Patricia Gagic is a world-renown artist, photographer, and author. Her work has appeared in the Vatican Museum Library, the Société National des Beaux Arts in Paris, and the Whitney Commons Gallery in Toronto, to name just a few, and she has won dozens of awards and recognition of the highest order.

Her skills developed young. Patricia picked up her first pencil and started drawing Elizabethan ball gowns at age three.

"I would finish a drawing. I would take it to my mom and dad and say, 'Oh, look at this,' and they would just stare at me like, 'Who are you?'"

But art wasn't her first career. An avid reader who excelled in school, she was encouraged by her parents to start a practical career, so in the 1970s she decided to join the good old boys' network of Canadian banking.

"I loved the whole idea of the business of banking," she said.

By time she was age 25, she was a branch manager. But that wasn't all. She excelled at property management and built a large portfolio of properties. Her studies and successes helped her mentor young business students.

But something else lingered. A polymath, Patricia felt the "spark of God" drive her not just toward artwork, but also to the relationship of art to math and the universe. This sense of unity with everything inspires her creations.

It also helped her to come out the other side after the death of her daughter.

"When you have the awareness that you have Christ consciousness, Buddha consciousness, that you have consciousness, it's like I've been able to separate and look at it in that duality and not let it be an absorption," she said.  

Patricia has been on a karmic journey of detachment and connection her whole life, and it is a strength that has propelled her to dizzying heights of discovery and contentment.

"When you allow yourself to experience being in the fullness of time ... your Zen, your bliss, when you see that you're exactly where you need to be then you are allowing spirit to emulsify," she said.

Patricia has worked in multiple artistic media, though she gained her mastery in the Matisse palette — the result of years of study under a master artist in France. But she has also impacted communities around the world, including in Peru, Nepal, and Cambodia, where she has built a library and schools.

Patricia's success is impressive, but her spirituality and her empathy are truly inspiring. I could talk to her for hours, but we had to stop somewhere. I am certain you will feel the fullness of connection after listening to this week's episode of Chiseled.