Welcome to my blog page! I love writing about the healing power of the creative process. Here you will find a collection of all of my writing from all the way back to 2005! Enjoy!
One of my favorite movies is a little flick called City Slickers that came out in 1991. It's the story about 3 guys who hit their mid forties and find themselves kind of lost and wondering what the heck happened to their lives. They are friends and all live in New...
Just recently one of my brave, brave students took her intuitive paintings home and showed them to her dad. She was generous enough to share the interchange with me and I thought it would be helpful to share it with all of you. Here's a brief transcript of their...
Have you ever been asked the question " If you could have a superpower, what would it be?" Well, it seems like I already have one although it's not one that you ever see in the Marvel Comic books. Nor is it one that I would have necessarily chosen. My weird superpower...
I recently got an email from a lovely woman on my mailing list asking me about how to use creativity to work through negative emotions. Which is a completely fabulous question and one that I have thought about a great deal. My first response to that question is...
My muse is quite the bossy sort and has been yammering at me pretty much non-stop lately. What she wants this time is for me to be writing more. And specifically she wants me to be BLOGGING more often. There's a familiar dance that we engage in that starts with her...
I just completed the final session of my current Wild Heart Expressive Arts Teacher Training program. During this five day intensive each of my students took a three hour block of time and presented and facilitated an expressive arts class that they designed. Which...
I have been a personal growth, spiritual and creativity retreat junkie most of my adult life. Since the time when dinosaurs walked the earth and the term hippie was not prefaced by the world "old", I have participated in scads and scads of workshops and healing...
I get awfully tired of being an adult all the time. I get exhausted just thinking about the list of things I have to do to keep my life operating on a more or less even keel, much less actually doing all those things. Like always having to be competent. And...
I've been reading a lot of novels lately... and have come across some darned good ones... but the thing I've noticed the most is that a story only really gets interesting when someone majorly screws up. If the protagonist falls in love with the wrong person, if the...
I have been involved in the world of blogging and making online connections for the past year and a half. And it's been an exciting new adventure for an old dog like me. I'm 57 and most of my peers can send an email and surf the web but don't really understand the...
Whenever one of my students is in a creative bind and they feel stuck and blocked and like they don't know what to do next I often ask them the question "So what would you NOT want to paint?" This usually gets me a.) an incredibly dirty look b.) the dawning...
I have a confession to make. In writing this blog I talk a lot about the creative process which makes it sound like it's something that's kind of abstract. Or at least part of the workings of my own mind. Which isn't exactly the truth. I've been avoiding telling the...
Today is the day when we all celebrate love. Or are at least thinking about love. Or trying not to think about love. And mostly what gets celebrated is romantic love. Which is great. But it's not the only love game in town. There's another kind of love that we all...
I have been on a quest lately to find out what it is that truly makes me happy. I'm trying to learn to tell the difference between the considerable fulfillment I experience when I am being productive and simple, straightforward happiness. I have actually had them very...
I have a new creative project that I am in the very beginning stages of and it is a big project. It's something that I've been thinking about for a long time and haven't been able to get to because of lack of time and because I couldn't figure out exactly how to make...
I have a new intuitive painting student who has been surprising herself by how often she finds herself asking the question "You mean it's really OK to do that?" This question comes up around simple things like " You mean it's OK to make a mess? Is it really OK to use...
When people come to my classes they often show up because they are enticed by a promise. I find them on my doorstep because they've been to my website, or they've seen a flyer or read my blog. They come to me believing that what they want are all the things that I say...
When I was a kid I absolutely adored Christmas. I loved the twinkly lights and the schmaltzy music but most of all I loved that sense of anticipation and wonder and surprise. My family and I lived in a rowhouse that had three stories and two flights of stairs. On...
One of the things I love about the intuitive painting process is how much it encourages me to go under the surface of things. To explore what I can't always see. To dive into my inner world and try and express visually what is not readily visible. This can sometimes...
This piece is done with my little handy dandy portable water color set, which I love, love, love for traveling. Again, I don't know exactly what to make of this one. It's just another experience of trusting the brush or as one of my students puts it "following orders...
I don't have a dog. In fact my hubby and I don't have any living furry pets at all because we both have pretty severe animal allergies. But we also love animals. And so we have many stuffed animals, carved wooden folk art animals and tons of imaginary friends in our...
My hubby and I are on vacation and right now we're in the town of St. George Utah and visiting the various national and state parks in the area. Yesterday we went to a place called Snow Canyon State Park and today we are going to the world famous Zion National Park....
This piece is a painting using watercolors that I have in a little travel watercolor kit. I'm away on vacation and am in one of my favorite places in the whole world which is the Southwest desert area- Nevada, Utah and Death Valley in California. I have a pretty...
I love how this one felt to do. Even though I have no idea what it is. If I had to identify it I would say that it looks kind of organic- like a flower or plant from another planet. But it was very absorbing and relaxing to create it. I do enjoy letting the pencils or...
I have the great good fortune to be surrounded by many, many amazingly creative people. People that are bursting with creative energy and ideas, talent and enthusiasm. Friends and colleagues who are living wondrously creative lives and by their example are serving as...
This is another one of my pieces that I did with colored pencils which are a total godsend because they are so easy to just whip out and use when I don't have a lot of space or time to set up my paints. First of all, I have no idea what this drawing is about. It's...
Today's a busy day...in fact it's going to be a busy weekend. I'm co-facilitating a new workshop with a friend of mine we're calling Death Rehearsal: A Playfully Reverent Exploration and Artful Preparation For the Final Curtain Call where we will be using creativity...