This isn't about making pretty paintings or "fixing" ourselves, this is a practice space to begin noticing all the ways that our judging, critical mind shuts down our Aliveness, and an invitation to practice doing something different. It is a chance to be fully present with our full selves while in sacred community, with skillful, unconditional encouragement and support, and see what can happen.

Because you are you, everything you paint is a form of self-portrait. So while you are painting, the inner critic (internalized oppression), will begin to show up in various ways, trying to get you to stay small, contained, "perfect", understandable, within the lines, clean, pretty, calm, etc. The power of this practice is that what comes up in painting, the critiques, the judgements, the comparisons, the self-doubt, the fear, the shame, the vulnerability, etc, are the same things that come up in our lives. But in our daily lives we tend to both consciously and unconsciously absorb these rules, barriers and harsh critiques thinking they are us, or more often not even being conscious of how much they are controlling us and our behaviors. Or, we try to run from, avoid, hide, fix, obsess over or try to control these voices, in return burning ourselves out and accidentally oppressing ourselves in our attempt to heal. 

Because of the visual nature of art and the vulnerability of being seen, these judgements and critiques naturally arise in class where you have the opportunity to sit with and work with them in an intentional, supported way from and from a new perspective. So when participants feel their painting is too bright, too big, too messy, too intense, too joyful, too angry, too meaningless, too intense, too whatever, that insecurity reflects a self-judgment that is being illuminated. When you worry you've made a "mistake" and have "ruined" your painting, you are actually coming up against some internal rule, experience, feeling or judgement that you carry. And your nervous system doesn’t know that you’re just putting orange dots, for example, on a piece of paper, it feels confident (sometimes consciously and sometimes subconsciously) that you are about to ruin your life, or do something that will exile you from the community, or cause you to be shamed or punished, or maybe it’s just that you’re being asked to face some emotion or past hurt that is difficult to be with. But you are actually just putting cheap paint on cheap paper, and as a result are building your capacity to trust yourself, take risks, and actively defy your inner critic, ie internalized oppression, in favor of your inner wisdom, ie your intuition. As you move through these insecurities and judgments about the painting, you are actually healing your judgments and insecurities about yourself, and beginning to release internalized oppressions’ hold on you. 

The beautiful complexity of this work is that it is just cheap paint and cheap paper and means absolutely nothing, and it also has the potential to be the deepest, most intimate, authentic work you will ever do. 

Why Intuitive Painting for Liberation?