The Artist

Yasmeen Olya , also known as Kyla Gwendolyn Hidson Lewis is a visual artist, vocalist and Celtic harpist. Born in Canada in Edmonton AB, Yasmeen grew up in the Waldorf education and was encouraged in arts and music. Her father was a multidisciplinary artist and musician, her mother was also deeply involved in the arts and storytelling.

Yasmeen began learning the harp when she was 12, and is a folk harpist, she composes her own melodies, and sings to them often in a sound without actual words, just letting the music float freely into existence. Yasmeen studied art at the Fine Art College of Victora BC Canada in her early 20's, and continued on painting, illustrating . She enjoys painting flowers, figures, spiritual images while she also loves illustration, landscape and abstract. She loves to dapple in many different avenues of creativity, including hand crafts knitting and sewing.

 In her early 20's Yasmeen found Sufism and recieved the spiritual name Yasmeen Olya, which she has since used as her artist name. Kyla Gwendolyn Hidson Lewis remains her legal name. 

 If we look at this artist's collective works, we can see that she is a dedicated inspired artist, constantly creating, despite illness, despite raising children, in the face of many changes and difficulties she has continued on giving her music freely, and sharing her many different artworks. We can see from her work also that she s aspiring to inspire the artist within us all. Using a language without language, the idea that formlessness begets form, that music without language begets imagination, she wants her listeners, the people seeing her art to feel themselves the artist, dreaming into the works, forming their own story from what they hear and feel, what they see , what story they envision. Yasmeen is a creative, believing in the study of dark and light, the sensitivity to the myriad shades inbetween, the knowledge we gain from our own work with our hands, creative kinesthetic work, holistic work. Basket weaving, cooking, cleaning, building, sewing, spinning, and painting and music, and so much more. There are so many ways we can learn skills which carry us through life, keeping us warm and comforted in the knowledge of our own inner wisdom shining out through our creativity. She clearly feels that the more creative and intuitive we are with our minds, hands and hearts, the more empathy grows, the more emotional intelligence walks with us.

Mother of 3 children, she is currently fighting cancer and is living in Italy, this blog is a meant to share with the world, some of what she has learned from living with cancer. She has been courageously voyaging to find healing. In Italy she is undergoing the neccessary therapies, and depending on how they go, she may also travel to alternative clinics for care if need be. Currently her children are with family nearby while she undergoes her treatments and healing.

She is aspiring to raise more funds for her treatments in Italy.