Serious Art is Born from Serious Play - Artist Way Creative Workshop Chapter 6 - Abundance July 13th

Author, Julia Cameron, continued the conversation from last week’s lessons attempting to truly tackle a major creative block, money. She has us truly look at our beliefs around God, Money, and Abundance. We develop these beliefs around God, Money, and Abundance at a very young age, it is what forms our views on God’s power in our lives and our self-imposed limitations. For many of us, God and Money do not mix. Money becomes the Real source of security in our lives, and we limit how much God is allowed to be a part of our lives. Many of us do not realize we are doing this, but we place these limitations on God’s power and abundance in our lives, especially around money. Julia Cameron explains that “we become blocked and blame it on our lack of money. This is never an authentic Block. The Actual Block is our feelings of constriction and our sense of powerlessness. Art requires us to empower ourselves with choice. At the most basic level, this means choosing to do self-care”.

Spending time in creative endeavors allows us to foster our spiritual relationship with our Higher Power and will enable us to connect in a childlike, playful, joyful, and even silly manner. Unfortunately, our beliefs around money like “I need to worry about money first and creativity second” or “artistic, creative ventures are a luxury and frivolous use of time because no one will pay me to be creative”.

Even famous Artists fall into this way of thinking by denying themselves creative pleasures, like time to play, relax, and joy in our everyday lives. What gives us joy is different for each of us some may find joy in horseback riding, nature walks, baking, cooking, sewing, and music to name a few. The time we are spending with our Artist Date activities is designed to help each of us to explore different mediums like paper, painting, collage, journaling, fibers, and writing to explore and connect with our Creator, as well as find more ways to take care of ourselves.

The next key concept Julia Cameron addresses in this chapter is prideful perfection. It blocks our joy by not allowing ourselves to have fun because we require perfection or nothing at all. We place unrealistic expectations and judgments of ourselves and others preventing our progress. We need to remind ourselves that the point of these exercises is to allow ourselves the time and freedom to be silly, have fun, and paint outside the lines if we feel it.

This week we painted on canvas tote bags, focusing on the limitless abundance in our lives. Allowing ourselves to open our views of how our God’s power works in our lives providing abundance. It’s not about the money but what it represents. Being driven to only focus on the money, or having money at the expense of our connection with our God’s presence in our lives is the issue. What brings us joy and security in our lives is not money, but our awareness of God’s presence in our lives, time spent in self-care, being silly, having fun, and allowing ourselves to see the beauty and feel the joy in the creative activities we make time for.

Next week we are going to discuss Chapter 7: Recovering a Sense of Connection and paint our Wine Bottles in an upcycling project. Make sure to clean and remove the label from an old wine, alcohol, or unique glass bottle. We will be creating a collage of our clean bottles. Suggested supplies needed: Clean Glass Bottle, craft brush, misc. colored tissue paper, decoupage glue, ribbon, twine, and glass markers.

Note: We also plan to make a toast together celebrating our connection with each other on this creative journey. It can be wine, or your drink of choice (alcoholic or nonalcoholic). Cheers, you next week 😊