art transforms playbook
Here are a few conscious art practices that offer ways to find center, creative ways to give form to feelings that need expression: non-linear ways to inquire into our own material, and help you navigate sometimes difficult emotional terrain. all these practices are excerpted from processes, events, courses or workshops offered by Margaret lindsey.
investigating personal emotional terrain: a method for being curious and present with your emotional terrain. can be done with any colored medium—paints of any kind, pastels, pencils, markers, or all of them.
meditate with the heart spiral doorway: meditating with art, particularly sacred geometry, often reveals new information to the meditator, and perhaps guidance, healing, or clearing. every session is unique to the art form, and to the individual who enters into active meditation with a given piece. many of us are currently working with The heart spiral doorway daily…
click here for info @ live online meditations
expressive Painting with acrylics: alternate tuesday mornings on Zoom. click here for details about the class.
click here for materials list click here for list of techniques
meditate with art: breathe it into yourself, breath yourself out into it. let the artpiece serve as a doorway, a connector to information or content beyond yourself.
13 creativity prompts:
The most important creativity rule of all? you cannot do this wrong, and you cannot do it right. just create with what is.
1. list everything you can think of that is true or a feature of your symbol/project/creative practice. EVERYTHING, including color, texture, environment, history, myths, adjacent symbols, associations, names in other languages…
Any and all of these can be juicy channels for investigation, on offer because you have chosen to engage with a specific project or symbol.
2. Use that list: write down the opposites—what would be the absolute opposite being/thing to your creative project? Or conjure the opposite of just one attribute…
Make art utilizing those opposite aspects, as a way of probing the is-ness or not-ness of your content.
3. Draw/paint/collage huge--at least body size (or larger). Consider having someone trace your body on a large piece of cardboard or paper, and work within that border to create a piece. Or use measurements from your body as the parameters for an art piece—the size of your hand, your height, your foot length, your head circumference...
4. work with clay or other modeling medium—manipulate with your hands or with tools. Go as big as possible. the somatic process of molding with your hands will offer different information than drawing or painting.
5. prepare for and create a series—prep maybe 10 or 20 pieces of something all the same size/color/media—make a new piece every day, using the same format and materials (could be tarot cards, quilt square, tiles, songs, pages in a book…)
6. make a book: could be an altered “real’ book, a flip book, an accordion fold, a hand-made book, a scroll.
7. tap into your emotional intelligence—meditate with the emotional state you are feeling right now, or a feeling that is connected to your content, and then create a piece which channels that energy—for example, where do you feel anger in your body? what is its texture and color? give if form and substance. this can just be scribbles or words or stick figures. here are instructions for this process
8. go online or to the bookstore and find images and creative pieces that investigate the same symbol or subject that you are querying and dialoguing with. Research what others are finding out when they ask the same questions you are asking. Compare and contrast. sense in.
9. gather audio recordings or music that remind you of or seem connected with your subject. Make art in response to that (what color is the sound, what kind of marks would you make if you were the music drawing/painting itself?)
7. Put a whole bunch of different “doing” ideas in a bowl—myriad trails to follow from your notes or journal, different ways you’ve thought about investigating it, exploring what it means, expanding what ideas your creating follows. Take one idea at random, perhaps as a warm-up when you enter your studio, and create with that.
8. What-ifs: Come up with some “what if’ questions, and create in response.
For example: What if my symbol/project were as big as a whale? What if I made it out of stone? What if I went to see it live/in-person somewhere? What if I created an installation? What would I know, feel, do, sense?
9. Make it wearable, get personal: create a hat, make hand or foot coverings, jewelry, a neckpiece, a cape, implement, or mask. Then wear what you make. Consider researching masks and other gear worn by indigenous people when they are representing various earth/animal spirits/energies. What materials do they create them out of? What ceremonies accompany masking? How do they embody/sacralize that which they are inviting in to their lives? How do they abstract the creature/being/goddess?
10. Mind-map it: put the subject/project/symbol at the center of the paper, and begin mapping the terrain—what is it connected to, what leads to and from it, what are possible inquiries, what can be made from or about it…
11. Dance, sing or write a poem or play that is sourced in your symbol/project/content.
12. Make a poster or tarot card packed with different meanings and aspects of your symbol/project.
13. Create an altar for it, a sacred place where you gather what is connected, meditate with it. Honor the source of your original symbol/project—the place it arises from. Honor what it has been telling you, and the journey it has led you on.