My Creative Path...
From Florence to Cuepaliztli, the story of a transformation...
Florence Ménard was born in Le Mans, France in 1972 and earned a university degree in Business Management before beginning her career in tourism. In the year 2000, she became the personal assistant of Ernst Fuchs, founder of The Vienna School of Fantastic Realism. Upon her return to Paris, she began a long career in Communications, specializing as a Press Liaison and Events Manager in the Arts, while also studying Art History at the Ecole du Louvre.
In 2013, she co-founded The Vienna Academy of Visionary Art with her husband Laurence Caruana. Inspired by the Visionary artists around her, she began painting at the age of 41 and has never looked back, enthusiastically exploring her inner world of visions while honing her craft with each painting.
While living in Vienna, she began her initiation into Inner Journeying with Kevin Campeau and Roel Crabbé. After years of journeying on her own, she started guiding the students of The Vienna Academy of Visionary Art on inner journeys, visualizations, and meditations on their paintings, accompanied by shamanic drumming and other instruments for sound healing. She also took online classes with Sandra Ingerman to deepen her knowledge of the shamanic path.
In 2018 she felt the call to participate in the Moondance in Austria, a spiritual ceremony where, for four nights, over 200 women fast, participate in sweatlodges, dance under the full moon and sing sacred songs while dressed in their traditional white robes. This ceremony is a prayer for our Mother Earth, for Peace, for the Four Elements of Earth, Air, Fire and Water, for our Ancestors and for the Spirit Guardians of the Seven Directions. At the 2021 Moondance, Florence received her spiritual name: CUEPALIZTLI, meaning “Transformation.”
The artist now lives in Burgundy France where she continues to explore a variety of painting techniques while deepening her shamanic work. She loves gardening and has taken classes on Permaculture to achieve a more sustainable lifestyle with her family. She takes time to be in Nature to reconnect with herself, and loves going on long walks around the beautiful hills of Burgundy with her husband and their son.
As a teacher, she has started sharing her gifts with others - offering Inner Journeys through online workshops, and transmitting the love of creating to children through individual and classroom instruction (to make sure that they never lose the inner child as they grow up…).
Florence Ménard Cuepaliztli has exhibited her work in France (Chimeria in Sedan), England (House of Alchemy in Brighton), Austria (Homage to Ernst Fuchs at Galerie 10, SGEM Conference at the Hofburg Palace in Vienna, and The Vienna Academy of Visionary Art), Columbia (Water Wisdom Convergence in Aguaniles), Russia (Visionary Art Award and Visionary Art Trip in Moscow) and Spain (Visionarium near Barcelona).
