Creativity Workshop

I did it! I taught my first Creativity Workshop. Thank you Laura, Sam, Linda and Keri, my brave participants that trusted me to take them on a journey. We wrote, shared, laughed, danced, painted, wrote some more, made beautiful collages with our hand painted papers, and imagined our perfect creative spaces. Wow, and all in 6 hours. I brought my camera and totally forgot to take pictures. Because of our small number I was the 5th participant and I really enjoyed creating alongside my friends. These are some of our painted papers, my collage and some of their feedback.

Sam wrote:

"I really enjoyed it. One part that was interesting was to be able to write freely about something and then go right into making something that tied the two together.Working on pieces together then creating some pieces on your own was also very freeing and I got a lot of inspiration from that exercise.I felt very inspired to just want to paint, when I left. I wanted to explore things that I played with in the workshop and the pieces that I'm currently working on. It was very positive energy."

Linda wrote:

"I definitely enjoyed the day....despite my crying! It was very intimate and the group worked together well in our joint projects. I loved the whole thing....perhaps just a couple more hours of time would be nice so that we would have more time as a group to get to know one another."

Laura wrote: "I enjoyed it very much. To me, it was an amazing success. I am so restrained when trying to create. Like when you mentioned in the a.m. that we'd be using our papers to collage with, I couldn't imagine at all how I would design a collage. In fact, I was a bit concerned. The writing exercise was so helpful to me; it gave me ideas to collage about. It was so fun to have a topic or message to play with in my collage versus wondering, what it ever could say, and the most inhibiting, how it should look? "

Thanks guys for your thoughtful feedback. I'm planning on leading another workshop probably in the Fall. On Monday I start my job as the art director at ACRA, in Arden, DE. It's the hardest job you'll ever love, if it doesn't kill you.

New Work, Open Studio

I've been working on 3 new 46 x 48 inch oil paintings. This time I toned the canvases with acrylic before I started pouring oil washes which really jump started the work. Starting with a colored ground is an entirely different process. The goal was to break away from the phthalo blue based work, so I painted one canvas a golden yellow ochre color, one dark green and one ended up cerelean blue so I painted over it with orange letting some blue show through. So 2 of them have blue in them and then the third is the golden red one which I don't evn know if it fits in with the others. I'll let the work speak for it's self.

If you're in the area please stop by I'll have my studio open from 5-8:30 pm at the Delaware Center for the Contemporary Arts in Wilmington, DE on Friday June 5th, check the website for directions http://www.thedcca.org/ There will be gallery openings, music and food. Somehow I'm going to arrange my studio so most of my new work will be visible including about 12 new encaustic paintings.