Join me at the beach for an artful week of painting and FeelingPeaceNow
by heidi_behr | Mar 16, 2017 | Creativity
I’m so excited!!
I hope you will join me, April 18-23, 2017, at Lynn Whipple’s BIG BOLD BLOOMS WILD PAINTING WORKSHOP at New Smyrna Beach, Florida. This is going to be an amazing week of mark-making, painting, laughing, learning, drawing, enjoying, friendship building and more.
What I am doing, helping on this workshop?
Well, besides always jumping at the opportunity to take one of Lynn’s fun workshops, I am will be helping out and providing additional coaching to enhance your creative flow, via daily guided meditations and EFT- Tapping experiences. These “creativity enhancements” are to help you feel even more freedom to explore your style as a painter and mark-maker, to help free up your inner-artist (yes, we each really do have one!).
In the words of Lynn, here is what you can expect during the art workshop week:
We will meet each morning for a healthy breakfast in the common area, next we will stroll down the boardwalks to the art studios where I will share with you techniques, demonstrations, food for thought and lots of encouragement and one on one attention. Our studios will be open 24 hours a day, so you can spend as much time in art-making mode as you please. Your accommodations are just short walk down the path, any time you wish for quiet time. We have a library, media center, gallery space and common area for you to enjoy as well. You will be surrounded by like minded, open hearted artists to share this creative experience with.
Why do I love Lynn Whipple so much? She is a dear friend and also my art teacher <3
I first took a phone-photography-app workshop with her just about 3 & 1/2 years ago, and I fell in love with her teaching style, which is fun, motivating and super comforting. I had known Lynn for years, as an artist and friend, but being in her class was a new experience.
That gave me the courage to take a weekend collage and painting workshop at her studio in Winter Park Florida in Jan 2014. I chuckle when I think about how scared I was to walk into an art supply shop — I had NO IDEA what to purchase and I felt intimidated with all the rows of colorful supplies that were so foreign to me. In fact, when I did venture to pick up a tree bark stencil, I shuddered at the cost (less than $5!) and felt unworthy of purchasing it because I wasn’t sure what to do with it.
You see, I had been told, in 8th grade, that I was “bad at art.” Brene Brown, a research professor at the University of Houston, who studies shame and vulnerability, says this is all too common:
85% of the men and women we interviewed remember something so shaming from their school experience that it changed how they think of themselves as learners.
What I learned from my 8th grade teacher was that I was to stay away from making art. That was, until Lynn Whipple’s art classes. The weekend of that collage and painting workshop, I proclaimed to my husband, “This is the MOST FUN I have EVER had!” (He laughed and was happy for me. He understood- he is also an artist of sorts.) Lynn was so supportive, so encouraging, so full of permission and ideas and explanations and ease– I really truly felt freedom and joy that had eluded me in since I was 13.
Fast-forward just a few years: I have had TWO independent art shows, my art has been on display TWICE at the Orlando Museum of Art’s First Thursday events. I have sold art, I have had my art made into cards and posters. And more importantly, I have had FUN making art! And I keep learning and taking more opportunities to investigate how-to, with fun teachers like Lynn Whipple.
This upcoming April, you get a chance to participate in Lynn’s Big Bold Blooms Wild Painting Workshop! I hope you will join us.
Go to Lynn’s site to learn more…. and to explore all the other wonderful things she does with art (she has bunches of fun online classes too– but I think in-preson is WAY MORE FUN!)
