Art, intuition and writing….
Okay, I am a teacher on holiday, living my art passion, so why am I teaching in my holidays? Perhaps it is because I found something that integrates my passions for art, writing and teaching. So here is a little ramble on SoulCollage©, facilitation/teaching, art and me. Thank you, Sheena Frost, for including the group shot from the Facilitation training in Melbourne with Karren Mann from October 2014. It was such a lovely confidence boost as I organised for my first group.
I am your shelter and I surround you in love and light.
Today I facilitated my first SoulCollage® session with a small group of friends. It was a hot Melbourne summers day with the ability to escape to the shade of garden trees. The group of 6 was a nice number to start with. The card packs hadn’t arrived in time so I had created my own packs and spent time cutting cards to size. This worked really well but as fate would have it, the delivery man arrived with the desired SoulCollage® order, right in the middle of the chakra, companion animal meditation. Through phone calls and a yippy small dog who would not settle, we continued. Despite interruptions, the meditation went well. There was a nice flow to the day as timelines were stretched and information modified to suit the heat and feel of the day.
The thing I love about SoulCollage® is the lovely integration o
f art, intuition and writing. This is something that comes naturally for me as I natyrally work this way in my art. By trusting the process, people who are new to this approach, achieved great results in both their collage and writing process. Some people in the group had not done an intuitive writing process before but the ‘I am one who’ process was a lovely segway into this type of writing. It is simply that thing about letting your conscious mind step aside and allowing the deep inner knowing; this wealth of wisdom that we all have within; to bubble up to the surface.
I do love the alternative way of looking at spirituality and see this as a way of touching that soul self and allowing the possibilities within each of us to be heard. A SoulCollage® card is an accessible way to allow those powerful inner voices and their depth of understanding, to be heard. It is about permission and reminds us that we are all artists and writers and there is so much we still have to learn about ourselves as we continue the journey. Of course there w as the aside from Anna, You mean that 2 of you are married to ministers and I am swearing!” I added, ‘yes and my Dad and brother are ministers.’ This is not about seeking alternative spirituality but about seeking the depth of personal understanding that allows us to access what our deepest selves truly know so we can be pur best selves and in some ways, get out of our own way. By listening to our inner critic or our playful child or our fool, we open to understanding the many parts of us that make us unique.
As an artist, I have started to use the ‘I am one who’ question stem, to gain a deeper understanding of parts of my artwork. As my artworks are not replanted and are drawn out of the layers through an intuitive process, I find myself always in discovery mode so that becoming part of my own mixed media collage artworks and using this simple type of questioning (I am the one who..) is a powerful way of giving me deeper understanding. I have used an image from one of my paintings as part of a card and also used cards as springboards for developing artworks. There is a lovely flow between my art process which is based on trust and intuiuon and the SoulCollage® process.
I am always searching, always learning and this is one way for me to learn more about myself and in doing so, I hope to become more open, more able to listen and more able to ‘trust the proces s’ of life as I flow forward and share parts of me within my art with myself and with you. SoulCollage® helps the layers of my soul, all those individual parts that make up me, come into focus so I can continue to grow and learn. By sharing this process, I hope to gift others with the possibility of expanding their own self understanding through these personally powerful tools.
What dreams may come…
I have added a couple of SoulCollage® cards that I have made. ‘Grace’ is an angel painting from several years ago and she has such a feeling of compassion, love and protection. I have combined the image with the radiating lines of a pink gear era. The other card, I made today after the workshop and I named her Possibilities’. I love the Monet background and the flowing willow branches are a remnant of my childhood. This is a simple image but sometimes it is the simplest image that can have the strongest voice.
Possibilities
Beneath the flowing willow leaves I await,
Where the blooms float gently in a pastel haze,
For I am the one who stares into the future with optimism and hope,
I am the one who sees beyond the edges and knows,
I am the one who sees color when life has turned to greys,
I am the one who sparkles and shines brightest when challenges appear,
I am the candles that burn and waver gently in the breeze,
As I am the believer in possibilities,
I am the one who remembers and grants a gentle inner smile
As my eyes raise in mirth as I face the impossibility of today.