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Gratitude

1/16/2016

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​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.
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Painting How It Feels, Not How It Looks

10/31/2015

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Every time I go to Ghost Ranch, I am drawn to paint the view outside the studio. Whenever I try, I run into the limits of my ability - I don't have the skill to make it look the way I want.  Last week, after finishing a very intense painting, I was drawn to try again. Instead of trying to paint the view, I just tried to paint how I felt in the moment looking at the view. The result doesn't look much like the hills but it was still most satisfying of all my efforts to paint the high desert.
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Painting in Community

10/31/2015

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 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. ​
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Joy and Beauty in the New Year

9/19/2015

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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.
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In January 2015, I posted on my Facebook page that my word for 2015 was going to be "JOY". Nice idea but easier said that than done. Now, in September, I recognize that I am in a situation that is familiar to me from the painting studio. A painter starts out with an intention: I am going to paint "Joy". 
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.
I love the way that lessons learned in the painting studio reverberate throughout my life.  As I struggle to find space for more joy in my life, I know from my painting experience that admitting to the dark parts doesn't undermine the happy stuff - it makes the painting better. Both sides of the struggle - the wanting joy and the dark feelings that block it out - deserve to be in the painting and make it beautiful.
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So this is what I am learning from process painting this month:
My life may not always be happy but it is beautiful.
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Experiencing a Painting Intensive

9/19/2015

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

8/7/2015

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    I recently had the experience of looking at 189 photographs of myself, all taken within 45 minutes. (I had a hired a photographer to do a professional photo for my website.) It was disconcerting at first. Usually when I look in the mirror, I'm just looking for information - Is my hair OK? Any food caught in my teeth? If I stop and take a hard look at myself, it can quickly turn into a surreal experience. The connection between the real me and the face in the mirror seems more like a logical fact than a true and certain reality. 
     If I want to know what I really look like, on the inside, I pick the brush and see what happens. Sometimes what comes out is a surprise. Sometimes it seems boring and predictable. But it almost always feels like "me". So, if you want to see what I look on the outside, check out my new portrait below. If you want to see what I look on the inside, check out my paintings in the gallery at ReflectingCanvas.com.
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The Unloved Child

3/17/2015

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      Sooner or later you are going to end up with something in your painting that you just don't like. Maybe a drip or a slip of the brush in the wrong place. Maybe your skill fell short of your intentions and no one else would know that brown blob was supposed to be a dog. The basic idea of process painting is that the results don't matter. What do you do when they do matter and you aren't happy about it?
      Here are a few strategies for dealing that uncomfortable situation:
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- Work with it in your painting. Try doing more of what you don't like and see what happens. Or paint your response, let the "not liking" show up in the painting too.
- Remind yourself that it really doesn't matter how it looks. After all, your subconscious (or your muse, if you prefer) wanted you paint the idea. That idea is still there, even if you don't like how it was executed.
- Try to think of as a misbehaving child - love it for being what it is, even if it wasn't what you expected.
- Notice the part of you that doesn't like it. "Not liking" is a feeling. It's OK and you don't have to do anything at all about it - just go right on not liking it.

What do you think of the painting above? It was done by my friend and fellow teacher, Linda Bolton. She titled it, "I Might be Pissed". She didn't like it and was surprised when I asked to include in the gallery for my website. I love it. If you want to comment on the painting or on this essay, please offer your thoughts in the comment section below.

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The Magic That Guides Us Through Dark Places

10/22/2014

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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.
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Before painting, the dark feelings are churning around inside. After, you can step back from the painting and see their shape and color on the paper. Maybe some of that magic comes from taking the emotion out of your body and putting it on paper. Maybe some of it happens when you can step back and take in what you created, allowing you to see and reflect and not just feel.  Painting allows the emotions to come out a way that is totally safe and without hurting anyone else. After all, it is just a picture, nobody else needs to see it. 

I’m sure someday a painter will tell me that she felt miserable after a workshop (and if that painter is you, please let me know so that I can support you) but that will not shake my belief that magic happens when we truly listen to our own experience and allow it to guide us while putting paint on paper.

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Why Paint?

9/15/2014

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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.

2. I feel more integrated. About half my paintings had contrasting elements - light/dark, safe/dangerous, They didn't start out that way but as they unfolded over time, the mood changed and new layers came into the picture. One big painting (3 feet wide by 6 feet high), done late in the week, had a wild mix of color and textures from hand prints and foot prints to angular geometrics to curvy vines with primary, fluorescent and glitter colors that all come together in a way that felt very satisfying to me - contrasting elements creating a integrated whole.
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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.
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Making Meaning from Mystery

8/16/2014

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Process painting can be a wonderful way to tap into your subconscious mind but sometimes what shows up on the paper just doesn’t make sense. Of course, not all painting need to make sense. Maybe you just like the motion of the brush in your hand or you are exploring the way the colors look on the paper. In that case, just embrace the experience, everything is fine.
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. 
 You can try this out on my painting of the spider web. Next month, I’ll post my own responses
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Questions to Uncover Meaning in Your Painting

-  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.”
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    Process painting is such a magical experience that I want to share. My invitation to you: Paint. Play. Discover.

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