expressive artmaking
CREATIVE INQUIRY: 1+1
individual one-on-one creativity mentoring
This is an active one-on-one process utilizing artmaking as a tool for inquiry and healing. Margaret guides the inquirer through a series of customized activities which support the investigation of a specific issue or a question. Activities may include guided meditation, painting, drawing, kinesthetic interaction with artpieces, and conversation. Sessions are usually approximately 1.5 hours, and may consist of a series which unfolds sequentially, going deeper and deeper. Various materials and processes are utilized and designed in response to the individual’s needs and quest.
No art experience necessary. this is most wonderful in person, but also works great via video chat.
Guide: Margaret Lindsey, MFA
• Enjoy painting as a doorway for information: investigate ideas that interest you, as acrylic painting takes you into deep inquiry and inner sensing.
•Interact with acrylics in new and interesting ways.
• Play with a variety of techniques for applying paint to surfaces
• Practice using paint as a medium for inner sensing.
EXPRESSIVE PAINTING GROUPs
creative inquiry and colorful play for adults
Creativity coach and artist Margaret Lindsey guides these workshops. The painting process is usually about 2.5-3 hours, and can be customized to the needs of the group. Margaret offers monthly expressive painting groups in Grass Valley, CA. Guided activities get the process humming, then participants create freely during remaining time, with mentoring from Margaret. Groups usually enjoy their own snacks and beverages throughout the evening. All materials included.
“I knew there was something inside of me longing to be expressed but unsure what it was or where to start or how to start. I felt totally hopeless and helpless. With Margaret’s guidance I cried, I allowed the suffering I was feeling to come through me by ripping, cutting, poking, stamping, sewing, hammering. She helped me realize it didn't need to be pretty it needed to be honest no matter what it looked like.”
--student, artist Joan Kirkaldie
group processing after art making
TEAM-BUILDING WITH PROCESS ART
expressive artmaking as a tool for connection and inquiry
Team-building activities usually involve a sequence of artmaking and guided activities, custom-designed to create a forum for playful member interaction and inquiry within a community or company. The activities are designed to respond to the size, nature, and intentions of the group. Processes may include guided meditations, intention work (individual and group), pairs and group work, and large circle work. Groups could choose to walk a labyrinth as part of their process. Materials might include any of the following: acrylic paint, pastels, clay, markers, colored pencils.
No art experience necessary.
Appropriate for groups of 5-75. Suggested session is 3.5 hours, or 6 hours with a lunch break. Materials are included. Groups supply their own snacks and beverages.
metatron’s cube: centering within universal knowledge
MANDALAS: JOURNEY TO CENTER
creative mandala explorations
conscious creative work with mandalas usually includes various unique experiential meditations with different world mandala traditions, followed by directed expressive art practices. The mandala (Sanskrit for sacred circle) is a prime universal symbol, appearing and in continuous use in virtually all cultures. Mandalas are used for offerings, as icons and yantras, as narratives, as healing tools, gateways and portals. They have been used for millennia as primal centering tools for organizing or re-patterning physical and mental structures, and as specific tools for healing. The mandala series is most potent when experienced as a group.
A one-day workshop with mandala-making and meditating will be Offered this summer by Margaret Lindsey at Port Townsend School of the arts in Port townsend, wa.
Read more about the workshop here
No art experience necessary. All materials included.
Facilitator: Margaret Lindsey, MFA
at the center, on the edge, boundaries expanded
CONSCIOUS ART PRACTICE
shifting consciousness: kinesthetic meditation and guided art practices
In these group sessions, art practices or art games usually follow a guided meditation experience with floor mandalas or other tangible focal points. This induces natural non-ordinary states, which often awaken deep sensing states, allowing access to innate knowledge. Participants experience expanded states of mind, and shifts in consciousness, during which they connect with information within and without, information which may not normally conscious or readily available. Art materials could include: pastels and paper, markers on canvas, colored pencils on paper. Longer sessions can include paint or clay. Materials are included. Groups supply their own snacks and beverages.
For groups of 4-24. 1.5 -4 hour sessions. No art experience necessary.
What is Expressive Art?
In short: deep inquiry through intentional art practice…
This type of artmaking process is a hands-on approach to direct sensing, internal observation, deep inquiry, and self-reflection.
It’s a non-linear, non-verbal process.
Participants create from the heart and body-mind, responding to guided meditations, prompts and questions. This process allows people to investigate what is within, rather than attempting to render what they see outside themselves visually, physically. It’s about giving form to what we know, rather than trying to duplicate how our mind thinks things are.
This type of artmaking is how I myself process, investigate, and work through the issues of my life. It is how I make meaning out of what is happening in my world, and the world around me.
What can conscious art practice offer?
Change occurs, shift happens, and it’s fun…
Shift happens when art is made this way. Change occurs, directly as a result of engaging in conscious creative practices.
In short, it works.
How can I explore Conscious Creative Practices with Margaret Lindsey?
Margaret offers Expressive Art Workshops, Conscious Creativity Events and meditations, Creativity Retreats, one-on-on creative mentoring, group in-services, and custom events and ceremonies.
read more about upcoming events with Margaret
Why do this?
Engaging authentically and consistently with conscious creative practice can illuminate or shift whatever is being creatively investigated or explored:
• Current or past psychological states
• Patterns and sub-conscious stories sourced in family/culture of origin
• Healing or information about their body
• Insight into current relationships
• Information or shifts in past traumas
• Intuitive knowledge of the archetypal meaning of a symbol, often from another or unknown culture’s mythology
• a new personal relationship to artmaking or to specific media
• key insights into one’s own personality
• tracking a personality trait or series of experiences from childhood onward--connecting the dots.
• build a newfound or deeper connection with the symbolic meaning within and behind all manifest life
• Insight into the spirit of another creature, place or thing
Through creative exploration of what needs to be seen in a person’s life, each person hones their own methods for accessing inner knowledge and information. Clues to what is contained within one’s individual psyche are also often revealed.