Painting Myself Free

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 [...]
Creating Outside the Lines

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, [...]
Connecting With Your Own Energy

Connecting With Your Own Energy

After creating a safe and spacious environment, working with energy is a facilitator’s primary tool. The energy determines how you move within that space -- for example, the questions you might ask and the suggestions you might offer to a painter. ~ Stewart Cubley, from "Working With the Tool of Energy," a talk available in [...]
Safe Place, Sacred Space

Safe Place, Sacred Space

“An artmaking space is a “mishkan” a portable sanctuary. Each artist working there is alone with her image and the message it brings as well as being in a subtle communion with others in the space. (…) The witness of others and our ability to struggle alongside them deepens our engagement in the process. Safety [...]
Radical Innocence

Radical Innocence

The first encounter with painting is often a delight and a surprise. Each color is a delicious revelation; strangely satisfying forms appear; we’re amazed and fascinated by the mysterious images that emerge. And the room feels safe—a supportive, inspirational community of people working together at their growing edge with no obvious comparison or judgment in [...]