Since 2019, we have featured 182 of Jenny’s paintings in our Tools for Transformation…
There is something unmistakably alive and palpable emanating from these paintings that have emerged from artist Jenny Hahn’s hands and heart. Long before they became oracle cards, tools for reflection, or sacred mirrors for others, they were something far more intimate: relics of a woman learning how to meet herself fully.
For nearly 27 years, Jenny has painted not for performance, not for product, and not for public approval – but for personal process. That is perhaps what people feel most deeply when they encounter Jenny’s work: the honesty inside it.
A Glimpse into Jenny’s Herstory
Jenny has described herself as a lifelong artist, and has said: “Ever since I can remember, I have created. I have always had a need to express. To express my emotions, to express my experience...”
She was raised in the suburbs of Kansas City in the 80’s when kids roamed the streets on bicycles and kept roly-poly bugs as pets. Her mom raised her and her younger sister to stay curious, and more importantly, to always believe in themselves.
One of Jenny’s favorite memories involves piling into her mom’s burgundy Dodge Caravan with her childhood besties and a cooler of snacks, setting out on a day of exploring. At every stoplight or stop sign, her mom would ask them: “Which direction now?” With no end destination in mind, it became an empowering turn-by-turn adventure led by the kids. They discovered new towns, country fields, carnivals… and even ran into their favorite celebrity that way! No GPS or paper map required, just an excursion of discovery without an end destination in mind.
That spirit of curiosity followed Jenny into adulthood. She attended the Kansas City Art Institute to study illustration, pursuing what she had known since childhood: she was here to be an artist.
Yet beneath her achievements lived another reality.
During her teen years and through art school, she had developed an eating disorder that threatened her health and wellbeing, as well her creativity and vitality. She was caught in perfectionism, shame, and buried emotions.
She was a high-achieving art student with a secret: She struggled daily with debilitating self-doubt, anxiety, and self-hatred. Driven by the feeling that she was never good enough.
Around the time of graduation, she met her teacher and mentor Sarah Oblinger who led a workshop called “Paint or Die” where she was introduced to the concept of art as process; showing up to your true self and creating without the agenda of making a finished product, but rather to explore whatever is needing expression.
The experience changed the course of her life. And this philosophy became the foundation of her artistic practice.
She found healing and wholeness not by denying the painful experiences within her path, but by moving through them. By engaging each emotion and compulsion with mindfulness, self-compassion, and by using painting to explore each one visually. Process art is what eventually allowed the innermost hidden emotions to start coming out (and became many of the paintings within the Wisdom of the Shadow oracle deck.)
She has painted for personal process ever since. And has grown into teaching over the last two decades.
The “Shadow Archive”
Over the years, Jenny continued painting (we estimate close to 1,000 images to date). Many of those creations entered galleries and public collections. Some remained private, tucked away literally in the shadow for years, never intended to be seen by anyone other than her.
When Jessica first encountered Jenny’s work, she was blown away by the potency exuding from her paintings. As someone who reads and works with energy as a living, Jessica sensed something profound. She had visions and dreams of Shadow Work paintings prior to knowing anything about Jenny, and without knowing that there were actual “secret archives” of paintings.
After Jessica shared that vision with her, Jenny timidly-yet-openly revealed her private folder of 441 paintings. Jessica was blown away once more. She felt the healing they emanated, and the medicine they could be to those who would get to hold them in their hands as oracle cards.
They were truly the most intimate, vulnerable parts of Jenny – painted right there in vibrant color. A few of them took some convincing by Jessica to be revealed and included in the deck, and understandably so! Both women look back on it sweetly now – Jessica begging, tears and alchemy and conversation, and Jenny so generously sharing of her innermost depths.
This particular image is NOT published in Wisdom of the Inner Child Oracle or any of our creations. It is a special glimpse into Jenny’s process work… one of hundreds of potent portals.
Art for Transformation
Beneath every product, every card, every offering, remains the original heartbeat of Jenny’s work:
A woman standing before a canvas.
Listening inward.
Allowing herself to be changed by what emerges.
And perhaps that is why these images feel so deeply personal when we encounter them. They were never manufactured to tell us what healing should look like. They are evidence of what healing actually looked like, for someone willing to face herself honestly and transform through the process.
In sharing her paintings, Jenny offers more than art.
She offers permission.
Permission to feel deeply.
Permission to create imperfectly.
Permission to meet the shadow with compassion.
Permission to trust that what is most authentic within us may also become what most profoundly serves others.
The magic of her paintings is not only perceived in the visuals, but felt viscerally through the body as we receive their energetic pulse. We are feeling the potency of that which was birthed from the depth of her own soul work… the grief, healing, shadow work, awakening, creativity, perfectionism, tenderness, and rage themselves.
Our Newest Creation
Jessica witnessed Jenny’s Inner Child the moment she saw her archive of personal process paintings. In innocence, vulnerability, shadow, and light, many images in the archive depict Jenny in various stages of childhood. Wisdom of the Inner Child Oracle was dream-seeded by both Jessica and Jenny in the early talks of co-creation (back in 2019) because they have a shared journey around the potency of integrating the healing of the Inner Child.
Now… that idea is finally being birthed!
And it is truly a gift to experience art that was created in such soulful, deep, intimate ways.
As Jessica recently described in an interview: “We hear so often about how potent our oracles are” [it is because] “these are archives of Jenny’s personal healing journey. Because she is a very embodied person in her healing and her own path... we’re getting to experience that in this oracle deck. These paintings weren’t created for this deck. It just so happens that she had this very rich prolific archive that captured the human journey so well that we were able to curate a collection that really spoke to those paths.”
We trust you can see, and feel, the depth of soul in these creations.
May you experience the magic and alchemy they pour forth from their souls to you...
May your Inner Child feel more accepted, cherished, and honored in working with Wisdom of the Inner Child Oracle.
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