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The Road to Everywhere in the Windows of Life

I have been working as a visual artist (paintings) for many many years. I felt the need, through times of joy as well as pain & suffering. And it’s through those stages that I’ve realised that the tools of painting/drawing/creativity have helped heal my journey. I found hours would slip by whilst painting, & how time just disappeared when in a different state of consciousness through the use of creativity. I feel priveledged being an artist, but then we all are if we tap into this area.

Feeling compelled to learn more; I was interested in returning to art school, as a lot of my personal studies over many years have been more spiritually based. I wasn’t sure how I could study art & healing combined for the therapeutic benefits that I new could be found through art. I spoke with a women I met at a gallery of which I gained that there were opportunities to study art therapy, just a matter of finding out where! So as one can imagine I was excited about that. I had done the ‘Artists Way’ by Julia Cameron nearly 3 years previous but wanted more knowledge. And then one day came across an advertisement for an Art Therapy course, of which I began earlier this year. The more I study the course the more I realise I have been doing naturally a lot of what I am learning, now I am intellectualising it, making sense of why I feel so compelled to be creative & the benefits of this. Not just making it for the sake of it. I feel privileged to be doing this study & love the learning process.

It’s a part of this journey that I came across mandala art, mandala is the ancient Sanskrit word for circle. Patterns/pictures placed within or around being used for meditation, healing & centering. Carl Jung (psychoanalyst) believed mandalas created spontaneously in dreams or waking life were unconscious attempts to heal oneself.

After an exercise that I did I had an urgent need to create a large mandala, after some thought I remembered I had a large piece of plane white clothe. Now a large circle, forgetting that a piece of string and a central starting point was all I needed, I used my dining room table for the outline of a circle as it is round. I decided to paint it right there & not move it into the studio. So I could keep the momentum going, the excitement of creating it there on the spot, even though it took a few days to complete once the initial design was down. I surrounded the floor with plastic & also placed some under the clothe for protection from the paint I would use.

It remains on the table some weeks after the event & to me it speaks of harmony & stability, that being part of my interpretation. As it’s important to do the interpreting yourself. And to allow your work to be around you daily so it can assist triggering insights into your journey & healing qualities.

The circle has been symbolic in my life for many years, my business cards make use of a mandala I created. And various others, one in particular that I named. ‘The Road To Everywhere In The Windows Of Life’that I spent quite some time designing. Which as it has turned out is very significant to my journey. To come across the mandalas years later now seems perfect in terms of connection for me.

My workshops are about you retrieving your own symbol from within through guided meditation. Then recording those images with pastel or paint on paper. One thing that is important is that you don’t have to be an artist to do this work. So there’s no fear around being perfect or of being capable of drawing, we all are. This is about self empowerment, a workshop for you & what you create is right for you.