I had been working primarily as a psychotherapist when I started my Creative Juices Arts business, and I was supporting myself nicely with that work.

But intuitive painting … even though it meant I was still working in the realm of psychological and emotional healing… was something that not a whole lot of folks knew about or understood.

When people thought about using art as a healing path they either approached it from the technical/product oriented perspective… ( I’ll learn to make “good” art to help me relax and feel better about myself) or they saw it from the art therapy vantage point where art making is a way to solve your problems and analyze your psyche so that you can understand yourself and your psychological issues better.

But intuitive painting is really neither of those things. It’s got a kind of anti-product orientation… what the painting looks like to you or other people doesn’t really matter at all… AND the whole point of it is to get out of your head and into your body and learn to deeply trust in the weird and wily ways of your intuitive knowing. Which means there’s not really a lot of attention put on what you might think the painting symbolizes on a mind level.

So in other words, saying it was a hard sell since it didn’t fit into any preconceived categories that people already understood, was a bit of an understatement.

Which IS of course, exactly why I loved it. I loved how intuitive painting encouraged people to step out of their preconceived notions about themselves and art and life and just about EVERYTHING. How it helped people learn to trust their hearts and intuition and authentic emotions and impulses, without first having to understand those feelings, like nothing else can. I loved how intuitive painting was such a wondrous invitation into our deepest souls and how it helped to give a voice to those sacred, wordless places inside of our being.

So it was frustrating when I opened the doors to my brand new intuitive painting classes and people didn’t just come flooding in.

So of course I spent a lot of time pouting. And whining ( mostly to Tim) and questioning my decision to follow this path.

And then, one day, when the pouting, whining, questioning part of me was operating at a fever pitch, something kind of miraculous happened. A sense of peace and tranquility seemed to descend upon my being, seemingly out of the blue. It was like all the frenzy and fear and sense of failure and unworthiness just stopped. And along with the calm came a very deep knowing.

And what I knew in my bones was that I loved this work with a holy passion. It had healed me in so many ways and I was deeply devoted to the idea of sharing it with others. It was clearly the work I was meant to do.

And from that perspective it really didn’t matter how many people showed up or how quickly my classes filled. All that mattered is that I stayed true to my devotion and to doing the work.

At his point something in me deeply relaxed and I stopped worrying and fretting and just got to work taking the necessary steps of getting the word out so that people who wanted what I had to offer could find me and my studio.

Of course, it still took longer than I wanted it to to fill my classes. But not as long as it would have taken if I had distracted myself and wasted my precious life energy continuing to pout, and whine and question every step of the way.

What I was up against through this process, was the age old artists dilemma of placing my value on how people responded to my art… because make no mistake… this work IS my art… instead of staying connected to how valuable doing the art was to ME.

But once I got back in right relationship with my artists soul, things unfolded in ways that I could never have imagined.

And it’s this connection with people’s deepest self and passion and desire that I am so committed to fostering in my many beloved wild heart students.

Next round of my Wild Heart Expressive Arts Teacher Training begins at the end of April, 2024!