​Gratitude 
I have been leading process painting workshops since 2012. Almost one hundred different people have painted with me. (97 to be exact!) Some came just once, but many of you have returned again and again.

I appreciate all of you and the opportunity to be part of your painting process. I love watching when you take me up on the invitation to be big, be messy, have fun and break the rules. Watching those magical moments is a pleasure that never gets old. Thank you. 

It is also a moving experience to be with someone when they are painting deep and complicated feelings. It is not easy, especially in a room full of other painters. If this is you, I am grateful for your trust and your willingness to be true to yourself.

And for those of you who have not yet attended a process painting workshop, thank you for your interest. It is nice to know that there are people that I have not even met who are curious about what I am doing and interested enough to read this far into the newsletter.

Happy Thanksgiving! I look forward to painting with all of you in 2016.

 Last month I went to a week-long painting retreat at the Ghost Ranch in Abiquu, New Mexico with Chris Zydel. One thing I noticed at the retreat was how different it was to do process painting surrounding by other painters, compared to painting at home. 

     At a painting retreat, I am there to paint. I know perfectly well that boredom means that I've touch with my inner experience. Still, when I get bored at home, I usually wander off to get a snack or check my email. At a retreat, there is nowhere else to go. If I stay with the painting and confront the resistance, the energy comes back. The result: less snacking and more profound paintings.

     At the retreat, I have another person serve as my facilitator. I am a fully trained facitlitator. I already know all the questions. Yet, there is something in the interaction with another person that gives me inspiration, insight and energy. 

     Painting in community also changes the energy. Even though no one is talking, the room becomes charged with a intense energy that inspires me to go deeper. 

     Finally, watching others paint opens up possibilities. At my very first workshop at Ghost Ranch, I was astonished by other people's paintings. While I worked to fill a single 2' x 3' sheet of paper, other people had paintings that sprawled across as many as a dozen sheets. People were using paint in surprising ways - using their hands, throwing paint with their brushes, squeezing glitter glue right onto the paper. There were images ranging from monsters to birds to naked lovers. From watching the others, I knew that whatever I wanted to do, it would be ok. ​

After living so many years of my life in synch with the school calendar, September always feels like the beginning of the new year for me. This makes me think back to my New Year's resolutions of last January.

For a while it works. Flowers, rainbows, balloons - the painting is light and free. But after a while the painter runs out of energy. When I check in, the conversation goes like this:
Me: How is it going?
Painter: I'm making a happy painting.
Me: How are you feeling as you paint?
P: I'm feeling sad and heavy.
Me: Could you let some of that show up in your painting?
P: But I want it to be happy! I don't want to ruin it!
Me: You did paint happy. But this is process painting. Could you let your current feeling show up in the painting too?Usually the painter agrees. New, darker images appear but instead of ruining the painting, it becomes richer, more complex, and more satisfying.

So this is what I am learning from process painting this month:
My life may not always be happy but it is beautiful.

Wonder what it is like to spend an entire weekend painting? At the Fall 2015 Intensive, participants made this painting to capture their experience.

As you can see, it was complex experience with images of growth, movement and calm. The words that came up the most were "Joy" (three times) and "Love" (twice). It is a safe space ("Trust" and "Acceptance"). It can also be a quiet, meditative activity, as you connect to your own experience and translate it, without words, into color, line and shape with painters describing it as "Peaceful", "Mindfulness", "Silence", "Inward" and "Grounded"

With more time for the workshop, paintings have time to unfold - to move beyond the first impulse into something more complex, more interesting, and more surprising. There is also more time for the underlying skills of process painting - giving yourself permission,over-riding the critical impulse and allowing your creativity and intuition to blossom. Finally, there is time for fun - Be Big! Use Glitter! Make a Mess! Do What Makes You Happy!

At the end of each workshop, I ask painters to give me feedback about their experience. It is no surprise that the painter who took great delight painting giant glittery flowers had a good time. It makes sense that the one whose painting evolved from a dark tangle into a powerful tree felt better when she was finished. What is interesting is how often the ones who painted the darkest, most painful feelings consistently tell me that they feel lighter when they finished. 

Painting dark emotions can be intense. When I first became a facilitator, I worried that some people might leave a workshop feeling worse. Since then, I’ve learned to trust that something magical happens when a process painting goes to difficult places.

My recent painting retreat at the Ghost Ranch in New Mexico has recharged my enthusiasm for intuitive painting. The basic idea of process painting is simple - focus on your own process or experience as you paint without worrying about how the product will look. Last week I wrote about how to explore the deeper meanings in a painting and they can certainly be powerful way to get new insights into your psyche. However, there is much more be learned from the experience of process painting. Here is a quick list of other reasons why I paint:
1. I can be big! powerful! sexy! And also small, scared and constrained. Sometimes in the same painting. And it is all OK.

3. I'm learning to listen to my intuitive, creative self. When I'm painting, any impulse can be giving space, it doesn't have to make sense. So I get practice in paying attention to those non-logical instincts that carries over into every day life.
4. I get to practice taking risks when it really, truly doesn't matter. I hate painting people because I just know they won't turn out right. Guess what? I did it anyway and it was OK. It's making me braver since I'm learning that just because it feels scary doesn't mean that it is really dangerous.
5. I feel better when I am done. In process painting, we try to follow the energy, good or bad. Even painting the difficult or uncomfortable parts is a release of energy that makes feel great when I'm done.

But, sometime, you can sense that the painting is tapping into your deeper consciousness and you don’t understand what it is telling you. When this happens, the first thing to do is to ignore the urge to understand until the painting is done. At this moment, the act of painting is allowing the intuitive, creative, nonverbal part of yourself to use line, color and image to send a message to the world. Trying to make sense of it shifts you into a logical mode that disrupts your creative process. There is plenty of time to be logical after you are done painting. Allowing yourself to stay in confusion allows you to stay in connection with your deeper self. 

However, once done, you can integrate the experience more fully by inviting the logical side of your brain making sense of what happened in its own, left-brain terms. When you sense that there is more meaning in a painting, here are some questions you can use to help your verbal, logical part of the brain figure out what happened. 

-  Stand back and look at the picture as whole. What do you notice? How does it make you feel?
-  For each of the objects in the painting (for example, the web is one object, the background colors are another)

• What is the mood or feeling associated with object?
  
• What is the relationship between that object and the others?
  
• If it could talk, what would it say?
  
• What are the common cultural associations for that object?
  
• What are your associations with that object?
  
• What aspects of the object seemed important when you painted it?
  
• What aspects stand out for you now that you look at it? Color? Size? Symmetry? Placement on the paper?
  
• Do you see an connection between this object and someone or something in your own life

-  What isn’t in the painting? Is there something hidden, missing or implied?
-  If the painting were put into motion, what would happen next?
-       The painting was is a expression of painter in that moment. What do you think it says?

As you work these questions, keep checking in with your intuition. Some questions will seem important and other irrelevant. Some answers will seem to fit, even they don’t quite make sense while others just don’t resonate. Trying to understand a painting as a message from your subconscious is very individual process. To get it right, you need to consider not just the final painting but also your own experience, first, as you painted it and, now as you look at it.

Sometimes, as you explore these questions, the meaning becomes very clear. Other times, even if you have a strong sense that the picture is trying to tell you something, the mystery of your painting stays a mystery. Rene Magritte wrote, “My painting is visible images which conceal nothing…they evoke mystery and indeed, when one sees one of my pictures, one asks oneself this simple question, ‘What does that mean?’ It does not mean anything, because mystery mean nothing either, it is unknowable.”