Painting From Within Workshop, March 26

Like the shiny pebbles or moss-covered sticks I pick up when I hike through the woods, this blog is about pieces of life.  Pieces that bring us closer to completion.  Pieces that create a more fully-developed circle.  Pieces that bring us to wholeness.

This journey is wonderfully unpredictable.  Each time I think I understand where I’m headed, things change.  I’m redirected ever closer to a crystal stream, or a sunny meadow.

My path speaks gently, “Let’s go this way, instead.  It all leads to the same place.” Well, I’ve always been one to take the scenic route.

I only began my painting journey a little over a year ago. Since then I’ve watched other artists. I’ve watched their spirit flow onto pages, onto canvases, yes, even onto my computer screen.  I’ve watched, and listened, and waited, and explored.  My painting evolves.  My understanding of how to paint, and of who I am, evolves.

The image I’ve chosen for today’s post is a self portrait I painted in 2009 during a workshop called “The Painting Experience”.  Only the outer layers of paint show … there are many layers of paint underneath … many layers of myself.

I was talking with my father on the phone after that workshop.  He asked what I painted.  “Well, I didn’t really paint any pictures,” I said, with surprising confidence, “we just used images, and the colors that called to us.”  He turned from the phone and called out to my mother, “She didn’t paint anything, she just painted colors!”   I chuckled then, and still today, when I recall my dad saying that.

This is the first time I’ve shared my self portrait outside of its home in my meditation room.  I’m certain that if I painted another self portrait today, it would look very different.

Today I am excited to announce my first painting workshop, Painting From Within.

I’ll be offering it at the Bower Center,  in my hometown of Bedford, Virginia … and I can’t think of a place I’d rather begin this leg of my journey.

Painting From Within ~ Facilitated by Jane Barefoot Rochelle
March 26, 2011
The Bower Center for the Arts
Bedford, Virginia
All supplies provided ~ you already have all that you need.

The workshop itself has taken a while to develop.  Admittedly, I am still working on many of the details.  Wholeheartedly, I acknowledge that some details will work themselves out intuitively in the coming weeks.

I am still learning, about art, about paint, about myself.  I have learned enough.  The teacher in me, the artist in me, and the healer in me are ready ~ we’re ready to share what we’ve learned.

Though I’m now learning how to sketch figures, still, I paint from my soul.  I paint from what comes within and calls to be thrown onto my canvas.

Participants in my first workshop will not leave with a copy of a landscape.  They won’t carry home a perfectly polished, ready-to-hang painting of an apple.  It is much more likely that they’ll leave with an image that doesn’t mean a thing to anybody but them.  Colors, shapes, and images, allowed to surface from the spark within that make their way to the page.

It is my wish that participants in the workshop will leave with a renewed sense of creativity and a more intimate understanding of who they are.  Perhaps they’ll leave with some answers, and some new questions. My hope is that they will reconnect with the curiosity and intuition they knew as children, but were taught to ignore.  My wish is that they will carry home a sense of wonder, and new eyes with which to see this amazing and imperfect world.

I am reminded of my excitement when I was invited to be a featured Wishcaster on Jamie Ridler Studios. On that day I knew that I was a writer, and I knew that dreams could come true.  In that post, I described my dream. (Click here to read the post as it was published at Jamie Ridler Studios on Thanksgiving Day, 2010.)

For some time, I’ve envisioned a community for people who want to find wellness and wholeness.  A place for people to gather because they want to, and because they find happiness there.  Perhaps there will be a soft and breezy meditation room, an intuitive painting studio, an open air energy medicine area, a vegetable garden leading into a kitchen full of fresh vegetables.  I can see the children gathering fresh eggs from a chicken coop, and laying in the grass, giggling as lady bugs tickle their bare toes.  Always butterflies, and lady bugs, and flowers.

Writing, painting, healing, gathering, giving, teaching, loving … yes, unconditional loving.  It’s my dream.  I don’t know which parts of it will become reality.  Perhaps when the time comes, the dream will have evolved into something much bigger, or into something much more simple.  Either way, it will be perfect.

My wishes, my dreams, are a step closer to coming true, in whatever form they become manifest. The circle makes its way toward wholeness, thickening with each round.

Thank you for being part of my journey.

You can learn more about ~

• my upcoming workshop ~ Painting From Within
• my hometown, Bedford, Virginia
• the Bower Center for the Arts. Also, I want to thank Sara Braaten for helping me with the details.  She’s an incredible gift to the city of Bedford, and to the arts community as a whole.
• If you prefer a 2 1/2 day workshop, the workshop I attended in 2009 is kicking off an amazing new season of programs in the US and abroad.  Maybe it seems strange to introduce this workshop at the same time I’m announcing my own, but it doesn’t make sense to put a basket over a glowing flame … I am compelled to share what is worthy and good.

Thank you so much for reading today.  I’m so glad you’re here.

Painting From Within ~ Facilitated by Jane Barefoot Rochelle

March 26, 2011 ~ Bedford, Virginia

Click Here To Register ~ one of the many things I love about Bedford is the somewhat “relaxed” pace … thank you for taking the time to print and mail your registration form.

Take special good care, peeps,

Much love,