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December 3, 2006

vicki lind's "don't think! paint!"

by gl. at 11:39 pm

vicki's lind's "don't think! paint!," the first in a series of workshops led by other instructors, was simply smashing! though i won't always be present, i actually participated in this session in part to experience the kind of things that would come up (it's been a while since we hosted joanne's "writer's harvest" workshop a couple of years ago).

in essense, the goal of the class was to paint your way out of a stuck part of your life. you were not expected to know how to paint (in fact, prior painters could only attend if they will park their prior knowledge of art techniques at the door! vicki literally asked us to write some preconceptions, put them in a basket, and set them outside before we began the workshop).

we used tempera to create two paintings during the workshop, one that represented the barrier to your goal and the other that represented the resources you bring to solve that problem. there wasn't a writing component, though three of us spontaneously grabbed journals and began writing, anyway. my challenge: to make time for myself to rest & dream.


[barrier]
i have a haze of todo items that prevents me from getting outside that box. and it's pretty noisy inside the box, too. there's only one way in and one way out.


[resources]
curiosity, compassion, a solid sense of self, security, structure and sorrow, all stitched together with a thin red survival instinct. the colors blend with each other and escape the structures to sprout & influence each other.

since vicki was spending a lot of time just hanging out while we painted, she developed a neat technique she called "whispers": if one of us was stuck, she'd come up to us and whisper something provocative or inspirational in our ear. you can think of the "whispers" like that talmud angel: grow, grow! once she said to me "the thing that really pisses me off is...", which inspired the small white dots around the barrier box: what really pisses me off is feeling invisible despite doing all this work.

everyone was incredibly enthusiastic about this workshop both before and after. the only disappointment is that i just barely have enough room for 8 people doing large paintings. we were constrained to a horizontal or vertical orientation depending on where we were at the table because it wasn't big enough for everyone to have a horizontal page. :(

and it would be nice to have a good clock everyone can see. i personally love the aesthetic of this clock, but i don't think it would actually be helpful.

posted by gl. | December 3, 2006 11:39 PM | categories: classes & workshops