The Workshop
What happens in a typical workshop day
The structure is to formulate, create images from “nothing”.
To b
uild a sense of trust in oneself that initiates a belief system in the process of “making”. (Doing and thinking simultaneously, thinking and doing concurrently.) To understand search with the intention to “find” the invisible links.
Anne Dillard – “Teaching A Stone To Talk”
Today, we are going to generate the authentic, through processing ideas, many ideas.
We play by trying the new. Random drawing, eyes shut, the left hand, right hand, cut it up; paste it up, faster, faster. Now paint over everything you just did. All this to get the workshop participant not to “think”.
I believe we are our own worse enemy when it comes to the creative process. If we could just eliminate the “ego” while we create we could achieve authenticity with blazing speed.
Creativity itself is often thought of as “belonging” to the “other
”. That “other” is usually defined as The Artist. Creative energy is actually innate and spontaneously present in everybody. When we think, speak, and act out of natural creativity and it’s expression, we are not talking about something separate from our own mind and experience. The trick: not to let insecurities rob us of our trust.
During a workshop week I encourage participants to write down dreams, report ideas (if only to the self) and not to listen or read the news. In other words ….tap into your own language of ideas and play.
I find the news can be a major distraction to our emotional well being, dictating our moods and swaying us away from our own innate biorhythms. Make it up!! Rely on your own power of imagination. Push your boundaries. One simple way to test your boundary and push yourself is to try the new. For instance, if you know you can paint colorful shapes, try a figure. If you paint or draw figures, do an abstract. And by all means, let it look BAD, UGLY, NAIVE, and UN- PROFESSIONAL. !!!!Now, you are really getting somewhere. And remember, even this to will change.
I once took a five-day workshop entitled “Painting From The Source” with Aviva Gold.
The boundaries she set up in class were 1. A painting is rarely done in her five-day class.
