No More Secondhand Art

“Whereas all normally functioning people, having once learned to speak, go on speaking through their life, very few people continue making images. Most of us are severed from this native ability to visually ‘speak.’ A major contribution factor must be how we have beene taught to make images. We have learned to be embarrassed by our efforts. We have learned to feel so inept and disenfranchised from our own visual expressions that we simply cease doing altogether. My experience as an artist, a teacher, and an art therapist convinces me that not the lack of technical skills but the inadequate and wrong-headed responses to these questions—Where do I begin? How do I know it it’s good? How can I use art no only to speak about the world I know and feel, but also explore the world, explore myself, define myself, and expand myself—are what silence us and keep the artist dormant.”

“The search for meaning is open-ended and exhilarating, if uncertain. Once we create imagery that honestly represents how life feel from the inside, there is a deep sense of personal empowerment and a new degree of private certainty as a result of having finally touched down to the original bedrock of our original self. We can learn to relax, play, and lighten up. . . Why couldn’t we be our own dearest friend or at least one of our dearest friends? Why couldn’t we take for one of our life’s works the exploration of the reaches of our own imagination. Why not trust ourselves to always be there for us, never to abandon us, to be lenient, forgiving, loving, and respectful? The experience is drawing from within helps us uncover such a companion.