So good to hear from you all...

I hope to hear from others yet, too! And send me pictures to post--here's a new one from Margie of the artist space she's created for herself. I've posted it above the "before" photo she sent me three months ago.

That green looks very like the color I've just painted on a piece of scrap beadboard. I signed escrow papers today and immediately headed for Home Depot, where I bought four paint samples. None of them are exactly right, so it's back tomorrow. The fun has begun!

Six Months and No Longer Counting!

We've passed the six month mark since beginning our joint journey through The Artist's Way at the beginning of January, and the three month mark since completing the final chapter. I wanted to give everyone one last chance to share any news and/or images regarding your creative life, so fire away! Post your comments here and shoot me an email with any images so I can post them for you. (Pam and Jan, you've sent me personal updates--it would be great to have you post them here as well!)

I continue to do morning pages almost every day. Weekly artist dates, too, but they have been at Home Depot and Lowe's and scouring home design magazines and websites! It's been almost three months since I've been inside the house I'm buying and it's still not mine, but I believe everything is now in order and I should close within the next week. Nevertheless, I'm not counting on anything until I have keys in hand! The close date has been extended four times already.

I will be pouring all my creativity into my new home in July. I'm NOT going to feel guilty that my writing has fallen by the wayside--for everything there is a season, and when the house is move-in ready the writing season will come round again. Or perhaps I'll just be writing, for a while, about my efforts to make this house my home--just to keep my hand in.

I am stepping into the shoes of homeowner-ship as a direct result of my work in The Artist's Way. It was such a worthwhile journey that I think I may offer it through Platform 9-3/4 on an annual basis starting every January. In the meantime, except for your response to this post, the blog will be in hiatus for the next six months. I'll send an email round in late December, and if you enjoyed the journey and have friends you think would also enjoy a group approach to The Artist's Way, perhaps you will forward the information. Perhaps you'll even join us again! There is something to be said for group accountability.

Thanks once again for being such an important part of my life for many months. I look forward to keeping up with you!

Fondly,

Barbara Jean Hicks

Three Weeks Further On

How's everybody out there doing? Are you still writing Morning Pages? (I missed five days on a hectic business trip but am back to doing them every morning.) What about Artist Dates? (I took a marvelous walk today through a fragrance garden and then along a boardwalk through a wetland preserve filled with water lilies, bullfrogs, blue bottles and birds. Beautiful for all my senses!)

Anybody else with anything to report? Any more images to share? (Jan sent me several, which you'll find below. This is our woman who felt like she didn't belong but then signed up for a watercolor class. And check out the cake pops! Talk about creating from a sense of play!)

My news:

1) The house I've placed an offer on is not yet mine, but getting closer! It's a short sale, so anything can happen, but I'm hopeful. All my life I've told myself that I would never be able to buy a house without having a man to help me with the process. And here I am. :-) Morning pages helped me realize that buying a home was something I wanted to do and gave me the impetus to move forward with it. Yay MP3's!

2) The book I helped a group of four grade school/middle school girls write between Christmas and New Years is out and available at Amazon and Barnes & Noble--and it's adorable! You can also find it at https://www.createspace.com/3806081. I spent a full day with them, they had one day to draft their part of the story, and we gathered again the next day for a second full day writing workshop. The girls are thrilled that they will actually earn royalties!

3) The school I went to as a child has invited me to do several classroom presentations at the end of May. I have an art project based on one of my picture books, Monsters Don't Eat Broccoli, that I'll be doing with them. I am so excited to be going back to the school where I first discovered I wanted to be a writer! I also recently helped a local teacher write a grant proposal for me to do a series of writing workshops with her students next year and publish their work in a classroom book. Fingers crossed!

If you have any images you'd like to share, please send them along. Here's what Jan sent me!

Jan: Three Candles

Jan: Party Cakepops

Jan: Cakepop Menagerie

Jan: Everything's Just Ducky

More of Your Images!

I'm so pleased to add these images from the TAW team--if you haven't yet shared, please send me a j-peg of something you created during the last three months as we journeyed on the Artist's Way together, and I'll post it. If you haven't done so already, make sure to check the last post for other images. I added several during the week, and you won't want to miss them!

Margie: Artist Altar ("Where I meditate, pray, think. I got myself a BIG God Box!")

Margie: Studio-To-Be ("I made and painted the silk pillow on the rocker.")

Maria: Artist Totem

Linda: Selected Illustrations

Pam: Cape Cod Bog

Check-In: Reflecting on the Journey

Our Journey Ends--Or Does It?

"No final flourishes here," Cameron says in her Epilogue to The Artist's Way. 

No flourishes, perhaps...but much reflection.

"The Artist's Way is a spiritual journey, a pilgrimage home to the self."

Are you, as I am, finding your way "home to your self" as a result of the last three months we've spent on this journey? Have you gained clarity, purpose, joy? Are you playing more? Dreaming more? Do you know your self better? Are you able to express that self with greater authenticity in your life and art?

I decided to revisit The Artist's Way at this particular time in my life because I felt lost to myself--lost and confused and vulnerable. I knew I needed to reconnect with the child-artist I had pushed aside in order to keep an uneasy peace with someone I knew at some level did not have my best interests at heart. I needed to heal. I needed to reconnect with the dreams I had let go.

I knew that leading a group through this course would hold me accountable in ways I wouldn't do on my own. I am so grateful to all of you for being here with me and for allowing me to be here with you as you, too, have deepened your relationship with your selves and reconnected with your dreams. I am honored.

I like Cameron's description of the Artist's Way as an upward winding path. "As we pursue climbing it," she says, "we circle back on the same views, over and over, at slightly different altitudes.... The road is never straight. Growth is a spiral process, doubling back on itself, reassessing and regrouping.... A fog may obscure the distance we have covered or the progress we have made toward our goal. While the occasional dazzling vista may grace us, it is really best to proceed a step at a time, focusing on the path beneath our feet as much as the heights still before us."

I've seen glimpses of those dazzling vistas through the fog. Enough to inspire me to keep climbing! One step at a time...

"Art is an act of the soul, not the intellect."

I'm the sort who wants to figure everything out, wants to know, wants to understand why. This course has reminded me that there are different ways of knowing. I may not ever be able to understand intellectually why things happen as they happen. Reason, after all, has no answer for the unreasonable.

Soul understands we are more than reason. Soul taps into the undercurrent that flows through and between all of us and makes the unreasonable understandable solely because it is human. That's where my art comes from--not from intellectualizing but from letting myself relax into the flow.

"We all start out the same way--rich in dreams and nothing more. If we are lucky, we find friends to believe in our dreams with."

I am fortunate, indeed! 

"As artists, we belong to an ancient and holy tribe. We are the carriers of the truth that spirit moves through us all."

Why have we made such strong connections here? Is it because we are members of the same tribe, we are moved by the same spirit--a spirit we recognize in each other?

We have reached the end of The Artist's Way, but we have not reached the end of the Artist's Way. The journey never ends. We continue to move toward our dreams--to move toward our selves--as the stars continue to move through the sky. "Like neighboring constellations," Cameron says, serving each other both as guides and as company. I can say along her that "my deepest wish for you is the company of fellow lights and the generosity to light each others' ways."

Behold the light!

If anyone else has images you'd like to share, please email them to me. Celebrate your Artist!

Barbara: What I Want Is Who I Am

Barbara: Artist Altar

Nancy: picture book spread from PavoRatti

June: Artist Altar

Spread featuring June's picture book The Goodnight Train

Ginny: Heart Treasures

Pam: Splash

Ann: Artist Altar

Check-In: Week Twelve

Recovering a Sense of Faith

"Adventures don't begin until you get into the forest. That first step is an act of faith."

I loved this opening quote from Grateful Dead drummer Mickey Hart. It's so true for us as artists, and for those of us who write, it's a reminder that Story begins with Change--either initiated by the protagonist or thrust upon him.

I also like Cameron's follow-up that when we enter the forest on the path that is right for us, "we have a surefootedness." We know what to do next, even if we don't know exactly where it will take us. "By trusting, we learn to trust."

The Andre Gide quote takes the faith required to embark on a journey even further: "One does not discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very long time." As one who has been out of sight of land on a small sailboat for days at a time, I understand this concept on a visceral level. I remember vividly being tossed about during a storm at sea and asking my companion if we were going to die. His profound answer: "Yes. But not tonight." I survived--and yes, I discovered new lands--both outside my self and within my self.

Cameron makes much of dreams this week:  

"Each of us has an inner dream that we can unfold if we will just have the courage to admit what it is. And the faith to trust our own admission." 

"Our truest dream for ourselves is always God's will for us."

"It is the inner commitment to be true to ourselves and follow our dreams that triggers the support of the universe."

For me, the focus on dreams--the many exercises meant to help us discover, acknowledge and  clarify our dreams--has been the most significant part of my journey through TAW this go-through. One of my dreams is to help others discover, acknowledge, clarify and realize their dreams, and my goal in the next two weeks is to put together a proposal for a "creative dreaming/creative living" course to offer through my local community college's community ed program. The deadline for proposals is April 15, so I have my work cut out for me. If any of you have resources other than The Artist's Way you'd recommend I use as I develop the course, please, let me know what they are!

Other concepts and quotes from this chapter that resonated:

Abundance

"We have bought the message of our culture: this world is a vale of tears and we are meant to be dutiful and then die. The truth is that we are meant to be bountiful and live." 

Mystery

"Creativity--like human life itself--begins in darkness."

"Mystery is at the heart of creativity. That, and surprise..."

"How to raise the best ideas: Let them grow in dark and mystery. Let them form on the roof of our consciousness. Let them hit the page in droplets. Trusting this slow and seemingly random drip, we will be startled one day by the flash of Oh! That's it!"

Play

"In order to nurture our creativity, we require a sense of festivity, even humor..."

"It is a paradox of creative recovery that we must get serious about taking ourselves lightly. We must work at learning to play."

"Restive in our lives, we want to do something. But we think it needs to be the right something, by which we mean something important. [The truth is,] WE are what's important! " [emphasis mine]

And perhaps my favorite: "Life is mean to be an artist date." :-)


This is the last chapter in The Artist's Way, but the Epilogue and Appendix are well worth spending time on--so we'll officially "meet" on these pages for two more weeks: to comment on Chapter 12, to have time to read through the back matter, and then, after my final post next weekend, to comment on the back matter and Cameron's final words.

Next week I also want to post images of the playful work you've done over the last three months we've been meeting here: something you've created that is emblematic of your journey. If you haven't yet sent me a j-peg and you have something you'd like to share, please send it on! bhicksgvv at att dot net.

Cheers!

Check-In: Week Eleven

Recovering a Sense of Autonomy

My favorite quote from Week 11:

"To be an artist is to recognize the particular. To appreciate the peculiar. To allow a sense of play in your relationship to accepted standards. To ask the question 'Why?'

"To be an artist is to acknowledge the astonishing..." 

I'm reminded of an old friend whose creativity and playfulness I adored. Walking into his house the first time was mind-bending. He lived in a tiny place and had some of his furniture affixed to the walls! I've lost touch with him. Part of me hopes that even if he's moved on to a place that's large enough to accommodate all his furniture on the floor, he still has some of it on his walls...

Cameron spoke to me in many ways this week. Here's a sampling:

Stability and Flow

The discussion about different artists requiring different mixes of stability and flow (and perhaps different mixes at different times in one's creative life) brought me back to the job question I've been struggling with. My brother (the same one who gave me that great day off a few weeks ago) suggested I think about changing my perspective rather than changing my job.

I'd been resisting that--not because I don't think life is all about perspective, but because I DO. I'm the Queen of Perspective, the Queen of Flexibility, the Queen of Optimism. All my life I've used these skills to cope with whatever came my way. Like the kids in my last picture book, Monsters Don't Eat Broccoli, I know how to turn "yucky" into "yummy." And another door opens when one door closes? I'm there!

BUT... I have used this skill to my detriment. Sometimes it has not been about closed doors but about closed eyes. I've stayed both in unhealthy relationships and at unsatisfying jobs too long because I can see through the other guy's eyes, I can go with the flow, I know things are going to get better...

This time, because of my work in The Artist's Way, my eyes aren't closed. I'm very clear about what I want in a number of arenas. And this time, changing my perspective means I can see the job as a tool to get me where I want to go. I've figured out how to organize it so the time I spend is mostly enjoyable--and so that I have MORE time to pursue my art! It's not perfect. Some things about it will never get better. But it is getting me where I want to go. It's a pesky bug instead of a nine hundred pound gorilla. Right now, it's giving me a chance for BOTH stability and flow. I know what my bottom lines are and I know what my life will look like at the moment it's time to let go.

Moving Meditation

I sometimes forget that as an artist I must live in my body as well as my mind and spirit. I remember with great fondness one summer when I took a dog named Daisy for a walk in the woods every morning. I'd landed at a friend's house in the Sierra Nevada in the midst of a road trip with that boyfriend of the furniture-on-the-wall. He found a job, stayed in town and did stand-up comedy at a local club. I stayed in a cabin across the driveway from my friend's house and worked on a novel. And Daisy helped me work out my plot points every morning. The combination of exercise, fresh air and someone to talk to about my work-in-progress was pure magic as far as creative inspiration. (Great thing about dogs--they never tell you that your ideas are ridiculous!) That summer was one of the best of my life. Perhaps I need to think about recreating it...

Perhaps I am. I felt the same creative inspiration this week after going to visit Nancy (yes, our Nancy!) in her home studio on the water, then going for a bike ride and a walk on the beach. My morning pages this week have turned into a repository of creative ideas instead of a bitch session! There is magic in movement, not to mention fresh air...

Some great thoughts from Cameron this week:

My art has intrinsic value apart from what the market determines.

"I need to create what wants to be created."
"Creativity is its own reward."
"Our creativity is our gift from God. Our use of it is our gift to God."

Creativity can't be perfected or finished. It is a restlessness, an appetite for exploration, an invitation to expand in order that we don't contract. 

"The stringent requirement of a sustained creative life is the humility to start again, to begin anew."
"Those who attempt too long to work with formula, even their own formula, eventually leach themselves of their creative truths."

Exercise--movement--puts us in the "now," helps us focus on what's most important, and gives us an opportunity to celebrate our capacity to feel. Wow!

"Walking offers the benefit of sensory saturation. Things do not whiz by. We really see them. Insight follows from sight. We fill the well and later tap into it more easily."

"The goal is to connect to a world outside of us. To [forget self-obsessive self-exploration and] simply explore. One quickly notes that when the mind is focused on other, the self often comes into a far more accurate focus." [emphasis mine]

"The artist child speaks the language of the soul: music, dance, scent, shells..."

Did anyone create an artist's altar this week? I didn't, but it's something I'd like to do moving forward. Would love to hear your ideas! 

"We learn by going where we have to go."

'Nuff said. How did your week go? Can't wait to hear!

Next week: Recovering a Sense of Faith