when people say they feel something about my photography. I think to myself, I’ve seen better pictures than that! But I think what they are sensing is my own emotion in the moment, somehow that spills into the image.

shari: OTHER THAN PHOTOGRAPHY is there one medium you couldn’t live without?
chloë: Writing. I wouldn’t be myself without being able to tell stories and write and tell stories about the writing and the living.

Musee D’orsay, Chloë Rain

shari: WHAT CONTINUES to drive you to create?
chloë: I hope to be a steward of substance in this world. There have been a few points in my life, that I wondered if I was contributing anything worthwhile in the world, those thoughts haunt me, and at the same time drive me to keep living, keep engaging with the Creative life force within me, hoping to live a life worth living.

shari: TELL US ABOUT YOUR creative process. Does it differ from project to project?
chloë: Really? Wow… I’m not sure what my creative process is. I am lucky when inspiration hits me. There are times when I have an inspired idea, and I think “Oh please don’t make me do that!” And I know that is from some greater force, and I don’t dare shirk away from those ideas, though Chloë the person would prefer if “plans” were more simple and comfortable…

So much like Stars, Chloë Rain

shari: WHO ARE YOUR main creative influences?
chloë: My heroes growing up were Georgia O’keeffe, David Bowie, and Prince. To this day, my heroes are Georgia O’keeffe, David Bowie, Prince, and Leonard Cohen.

shari: DID YOU FALL INTO your personal style or was it developed over time?
chloë: Do I have a personal style??? If I do its, absolutely accidental and still an anomaly to me.

shari: YOU HAVE SO many great pieces. (I absolutely adore the one of you in the Hall of Mirrors in Paris, 
Pluviophile and I want to be Poetry.) Tell us about your favourite piece to date?

I want to be Poetry, Chloë Rain

chloë: Its truly not a story, when I say that everyone of my photographs that I love has a story behind it. Pluviophile was taken during a tremendously emotional breakup conversation after my lover had told me he slept with another woman. “I want to be Poetry” was taken while I was walking furiously in the rain about to break from my skin in anger about what was going on in my life, when something tapped me on the shoulder and said “Look here”.  I don’t have a favorite piece, because all the images tell me a story about an experience of emotion. I am grateful that I feel deeply. On my blog, I talk about a lot of things that might be uncomfortable for others to “put out there”, like the story behind Pluviophile.

“Hall of Mirrors” in Palace of Versailles, Chloë Rain

shari: IS THERE A STORY behind the Hall of Mirrors piece?
chloë: I was in Paris alone, hoping to have a love affair. And I did. At the time I was imagining the lover I would meet and how we would interact and how he would hold my hand and kiss me when we were together. It would be only 4 days later that I would in fact encounter a great lover and spend the rest of my days in Paris with him, that love affair would change the course of both our lives, and open my life to deeper creative work.

shari: WHO IS THE ONE PERSON (or people) who have supported you throughout your 
journey?
chloë: After the initial shock of leaving my corporate career, my parents have been my number one supporters against all odds and all arguments. I have several close friends that shared they had always known I was creative and have supported me wholeheartedly, perhaps even when I have doubted myself.

shari: TELL US A LITTLE (or big) something about yourself that no one knows.
chloë: For the past year I have been walking the Medicine Wheel with a Native American Sioux Medicine Woman, and that has completely changed my life, and is continuing to change the way I live and interact in the world. More on that to come…

shari: WHAT IS YOUR ONE dream creative project and why?
chloë: I am frightened and drawn to go to the Arctic Circle and photograph the Aurora Borealis, but more so I want to go and live there through the continuous dark of winter time. I’m not sure what that experience has for me, but I know that I must go and face my fears, and understand the excitement of experiencing that kind of darkness.

Poem to the Glory of the Sparkles, Chloë Rain

shari: IF YOU COULD COLLABORATE with anyone (living or dead) who would it be and why?
chloë: It would have to be David Bowie, I had wanted to save my virginity for him, and was so sad when he fell in love with Iman, but if I could have collaborated on anything (present or past) I would have loved to been on the “Labyrinth” movie scene with Jim Henson & David Bowie. Can you imagine?? It was Jennifer Connely’s first movie!

shari: IF YOU HAD TO PICK another creative career other than the one you have now what would it be and why?
chloë: I am currently revising my first literary endeavor, a memoir. I would like to think this is the first of many books. I think stories are real, and people still need real.

Musee D’orsay, Chloë Rain

shari: IF THERE WAS ONE THING you’d want people to know about you and/or your work what would it be?

chloë: I believe that what fulfills and makes each individual person “happy” is knowing our true self, and that through the expression of this true self, the soul self, we get to engage and experience the life that we truly desire to be, have, experience, and witness, this lifetime.

shari: IS THERE ANYTHING ELSE you’d like us to know? Your next project?
chloë: I am currently writing and revising my first book, “Deconstructing the American Girl”, its about why one would bother to keep hoping in this world, when it seems that this world doesn’t have a place for you or your life purpose. Is life is worth living, in and of its self?

Art for the sake of art, life for the sake of experience, love for the sake of feeling.

Chloë Rain is a Writer & Artist.

In 2010 Chloë sought to integrate her passion for life with her creativity, experience of the profound, and eye for the refined and inspired.

She founded Explore Deeply™ & The Explore Deeply Movement™ a unique merger of practical life experience, divine inspiration, and self-love mastery. The Explore Deeply Process™ was developed to help connect you to your inner source, the place where all of the answers to all of the questions you are seeking reside, and when you learn to explore deeply you engage with your own unique sense of self, and learn to express, integrate, and empower your own source energy to help you to claim new levels of personal power and intuition so that you may fully express your authentic self, experience real joy, and personal freedom.

The Explore Deeply Movement was founded on a belief that every person, no matter where they are at in life, how old or young, how successful or unaccomplished, how lost, unhappy or confused, has a unique and purposeful reason for being alive.  As you turn inward and fall in love with the truth of who you really are, you become whole, despite the brokenness.

You can connect with Chloë below where you can find free self development resources and live 21 days of support and self guided programs. She also offers personalized healing retreats and adventure journeys to places like Machu Picchu.

(Click any of the links below to take you to instant Chloë.)

Chloë on Facebook

Chloë on Instagram

Chloë’s Website