Debra Hillard: Weaving Remembrance, Painting Presence, Writing Truth
- Sep 16
- 5 min read
For Debra Hillard, art is not separate from life—it is life. Every painting she brushes into being, every textile she stitches, every word she writes is born of ceremony and sacred intention. Her work is not decoration but devotion: offerings that carry memory, presence, and medicine. Hillard’s creations are not simply objects of beauty; they are portals into remembrance, mirrors of truth, and companions on the path home to what is real, raw, and holy.
Her journey as an artist cannot be untangled from her spiritual path. For much of her life, Hillard carried the presence of the one she calls her mother—not biological, but spiritual. She embodied her grief, her artistry, even the prophecies hidden in her paintings and poetry. “For much of my life I lived as her,” Hillard reflects, “her voice, her wounds, her visions became my own.” It was only through sacred ceremony that she began to separate, to reclaim her own essence, and to offer the medicine uniquely hers.
This medicine takes many forms. Hillard weaves textiles, paints portals, and writes reflections that call people back to their essence. For her, these mediums are not separate disciplines but flowing expressions of the same current. Painting gives form to visions she receives. Textiles extend those images into vessels that can be touched, lived with, and held. Writing then gives voice to truths too expansive to live only in image. “I am not a weaver of fabric on a loom,” she explains. “I am a weaver of magic. My work brings what is unseen into form so that spirit and memory can be remembered.” Every brushstroke, every thread, every word is a prayer.
Among her most treasured creations are Soul Wraptures and Bubbe Pillows. These are not simple textiles but spellwoven vessels, carriers of memory and presence. Each Wrapture is infused with prayers, protection, and ancestral guidance. Bubbe Pillows emerged directly from her mother’s essence—her voice, her love, her lineage sewn into form. To hold or rest against one of these pieces is to be held by something greater than cloth. “When someone wraps themselves in a Soul Wrapture,” Hillard says, “they are held by the memory of those who came before, the guidance of ancestors, and the blessing of those yet to come.” In this way, her work is both deeply personal and universally connective, bridging the seen and unseen, offering each recipient a mirror into their own ancestral remembrance.
The creation of such sacred work begins in listening. Hillard listens to Spirit, to the soul of the person she is creating for, or to the larger collective prayer when making pieces for a wider circle. From this listening, she moves into ritual. Candles are lit, guides and ancestors are called in, and ceremony opens the vessel through which images and messages flow. Her process is less about technique than it is about attunement. Each brushstroke, each chosen color, each stitch is a transmission—a living prayer. Because she naturally inhabits multiple dimensions at once, she moves fluidly between realms, receiving visions and giving them form.
This is what she calls medicine: art that restores wholeness, unlocks cellular memory, and brings us back to what is real. “When someone wraps themselves in a Soul Wrapture or stands before their Soul Portrait,” Hillard explains, “it can awaken memories stored in their very cells. Those memories are portals into remembrance, reconnecting them with their truth, their essence, their belonging.”
Her art continues to work long after its creation, functioning as a companion, a guide, and a living threshold.
Hillard’s work carries deep themes of healing, lineage, and ancestral presence because her own journey began by carrying the grief and prophecy of her mother. The paintings and poetry of this spiritual mother were not only artistic expression but living prophecy—marking where she was while pointing toward what was still to come. Without realizing it, Hillard lived out these prophecies in her own body and life, until ceremony allowed her to step back into her own being. The influence of that lineage remains. Her art continues to honor her mother’s vision while embodying her own. Through this balance, Hillard weaves themes of healing through beauty, transmuting shadow into truth, and honoring ancestry. Her creations are simultaneously remembrance and rebirth.
Hillard’s paintings—particularly her Soul Portraits—are not about likeness but about essence. She paints what cannot be seen with the eyes but felt with the heart. Through light, color, and movement, she gives shape to the soul’s truth. Ceremony once again opens the space, allowing her to attune to what presence wishes to be revealed. “I am a weaver of the unseen,” she says. “My role is to give body to what is often hidden, to let what exists in other realms have a place here.” Each portrait becomes a portal, carrying medicine, making the invisible visible and the intangible tangible.
At the heart of Hillard’s practice is a commitment to what she calls returning to what is “real, raw, and holy.” This means stripping away illusions, masks, and performances, entering the creative process undone and allowing ceremony to birth truth. It is the place where grief and joy coexist, where wounds become gateways, where nothing is hidden. “My work is not decoration, but devotion,” she affirms. Every creation is an invitation to honesty, to vulnerability, to sacred wholeness.
Hillard’s creations act as mirrors, guiding others into remembrance and self-reflection. Soul Wraptures, Portraits, and her writings all carry the same intention: to reflect back the deeper truth of who someone is. These pieces don’t give anything new but restore what has always been present within. “I don’t create art,” she says. “I midwife remembrance.”
The transformative impact of her work is clear. She recalls one woman who received her Soul Wrapture and described it as “fit for royalty.” With each use, the woman reconnected with her sacredness and worth. Over time, this remembrance changed her life—shifting how she valued herself, transforming her business, and tripling her income. Hillard sees this not as personal credit but as the natural ripple effect of medicine-filled art: “It doesn’t prescribe or instruct, it awakens.”
Underlying everything Hillard creates is intention. Intention transforms brushstrokes into prayers and fabric into living vessels. Infused at every stage with ceremony and remembrance, her work carries presence that continues to resonate long after it leaves her hands. For those who encounter it, the art is less an object than a living field of energy, reminding them of their worth, belonging, and connection to Spirit.
Hillard’s forthcoming book, Remembering MySelf, expands upon these sacred themes.
While her visual and textile art gives form to the unseen, the book offers language and story as vessels of remembrance. Woven throughout its pages are not only Hillard’s own reflections but also the poetry and paintings of her mother. These serve as both prophecy and guide, showing how creativity itself can be divine instruction. “Looking back now, I can see how each of her pieces carried wisdom,” Hillard notes. “Her creative work became both compass and map, guiding her forward and leaving me a trail of remembrance to follow.” Remembering MySelf is a tapestry of image, word, and prophecy—revealing how art and poetry can carry us through thresholds, prepare us for what is yet unseen, and bring us home to ourselves.
At its essence, Debra Hillard’s work is not about objects but about presence. A Soul Wrapture, a Bubbe Pillow, a Soul Portrait, a passage in her book—all are vessels of remembrance, bridges between the visible and invisible. They do not give something new, but they awaken what has always been there: our worth, our belonging, our connection to Spirit. Through her art, Hillard reminds us that what is sacred is not somewhere far away but already within us, waiting to be remembered.
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