#004: Red K Elders – Drawing the Gods, Naked Bodies, and the Authority of “Yes”

In this episode, I’m sitting with Red K Elders, an artist, somatic guide, and seeker who has carved space in the woods—and in our collective psyche—to let the ancient gods walk through her pencil and through our bodies. In this episode, we explore not just what it means to create, but what it means to become a threshold: between shame and celebration, contraction and intimacy, technology and sovereignty.

🔍 Episode Contents (In Deeper):

* Leaving the City, Entering the Wild

* London for ten years, then deep woods: what happens when you trade the urban for the elemental.

* The hardship, the enchantment, and idealism vs practicality of off‑grid methodologies.

* How growing food, building raised beds, living with seasons shifted perception of time, resources, and self.

* The Emergence of the God‑Drawings

* How a casual invitation to draw during a liminal time led to rediscovering a lost practice.

* Drawing as trance, as yesness, as discovery rather than pre‑planning.

* The role of iconography, mythology, symbols: learning what shows itself in the lines.

* Yesness & Inner Authority

* What is “yesness” – somatic felt pull, bodily posture, intuition.

* Models & muses vs spontaneous god‑presence: choosing who models the gods, following signal.

* Training oneself to sense what is true, what feels wrong, what feels profound.

* Body, Shame & Nudity

* Nudity in nature with children; how innocence frames bodies without shame.

* Social & algorithmic censorship: the power of the human form, and why seeing it can feel threatening.

* The energy of sexuality as creative, generative, sacred.

* Movement as Permission & Healing

* Movement not as fitness but embodied release: what bodies want, what they need.

* Witnessing, group movement, synchronicity among bodies, what opens when moving with others.

* How movement clears creative blocks and connects back to creative source.

* Psychedelics, Vision & Nature

* Experiences with external psychedelics vs the psychedelic quality of being deeply in nature.

* Vision quests, sensory opening, wind, moon, earth: the wild as altar.

* Cultivating visionary states through ritual, earth‑places, trance, rather than substances.

* AI, Images, and What’s Left of the Soul

* How AI‑generated art feels: dead, malevolent, draining. Why this response matters.

* Practical uses of AI vs its dangers: when it helps with executive functioning, and when it replaces inner authority.

* The experiment of building a tool that reflects the user back to their own voice, their own knowing.

* Living Relationally with the Gods

* The artworks as living entities in Red’s home: altars, places, prints, relational presence.

* How child‑rearing, community, and place factor into art: teaching daughters, holding circle in woods.

* How seeing responses from people transforms the work even after the drawing is done.

* Freedom, Authority & What’s at Stake

* The cost of not knowing one’s body, one’s Yes, one’s full aliveness.

* Authority over one’s own movement, one’s own body, one’s own creative impulses.

* The larger stakes: disconnection allows easier control, easier flattening of identity; reconnection births resilience and resistance.

Recorded June 30, 2025

Get more from Red:

🌐 Website: redkelders.com

📸 Instagram: @rkelders.art

👤 Facebook: @rkelders.art

📌 Pinterest: @redkelders

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