Emerging from the Mud

A spring Painting from the Soul™ workshop

“Practice any art - music, singing, dancing, acting, drawing, painting, sculpting,poetry,

fiction, essays, reportage; no matter how well or badly, not to get money and fame,but to experience becoming; to find out what’s inside you, to make your soul grow."

- Kurt Vonnegut

Well, it's been several years since I've held a painting workshop at my home in Vermont - mostly because I've spent a good

chunk of the last 3+ years in California. I had gathered a wonderful and growing group of Soul Painters in Santa Barbara who

met for the last time (we didn't know it then) in December 2017, 5 days before the Thomas fire - when I was evacuated from

the retreat center where I was living and working - and 1 month before the Montecito mud flow which destroyed the property

and put an end to our lovely, creative endeavors. But what we created there, that was begun here in Vermont, has taken hold

and so wherever I am, a gathering of soul painters must happen!

For those of you who are new to PFTS:

What is Painting from the Soul?

Just close your eyes for a moment and imagine standing in front of a piece of paper and handing the brush over to your soul. Let it choose the colors, the shapes, the images that it wants to express on the paper. Let it doodle, or make giant sweeps of color. Draw stick figures or galaxies. Let it teach you what it wants you to know, through the painting. Free yourself to play and let go, to discover and create!

We use simple materials to help ourselves get child-like and remember how we used to create for the pure joy of it, without judgment or labels. Creativity is the language of the soul and painting gives it a way to express, to guide and inform us, to cleanse and release what's no longer needed, without the filter of the judging/thinking mind.

It's refreshing, healing, and magical.

(And who wouldn't benefit from a little sprinkling of magic ?)