Breaking Through: Transformation through painting
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My recent three-day journey into watercolor painting and spirituality at the Christine Center in Willard, WI was, in a sense, quite transformative.
Disclaimer: My last experience with watercolor painting was in kindergarten.
Painting? What was I thinking? Well, I wasn’t, at least not about the painting. That was the least of my worries. The bit of breaking from my destructive and dangerously affixed routine? That one had my mind spinning. I’m not a traveler. I’m not a stuff-outside-my-tiny-safe-box doer.
But my safe-box is crushing me.
Desperate for some spark of fire, of will for healing, I embarked on this personal retreat, leaving as a skinny, fading, hurt and hopeless white girl and returned as a…pregnant submissive Asian woman.
I was guided and encouraged by facilitator Dr. John-Anthony Parente, who holds degrees in spirituality, theology and art, and has worked as a professional artist and professor for over 30 years, in addition to being immersed in contemplative and monastic life.
As we viewed our wet-on-wet full-page color bleeds that we’d dried overnight, we were instructed to journal on what we saw. All I saw was a ridiculous “smiley face.”
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Find the full article, and others like it at: http://edgemagazine.net/2011/12/breaking-through/
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