Creature Conversations

Posted on November 8, 2019 by Art and Soul Creativity Coaching since 1993

Creature Conversations
Sally Swain art

Who knew these little winged beings would emerge?

I admit I’m rather fond of them.

Creature Conversations was created over four separate chats with fabulous art therapists. I found it an intriguing way to approach art-making – keeping one piece going over several different exchanges.

Conversation one
with the Dotties – an art therapist peer support group I am blessed to have in my life.

Laying down tissue,

adding paint,

gently watching

the watercolour run,

seep,

move across the mini-landscape

Creature Conversations
Sally Swain art
One

Conversation two
It turns out a respected, experienced art therapist is seeking me out for supervision. I am honoured.

Surrounding,

linking

background colours appear.

I spread out.

Creature Conversations
Sally Swain art
Two

Conversation three
with my lovely colleague about Leaf-by-Leaf project possibilities. We spark. We are dually inspired.

I look at the picture so far.

I see blobs and shapes

that could be little critters.

I draw them forth with texta.

First, a butterfly.

Then a winged cat.

This is truly fun.

Creature Conversations
Sally Swain art
Three

Conversation four

in which a colleague generously listens to what’s been happening in my world. She helps me reconnect with the ground of being.

Earth swirls appear.

Lightly.

Yes – the whole thing is watery,

yet

I have a sense of earth and sky.
It’s elemental.

Creature Conversations
Sally Swain art
Four

Do you

ever make art

while on the phone?

Creature Conversations
Sally Swain art

Oh yeah – I am not great at figuring out how to link up my social media stuff, but I recently joined Instagram. I’m artandsoul.sally . Creature Conversations appears Instagramatically.

with love, art and soul
Sally

Art, Love and Realness

Posted on September 13, 2019 by Art and Soul Creativity Coaching since 1993

We are Pod.

We are.

We.

My little Pod group formed randomly … or was it laced around some invisible design?

After Australia’s election in May, I felt a strong urge towards community, to be with like-hearted people. I sent out an email to maybe twelve creative arts therapists to get together, to lament, to make art, to see what emerged.

Art, Love, Realness
in the Pod
Sally Swain art-in-relationship
Transforming Grief into Gold

Four of us turned up on the day. We bonded immediately.

We became Pod.

Pod is for grieving, expressing our true feelings, making art and, importantly, eating too much cake. We’ve now met several times. We don’t necessarily talk politics or big picture stuff. We speak whatever matters to us at the time.

ART, LOVE AND REALNESS

was

my impassioned happy-slogan

in meeting three.

Pod gathering number four begins. We have cake on our plates. We have art materials at our fingertips. We have landed.

I slap down a bit of collage. It gives me a ground; a starting point. How about a pre-painted magazine page and a paint-dabbed tissue?

Art, Love, Realness
in the Pod beginnings
Sally Swain art-in-relationship

I notice the letter W right there in the centre, on its side. Can you see it? I pause. W? What might that mean to me right now? Straight away the answer comes. It stands for ‘We’.

It stands for the ‘We’ of Pod.

It’s a reminder of community, of interdependence. It tells me I don’t have to try and figure out my life, my work, my struggles, on my own. Even as I write this sentence, I breathe out a sighhh. It is so easy to get caught up in individualism, where I think I have to solve problems in my busy head; where I have to be a self-made woman and put myself out in the world.

Do you relate? ‘Making it on your own’ is so embedded and idealised in our culture. Such pressure. Anyway, it’s a myth. Nobody truly succeeds on their own. Always, someone somewhere sometime is supporting us.

I write a little ‘e’ next to the W. We.

Art, Love, Realness
in the Pod
Sally Swain art-in-relationship

I paint a Pod. I write the word ‘We’ lots and lots of times. The word becomes weird and funny, but demands to proliferate.

Art, Love, Realness
in the Pod
Sally Swain art-in-relationship
We We We We We

Gold arrives.

Art, Love, Realness
in the Pod
Sally Swain art-in-relationship
Gold arrives

More white tissue beckons. Laying it down is a bit like a tourniquet. Ew. Suddenly I don’t like the picture. It looks like blood and a bandage. We-e-elll …Pod was kind of forged in blood. And a community of ART, LOVE AND REALNESS is incredibly healing.

Art, Love, Realness
in the Pod
Sally Swain art-in-relationship
Transforming Grief into Gold

I still don’t particularly like the picture, but I want to share with you the sustaining spirit of ‘We’. I want to live in the Creative Love Exchange.

(Here’s another post about seeking solace in creative community)

Along those lines, here’s a wee (We) community noticeboard.

Let me link you to upcoming offerings

of several non-Pod Sydney art therapists.

Penelope James: Sydney Art Therapy Group for Therapists in Glebe over 6 Tuesday evenings from 15^th October www.arTTi.com.au

Anne Buckingham: Art + Mental Wellbeing workshops at Lane Cove Gallery in September info@gallerylanecove.com.au

Gabriel Lawrence: Embrace your Inner Superhero (for women) in Ryde on Saturday 14^th September http://www.into-arts.com.au

Romny Vandoros: is to co-lead one of her Artful Retreats…in Crete! October 1^st to 4^th. https://www.artfulretreats.com/crete-4-days?fbclid=IwAR2nJKgrvf67-jnLhxqYK4ohJrrqz2d5MuzGl1n_isXpMX891JNJw4aTjZI

Phillipa Tayler: A Creative Look at Chronic Pain several Monday mornings in Willoughby https://www.workshoparts.org.au/course/ArtTherapyChronicPain

Roxy Taylor: The Benefits of Art Therapy in Residential Aged Care podcast https://www.wisecare.com.au/blog/episode2

Oh yes. There’s me. Sally Swain: I have one or two spots in Creative Wellspring on Saturday 21st September in Glebe, Sydney.

We are ART THERAPY ABUNDANCE!

with love, art and soul from Sally

When Life Gives You Lemons,

Posted on July 5, 2019 by Art and Soul Creativity Coaching since 1993

Make Lemon Art.

When Life Gives You Lemons, Make Lemon Art
Sally Swain © art

That’s right.

When Life Gives You Lemons, Make Lemon Art

This is my new saying.

I’ve lemon-twisted the old phrase,

‘When Life Gives You Lemons,

Make Lemonade’.

When Life Gives You Lemons, Make Lemon Art
rip the fabric
place it on the little square canvas

The revised axiom, the paintage creation, arose from a lemony situation. Not that there’s anything wrong with lemons. Just as there’s nothing wrong with pear shapes. Indeed, I prefer lemons to lemonade…and they are so much more healing.

Let’s reclaim fruit beauty. Let’s reclaim our lives from the sour times.

(an earlier post including pear-shaped delight)

When Life Gives You Lemons, Make Lemon Art
glue it down
adore the frayed threads

But if we are talking lemons as in bitter, difficult times,

Continue reading →

Sister Pools

Posted on September 1, 2017 by Art and Soul Creativity Coaching since 1993

A Creative Support Partnership

Rosey
a Sister Pool picture
by Sally Swain

Last week, we looked at the Handala – a small mandala with carry-handles.

The Handala arose while I waited for my sister to ring for our creative conversation. An Art and Soul Space blog reader (thanks, Gallivanta) loved that my sister reads me her writings. Inspired by my dear reader, let me tell you about … ta daa … Sister Pools.

For the past year, whenever we can, my sister and I form an interstate telephonic dual Creative Support Partnership. We read each other our writing-in-progress. We talk about current glitches, hitches, joys and successes in our creative process. We divide the time fairly equally.

I paint while she talks or reads.

She writes (or doodles) while I talk or read.

I might paint a preliminary shape on one page of the art journal, then squish the pages together, forming a Rorschach-type mooshy print. (Squish and mooshy being highly technical hoity-toity art terms).

I develop each page differently. Intuitively, spontaneously, I listen to her words, thoughts, feelings and to my own art desires and intentions. It’s a type of Response Art.

Here’s what emerged

in our very first meeting.

Continue reading →

Make art, even if your wings

Posted on June 23, 2017 by Art and Soul Creativity Coaching since 1993

Wing-ear woman
Sally Swain © original art
little watercolour painting from art journal, created while listening on the phone

Continue reading →

Oh give me a home

Posted on May 12, 2017 by Art and Soul Creativity Coaching since 1993

where the Art and Soul roam,
where the handcrafted miniatures play…

part of a woven artwork by Margot Turner

…where silence is heard
in the tweet of a bird…

ceramic by Pru Jobling
drawing by Cate Dudley

…and the city stress scuttles away.

(to the tune of Home on the Range)

bottles from Stresa, Italy; pebble carvings from Oamaru, NZ;
bone carving from NZ

I escape

Continue reading →

Words in your Wallpaper

Posted on January 20, 2017 by Art and Soul Creativity Coaching since 1993

Maya and Me

Do you have words in your rugs?

In your upholstery?

Maya Angelou, amazingly versatile, talented poet, actor, director, dancer, everything-creator, said this to her pal Oprah:

“Words are things. You must be careful, careful about calling people out of their names, using racial pejoratives and sexual pejoratives and all that ignorance. Don’t do that. Some day we’ll be able to measure the power of words. I think they are things. They get on the walls. They get in your wallpaper. They get in your rugs, in your upholstery, and your clothes, and finally in to you.”

Which way?
Katoomba sign

Maya inspired me to

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Take heart. Make art.

Posted on November 18, 2016 by Art and Soul Creativity Coaching since 1993

How to respond?

How to respond to trauma, sorrow and fear
with creativity, authenticity and respect?
How to heal our hearts enough to move into action?
How to collectively create a compassionate world in testing times?

Ohh. Big questions.
Very big.
Too big, perhaps.
Here’s how one

Continue reading →