October 2019 - The Great Creative Life

When I was nineteen or twenty, I discovered The Artist’s Way, the famous book by Julia Cameron. I can’t remember exactly how, whether I’d heard of it or simply stumbled upon it at the library. What I do remember is how much it changed my perspective on life. I was studying photography at the time and I would read the book in my breaks while lying in the green grass outside the TAFE building (TAFE = Australian college). I remember putting the book down one day and looking up at the blue sky and feeling an astonishing sense of wonder at just how beautiful life can be. The blue of the sky that day and the wonder I felt is still impressed in my memory.

Fast forward sixteen years and I’m living in Berlin, working as a coach for artists and creatives, I’m a trained art therapist and I’m still a photographer. I can wholeheartedly say the Artist’s Way changed the direction of my life.

The Artist's Way showed me ways to connect with my innermost thoughts and feelings, stay connected to an artistic spirit in a world wants you to fit in with what’s ‚productive’ and it helped me to deal with a savage inner-critic. It showed me perspectives on life that were not tainted by cynicism or irony.

A lot of people say they find The Artist’s Way hard to go through for various reasons, in particular, the esoteric language can be off-putting. The amount of exercises offered per week on top of the compulsory artist date and morning pages can make the full twelve weeks seem difficult to achieve.

However, I can tell you from my experience, it’s worth doing.

Why?

The Artist’s Way provides you with a framework and guidelines in terms of time, space and direction in which to cultivate parts of your self that are undernourished but that whisper to you in quiet moments. It's possible they yell at you.

Perhaps, not listening to these whispers makes you feel guilty, or lonely, or unfulfilled. You have a sense that something exists inside you that wants to come out but you haven’t given it the space it needs yet.

The Artist's Way facilitates that thing or those things coming out.

By offering an Artist’s Way group this winter I’d like to support you and others like you whatever creative impulses are stirring within you to emerge.

What’s different about this group:

I will show you how to use art-making itself as a way to connect with your inner creative impulses.

As an art therapist I have seen, with wonder, how image-making combined with intelligent and compassionate reflection processes can bypass over-thinking and surprise the creator with a sudden new insight about their life.

Therefore, we will sometimes use art-making instead of writing to respond to the exercises.

We will keep it simple. We will focus only one to three exercises per week and aim to go deeper instead of doing too many.

We will skip the esoteric language. Bring your own sense of existential intelligence or spirituality with you or you can cultivate what those terms mean to you throughout the program.

You will want to participate in this group if:

you have an artistic and creative impulse whispering in you (or blatantly yelling) and you think it’s time to give that side of you more space.
you’ve already thought about doing The Artist’s Way but have found it hard to commit for whatever reason.
you’ve completed The Artist’s Way already and loved it and want to explore the topics by taking them a layer deeper this time.
you’re confused about what to do with your life next and would like a nurturing and encouraging creative space gain clarity on that.
you want something soul nourishing to do over the winter months in Berlin.
you’re curious to learn more about using art-making as an insight process.

Why would you want to pay for a group when you could do it on your own?

A few reasons:

in this group I’m offering a modernised and artful approach to the book, it’s not just going through the book. We’re taking the core themes from each week and digging a bit deeper using techniques I’ve learned from art therapy rather than taking a scattergun approach to doing the exercises.
having an experienced facilitator helps the group stay on track, provides moderation and ensures that everything is well organised.
Sharing your experiences with others, being witnessed and heard is powerful. It makes you stronger. It makes us stronger.
Hearing the experiences of other participants helps you too.
Commitment and accountability. No creative u-turns this time.

It begins Tuesday November 12th, 7-9pm at KLL Studio in Berlin (near U-Bernauer Strasse). It runs for 12 weeks with a break in the middle for the holiday season.

Places are limited and bookings are essential.

Full details, dates and pricing options can be found on the website here: http://www.thegreatcreativelife.com/the-artists-way-berlin/

For questions, please don’t hesitate to ask me!

If you know someone else that would love this group experience - please forward this to them.

Yours,

Rachel

The Future of Art is an interview series where I speak with artists on the topics of sustainability and climate change in relation to their artistic practices. The series aims to explore a range of viewpoints, not only those of artists working directly with these topics but also how it affects the practices of all artists, no matter their chosen themes or mediums.

Our next artist is Moe Murdock. Moe Murdock is a painter working primarily in the digital realms. He lives and works in Jersey city, USA.

"Greetings from Norway", 2019, digital artwork.

Tell us about your art. What do you create and why?

I always struggle to describe what my work is and what I like to paint. The best description would be that I’m a surrealist painter that likes to add oddities or points of curiosity to my work. Or rather a lot of my work borders on the surrealist end, but that all depends on how I am feeling or the idea that pops in my head. Sometimes I just like to paint flowers or something simple like clouds. It depends on the vibe I get from the object or image plus my mood.

How long have you been practicing as an artist?

I have always been artistic, the artist in the group or the “class artist” growing up. As of my adult life I would say I’ve been working at honing my craft for the past 20 years (wow!).

Have the topics of climate change and/or sustainability affected your artistic practice either directly or indirectly?

As far as the things that drive me to create work, “no”. However, growing up we were always taught the values of not wasting things (food, materials, time) because those things are precious. Those values have stayed with me as part of my adult life. Working as a digital artist came easier to me than traditional and the by-product of not wasting materials and working virtually is an added bonus.

Was there a certain point in time that you became more aware/self-conscious of climate change/sustainability issues?

When I first started taking art seriously in my 20’s one of the things that I was most concerned about was selling at shows, and comic cons and events and making money.

I worked on several pieces, picked the best one that I thought would sell and made a bunch of glossy prints to sell at said show. The goal being to sell all of them and make my money back and even a little profit. After 8 hours at whatever show or convention [- sometimes 16 hours--- if the event was over 2 days], I wouldn’t sell a thing. I’d come home with all of the print merchandise that I left with. So all that paper and material that I used is just sitting on a shelf or closet someplace, wasted.

I have since stopped doing conventions and events and printing up work to try and sell.

Not so much because of discouragement, but more because it’s honestly too much material to waste. Now I am a strictly digital artist. I carry a mini sketchbook around for ideas. However, I don’t make prints and I don’t work on easels or use paint tubes.

This is not to disparage people that do. For me I feel better about my work only living in the digital medium from a waste and resource standpoint. I even bought a projector to show work digitally when I get the opportunity instead of printing up large scale sized pieces. This is to avoid the inevitable clutter or trash that would go in the closet after the show or event is over. I have been going this minimal route for years and I have felt better about doing my part to keep the materials out of the landfill.

Have you reduced your carbon footprint in your professional practice in any way over the last few years. If so, how?

I try to be really mindful of how I live and how it impacts materials and the environment. I use and reuse materials as much as I can. Aside from working digitally, I also reuse any paper that I can so as not to create more clutter (when I do work traditionally).

Small things like that, don’t seem major, but are my small way of contributing which might have some impact over the long run.

Do you think artists have a responsibility to respond to these issues? Why/Why not?

I think that artists have a responsibility to share their point of view with the world. However, if they have a strong point of view on sustainability and environment then yes absolutely they should. Not only that, but if there is also a way for that artist to make their work live and breathe and directly engage the public through live events and engaging installations and street art, then so much the better. There are ways that I have seen artists try to address this concern both in their work and in the materials that they use (eg. making work that is only sourced from recycled materials, etc.). I recently saw a street artist create a series of sustainable wall murals that will be recycled once taken down. The short answer is I don’t know if there is an answer. However for me, going fully digital has been my way to contribute to the solution and maybe that is a first step.

Monthly Archives: October 2019

Why I’m running an Artist’s Way group and why you might like to join