Akiane: Heaven Is for Real
Akiane: Heaven Is for Real
Interview by Marlise Karlin
“Faces are more meaningful to me Than anything else, you cannot live Without seeing and touching them” -Akiane
Akiane’s life began in an unusual way, with an underwater home birth in a shack on the edge of a cornfield. Although during her first years the family experienced severe hardships, Akiane grew up in a nurturing home-schooling environment. Her mother was a Lithuanian immigrant teacher and her father a chef from Chicago. In their rural Illinois home the family had no friends, no relatives, no television or radio, and their life was quite simple: long walks in nature, open conversations, and hands on explorations of knowledge.
When Akiane was four years old, even though the family was indifferent to spirituality or religion, suddenly she started experiencing vivid impressions about invisible realms and a great desire to express them through art utilizing whatever medium was found on hand: candles, lipstick, fruits, vegetables, charcoal or pencils.
Though once in while she would share many details about the self-aware universes she was seeing, most of her spiritual experiences, however, she kept secret, so as not to overwhelm her parents. “It is not time yet for you to know what I see. When that time comes, then you will know.”
Soon afterwards, Akiane plunged into the world of colors, and a few more years later into the world of poetry leaving her family and audiences puzzled.
Gradually the days became filled with thinking, painting and writing, and at the tender age of eight the self-taught prodigy completed her first five-foot long oil paintings mastering realism equal to that of a seasoned artist.
