Art & Soul: Unveiling and Igniting the Hidden Imagery of Nature and Psyche, August 2023

…Hold to your own truth

at the center of the image

you were born with.…

~David Whyte

Image is the mother tongue of the soul.  As humans, we carry images, symbols, mysteries within us that arise unbidden through the dreamtime, dance at the edges of consciousness, and arrive via encounters within human culture and nature. They are with us from the beginning. Images that are core to who we are carry energy, story, meaning, memory, emotion, and/or vision. They might, if we are willing to engage them, connect us to our hearts — to the places we most fear but nevertheless must go — and also to the heart of the world. Such images point beyond themselves toward the mysteries and destiny inherent in a human life.

The reinvention of self and world happens primarily through the powers of our imaginations. Images are at the root of our “image”inations. The special focus of Art and Soul is the awakening of these powers and the expression of our raw images — our prima materia — into visual form, allowing their inherent mysteries to do their work on us and incubate life-changing intimacy with our souls and with our world.

In a precious Redwood Forest mixed with Madrone, Oak, and Bay, perched on the edge of the wild Pacific Sea, we’ll explore our images through the entwining of expressive arts, soulcraft practices, and embodied dialogs with the land and wild others. Our art processes may include: mandala and collage work, group and self-designed ceremony, symbolic art work, trance rhythm and movement, art with the land, focused wandering in nature, clay work, deep imagery, and body art. Artistic process can free us from the conceptual mind and purposeful logic, opening the doorway to nonordinary perceptual experience and the depths of psyche.

We’ll approach expressive arts in the spirit of giving way to spontaneous ceremony, holding clear intentions as well as allowing moment-to-moment improvisation. Whatever happens to us in the process is potentially as revelatory and transformative as any resulting image. We’ll interact with the images that emerge, leaving us vulnerable to feeling everything, to being stopped in our tracks or set into motion. We’ll track, as if with new eyes, underlying patterns and storylines that point us toward the truth at the center of the image we were born with.

No previous visual arts experience is necessary. All levels of creative skill are welcome; we are less interested in the finished product than the process and our ability to free up our wild minds as we dare to give life to our images.