Art and healing are intimately connected because it is through imagination and image making that you can stimulate and witness the process of becoming whole. The experience of becoming whole, while very real to the individual, is an unseen process. Healing is an inner process through which a person becomes whole, the sense of being intact and undiminished, and can take place on physical, emotional, or spiritual levels. How we imagine our experiences and what we believe about them have a powerful effect on our sense of well-being. Images are a central source of meaning-making because they flow from your inner creative authority, the soul’s palette. Art making satisfies something deep inside us and, at the same time, places us beyond ourselves. Humanity’s drive to self-express through art is a powerful and compelling need that often supersedes basic necessities. When one lets oneself enter the river and goes with the flow, great changes occur and wonderful things happen. Mysteriously, answers emerge and problems begin to resolve. The path of art making asks you to act on faith….Cathy Malchiodi
we disappear into ourselves by following what shapes us….by drawing nearer to what stirs us…..how do you respond to images? what draws you in? how do you honor your transformative possibilities? uncontrollable and fluid metaphors run through our core….
In my studio, on this sunny morning, I want to begin a new work. I place my log from a fir tree in front of me and sit with it. We sit as if we are two very old friends who don’t need to say anything in each other’s presence and whose presence is comforting to each other. I imagine the tree that this log came from as I sit with it, the kind of life it had. I listen with my sketchpad on my lap until I make a mark on the page or onto the wood. The images come with the mark, forged from sensation, from memory pressed into myself, images that I retrieve time and again. There is an endless supply from my grandfather’s garden, shadows large and small, voices and faces, the names of childhood friends, a fairy tale someone read to me, the gesture of a smile. I can conjure up my past, tucked away in my imagination, and examine what is there, going through my mind as if it were a trunk in an attic, for the little surprises and gems in my memory that are part of my history, giving depth and richness, authenticity and spirit to my work….Nancy Azara
get down to the gritty rituals
Art lives in the Big World. One of the main aims in writing practice is to learn to trust your own mind and body, to grow patient. It’s the process of writing and life that matters. One poem or story doesn’t matter one way or the other. The problem is we think we exist. We think our words are permanent and solid and stamp us forever. That’s not true. We write in the moment……Natalie Goldberg
