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empty
canvas : wondering mind
The content of this series of e-books is basically the curriculum
I developed over several decades of teaching art and design
within a variety of educational contexts. As an art educator I was more concerned with encouraging students to find and
express their own unique creative voice rather than turn out a certain type of
art product. This so often seemed the most difficult task facing those who
wished to 'do art'.
The activities and projects in empty canvas :
wondering mind are opportunities to examine and release the notions that
act to smother our natural state of creativity – the ideas, assumptions and
opinions we have about it. Why? Because these are the saboteurs that insist our
work be perfect from day one, that make it hard for us to face the empty canvas
with beginner's mind.
The heart of the matter lies in exploring the kind of radical creative activity
that pushes the
limits of perception's concrete conditioning. These e-books present a
collection of projects and activities that might help make explicit those
conditioned responses to both the mental and manifested 'worlds', thus, perhaps,
enabling perception to unfold new ways of seeing and expressing the wonder of
the world we create and inhabit. Their uniqueness lies in this underlying aim:
they aren't 'how to' instruction books, they are 'what-if ...?' workbooks.
empty canvas : wondering mind invites
us to relax into the wisdom of not-knowing. Of playing. Of exploring and
experimenting. Of finding out for oneself what is possible when all traces of
the artist or any other version of the self have taken a holiday, leaving the
playground free. Just to see what might happen.
Yes, the work is challenging. But it's also great fun, and potentially
liberating.
What is the self that expresses in self-expression?
If you intuit that making art can help us explore this question, and that our
artworks can be exquisitely revealing
by-products
- maps of our journey - these books might interest you.
click on the links below to read more about,
and to download, the individual books
(NB - they are free!)
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