The Painting Experience Blog
Painting Our Way Through It
This guest post by Suzanne Campise, MDiv, is an excerpt from a sermon she preached at the Nauraushaun Presbyterian Church in Pearl River, NY, shortly after the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officers. In this excerpt, lightly edited for our blog, she offers a reflection on racism through the lens of the painting [...]
Process Painting Can’t Be Categorized
Stewart hosted his first fully online painting weekend earlier this month. How exciting to have people join from all over the world! Participants "arrived" from Argentina, Brazil, India, Switzerland, British Columbia, and across the United States. Even some wild time zone differences didn't stand in the way: Charlene, who signed in from India, painted though [...]
Creating a Painting Space in a Small Rental Apartment
In today's post, Judy gives us a tour of the painting space she carved out in her small Philadelphia apartment. It's another great example of finding simple solutions to stay creatively connected while staying at home. I live in a rental. It’s a small space and I have to be careful not to get paint [...]
Practicing Process Art in Tough Times
Over the coming weeks, we hope to bring you some posts from process painters in our community. These may show art spaces at home or share reflections on how process art is supporting well being during these challenging times. Today, Cindy shares some thoughts and her experience as she sits at her desk with the [...]
Getting Ready to Paint at Home
This week, the Painting Experience team met online to talk about how we can help our vibrant community of process painters—that’s you!—stay connected and keep painting during this time when we must stay physically apart. As you’ve surely experienced by now, many creative communities are coming online with new ways to get together; we are [...]
Painting Myself Free
We’re happy to offer the following guest post by Diana Pop, who recently attended a Painting Experience workshop at Esalen and shared this wonderful description of her time in the studio. For the longest time, I painted all wrong. I started pieces with specific end results in mind. I worked painstakingly to paint them exactly [...]
Painting in Mid-Air: The Messiness of Letting Go
"It is not possible to complete yourself without sorrow." ~ Hafiz Last April, I began an enormous and purposeful transition in my life. I left my long career in residential architecture to explore the direct experience of creativity, and its healing potential. I soon felt like my life was out of control, derailed and barreling [...]
Creating Outside the Lines
It's hard to believe, but I've been posting to Facebook for The Painting Experience for almost eleven years. We have a large number of Facebook followers -- about 64,000 -- but because of the way its algorithms work, Facebook shows each of our posts to only about 300-1,000 of those folks. Every now and then, [...]
Q & A: How Is Following the Energy Different From Compulsion?
We receive some great, provocative questions about painting for process rather than product and we'd like to occasionally share them on this blog. We'll start with a question a painter recently sent to Stewart about "following the energy" and his answer in return . . . I have been intently listening to your podcasts. I'm [...]
Creative Challenge As Initiation
Homesick for moderation, Half the world’s artists shrink or fall away. If any find solution, let him tell it. Meanwhile I bend my heart toward lamentation Where, as the times implore our true involvement, The blades of every crisis point the way. I would it were not so, but so it is. Who ever made [...]