Total Expression: License to Create

Shaun McNiff
January 5-7

Whether in painting, poetry, performance, music, dance, or life, there is an intelligence working in every situation, a force that is the primary carrier of creation. If we trust it, collaborate with it, and follow its natural movement, it will find the place we need to be, a destination we could never have known in advance. Creativity requires relaxing into periods of uncertainty and trusting that the creative intelligence will find its way. When everything seems hopeless, trust the process; something astounding will emerge. Doubt, fear, and indirectness are eternal hurdles. Creating involves balancing surrender and initiative; imagining involves a magic that cannot be controlled by ego.

People hunger for personal relationships with the creative spirit. This will be an experiential workshop exploring the integration of varied forms of artistic expression and ritual. Painting will be the primary focus. In keeping with Jung's method of active imagination, we will practice responding to art with art with art and deepen our experience of images by imagining them further. We'll use movement, sound, ritual, and performance to deepen our engagement with images as we paint and construct in three dimensions. One expressive medium feeds another, generating a healing, creative energy. Music and drumming help us out of our heads and into our bodies, which physically express our inner vision. Experience the sacred, alive and resonant in the ordinary stuff of life in our bodies, in familiar things around us. There is a shared sense of "I didn't know I could do this. I never realized what I have inside me."

Our culture restricts creative expression to an anointed few. As children, we all created art until, in school, the identification of "talent" overshadowed universal participation. Join us to create spontaneous art again, in many media, whether or not you've made art before. Renew your childlike wonder. Let art free and heal your soul. Participants will receive an art materials list before the workshop. Limited to 20, so sign up now.
 

Shaun McNiff, an artist and an internationally renowned figure in the creative arts therapies, is Provost and Dean of Endicott College. His many books include Art as Medicine: Creating a Therapy of the Imagination; Earth Angels: Engaging the Sacred in Everyday Things; and Trust the Process: An Artist's Guide to Letting Go. His life work is freeing the artist in every person. His visits to Rowe have been "absolutely terrific," so we keep inviting him back.
"A person's license to create is irrevocable, and it opens to every corner of daily life. The ways of creation are as natural as breathing and walking. We live within the process of creation just as much as it exists within us." - Shaun McNiff