Jan 10-12, 2007 (Wednesday-Friday)
As children, we all created art until, in school, the grown-ups began to identify “talent.” We all hunger to relate with the creative spirit, but our culture anoints only a few. Create spontaneous art again, no matter how long it has been. Renew your childlike wonder. Let art free your soul.
Whether in painting, poetry, music, dance, or life itself, imagination involves a magic that finds its own way. Creativity’s natural movement finds the destination we could never have foreseen. If we can relax into periods of uncertainty and trust the creative process, we find something astounding often emerges.
This will be an experiential workshop. Painting will be the primary medium, though movement, sound, ritual, and performance will broaden our perception. As we paint and sculpt, we will generate a creative, healing energy. Music and drumming drop us out of our heads and into our bodies, and our bodies know how to express our inner vision.
There is a shared sense of “I didn’t know I could do this. I never realized what I have inside me.” You will receive an art materials list before the workshop, which is limited to 20. It fills up every year, so sign up now.
Shaun McNiff, an artist and internationally renowned figure in the creative arts therapies, is the University Professor and Dean of the College at wLesley University. He has written Art Heals: How Creativity Cures the Soul, Trust the Process: An Artist’s Guide to Letting Go, and many other books. His life work is freeing the artist in every person and 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