Creativity as a land to exist more fully

Hello my beloved community,

One of my most beloved Sacred Paintbrush affirmations is “creativity is an inherently healing process, and healing is an inherently creative process.” The foundation of Intuitive Painting for Liberation is that we are naturally self-healing beings. If you get a cold or cut your hand, even if you break a bone, your body heals itself. And every single cut, sickness, and break heals differently. Your body is a brilliant and complex system of processes always working to continue to find a way forward towards recovery and healing. This inherent process of healing is creative, its dynamic, it’s Alive. And your emotional, energetic and nervous systems function with that same wisdom. Your intuitive self, which can also be thought of as your inner wisdom, your highest self, your connection to the divine, your ancestor’s guidance, your Aliveness, knows exactly what you need in order to grow, heal, thrive, and live. But trauma, social conditioning, systemic oppression and internalized oppression have disconnected us from that inner knowing, or at the very least clouded our ability to listen to, honor, and follow that wisdom. But healing is an inherently dynamic, fluid, evolving, creative process.

And creativity is our most natural state of being as humans. Creativity ignites from the parts of our minds and bodies that exist right here, right now, in the moment, and is expressed through our full selves; our physical, emotional, energetic, and spiritual bodies, and our imagination. Creativity isn’t a skill to master, it’s a way of engaging with ourselves and the world around us, a state of being.

Every thought, feeling and action is a spark of creation bursting into the present moment. Creative expression is our way of connecting into something bigger than us, expressing the world around us, exploring and creating the unknown and things that don’t yet exist. Creating is an active way of being in relationship to our imagination, our dreams, hopes, curiosities and inner worlds. It’s a way of sharing our inner worlds with others and engaging with our own imagination and subconscious in an active and tangible way.

The intuitive Painting process is a place to explore what it means to be fully Alive and fully expressed, while also being witnessed in community. The vulnerability of being witnessed and celebrated in our wholeness and our creative expression is a radically powerful and effective opportunity for healing. When we are invited to show up in our imperfect processes of healing from the inner critic, the judging mind, deep-seeded perfectionism, rugged individualism, toxic-wellness behaviors, hyper-productivity conditioning, and fear of being “too much” in all the ways, we learn to both welcome and more deeply accept and integrate our wholeness. And this increases our capacity to be our big, messy, complicated, complex, imperfect, ever-changing selves more fully, and in turn helps us welcome others to do the same without feeling the need to try to control, dictate or oppress their self-expression. And goodness knows the world needs more of that.

With the deepest love and gratitude you exist,

Amy