New Venture for Me

Blogging is something I've been wanting to try and it took a friend of mine Pam Lee Miller to get me started. So thanks Pam!

My spritual journey began many years ago with becoming an artist in grade school (that is Catholic school!). The nuns noticed that I was good at copying the little pictures they gave us and asked me to do a poster one day. From there I began copying things from the encyclopedia. I have a cousin who is a very good artist and I thought I would try it out. I didn't have much training, although I took a couple of classes when I first went to college.

My college career ended early when I found out I was pregnant and I didn't get back to it until my second child was 4 years old (my oldest was 8). I decided to try something that I might get a job in and ended up with an English degree with a Woman Studies Minor. I took one art class: sculpture. Loved it! My journey continued with seminary where I earned a Masters of Divinity. I was expected to write my own theology as part of this program and I found this very hard to do. One of the exercises for class was to be creative and write our eschatology. (I will show this with an explanation in a later blog).

It was a revelation for me! I could paint what I had a hard time explaining in words. Writing came easier because of my artwork! I began showing my work at the Seminary. It was a great opportunity to talk about my artwork and to show what I had been doing. Then the spirit brought my life's work to me. One day while walking in Barnes and Noble, there was a book sitting on the floor facing me: Art and Healing by Barbara Ganim. I picked it up immediately.

Somehow I knew this was going to be important! I began working with the exercises in the book. But I kept getting frustrated because I wanted more information about what I was doing! I even tried using it with the spiritual direction I was beginning to do without much success. At the back of the book was a website from Salve Regina University in Rhode Island that offers an Expressive Arts Institute, a 3-weekend professional training program in the professional applications of the Expressive Arts. I drug my husband to two weekends and a friend to another!! Now driving from Kentucky to Rhode Island is a long way but it was so worth it!

I learned so much in those three weekends that I am using in my work with Spiritual Direction today. In addition to using to to create retreats and days of reflection, I have also healed many of the inner places inside of myself. The results of which I will share as we go along. This healing artwork is meant to be shared! It can and will help others heal by making them available for viewing. The above artwork is my healing sunflower.

This painting began as an exercise at one of the weekends in Rhode Island. I was surprised by a picture which I did that scared me:

I had to really work to like this dragon image. And to heal whatever this represented, I did another artwork:

 

This dragon is not so threatening!

 One of the things about healing and our inner journey that I have discovered through my work is that it is multi-layered and doesn't happen all at once. The image is more of an onion. And healing comes in many ways. I have found that doing art in this way has been more healing for me than anything I've ever done. The final healing painting I did was the sunflower at the beginning of this blog. It hangs in my kitchen and I share it here with you: