Nicholas Wilton Free Workshop, post #1
My inaugural series of CutUps came to a natural end just as a free workshop offered by Nicholas Wilton started up. I’m hoping to use my blog in one fashion or another so as to avail myself of what the workshop has to offer in more depth than I might otherwise.
Starting point for the workshop included 5 pre-workshop countdown prompts, the first of which was this:
#5 What, where, and who makes you feel most alive in your life? (maybe just look at recent past, and ok to limit to a small #). This question is a good one to ask to reconnect with what makes us feel more alive. These activities, situations, places, and people give us MORE energy than they take. How do you FEEL just thinking about them?
I limited my focus to just the immediate days prior to receiving the prompt and to the first few thoughts that came to mind.
What brings my energy up?
• exchanging gratitudes by text with a new friend—I am lifted by her gratitudes and her openness to sharing; I am lifted by pausing to reflect on my day to identify and specify gratitudes;
• painting cutups and writing blog posts—creating something out of ‘nothing,’ something that didn’t exist when I woke up but did exist by day’s end; feeling the partner dance of creativity and my eyes/hands/heart/mind moving together; entering the unknown, responding to ‘what if,’ problem-solving when results feel ‘off,’ and creating solutions visually and verbally; and
• stepping out my back door before dawn to walk in the hush and spaciousness of the outdoors ahead of the peopling and busyness that characterize the daylight hours; feeling the air on my face, the rhythm of my steps, the energy of movement, the nourishment of solitude.
To give a visual anchor to this piece, I offer a flashback to an early painting about which I wrote the following:
Heavy lifting: Paint for an hour, stop. See what happens.
Heaviest weight: Let it be as it is.
6×6″, acrylic on watercolor paper
2015
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10 responses to “Nicholas Wilton Free Workshop, post #1”
I’m up to my eyeballs this week with multiple appointments, interests, have-to-do’s, classes, guests, and the like yammering at me, shouting ME, ME, ME! This workshop is one such! Holy moly, I say. I’m grateful each time I can dip into the workshop and immerse myself, even if only for a few minutes.
It was fun to dial way back to Bench Press, a painting I posted in the very first days of having a blog starting late May 2015. Thanks for loving it with me!
Yup! This workshop has led me to step away from my CutUps immersion, pop my head up, and see what else is going on (and what else other than art has been piling up waiting for my attention!). I’ve appreciated the prompts as a way to direct some self-reflection. Further, even having availed myself of last year’s iteration of this same workshop, I’ve discovered that—no surprise—we (read *I*) need considerable repetition and application before it’s possible to internalize new learning. Fun to have you following along! Thanks!
This prompt exercise was valuable and it was fun to go back through my painting archives to select a piece to provide a visual anchor for this post. Thanks for commenting on it, Simone : )
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