The One That Will Go Deep - And The One That Will Uncover Your Voice

Collage Work In Progress  by Crystal Marie (neubauer) 

Listen, I’m going to level with you. Normally when I plan a workshop, I get something like a long drawn out stage fright in the months leading up to it. A sort of performance anxiety. Deep deep dread. I am truly an introvert.

But this one, this one is different. It’s only 3 weeks away and I’m not nervous. I’m anxious to be there, and excited, but it just occurred to me, like seriously, just now, that I’m not nervous even a little bit. And you know why? Because the closer it gets, the more the ideas I want to share keep pouring in. It’s like inspiration on steroids!

I mean, yes, I plan these things. I don’t wait until three weeks before the class to develop content, but I do continue to gather scraps of thought, and relevant information right up until the first day of a class. I want each one to be fresh.

Yet, it isn’t even just that Tsunami of inspiration pummeling the shores of my being. It’s that I planned this class to be everything that I live and breathe. We are going to go deep! There will be writing- but not to read out loud like a writing workshop, maybe another time we’ll do that. It’s writing to clarify. Writing to listen. Writing to hear your own dang voice. Do you have any idea how much that thing has been covered up over the years?

And the funny thing is, it isn’t even a writing workshop. Writing is just another tool we’ll use, along with the art of collage. Cause you know Collage is my first love, right? Ask my mom. I might have established myself well into my 50’s in the last decade, but she’ll remember, she’s pretty sharp. 

My bedroom walls were the first place I practiced this love affair of mine. My ceiling sloped, almost all the way down to the floor on one side, and I plastered that thing with posters and snippets of magazines, and Disney characters that I was partial to drawing. And my desk? It was built-in; a well curated visual feast of teenage delight, ABBA stickers, and rainbows everything and trolls, so many trolls (it was the start of the 80s!)

Yup, that’s where the whole thing started, but then it took me a while to get from that place to where I’m at today. Some decades under my belt, and a whole lot of life experience.

When I first came back to art in my 30’s, it was hard. After many moons of somehow living my life as if I wasn’t an artist, my voice had a lot of scar tissue attached.

A. LOT.

But when I first opened the cover of that magazine- you know the one, I talk about it every time anyone wants to hear how I got started pasting trash together and calling it art. That magazine someone walked by my desk at work and handed me when I was just on the verge of mental collapse. A lifeline.

I opened its cover and saw pages filled with the art of collage. And I nearly broke down weeping over it there at my desk. I knew what I was seeing was a vital part of me. My heart, my very essence laid out in the thick glossy pages of that spread. And I knew it was what I was really meant to be doing.

Leaving the safety and security of that 9-5 job behind was hard. I made a good salary, had worked my way up from the hand bindery to the front office as project manager. It had taken me years to get there! I was proud of my accomplishment. But then Collage came along and wrecked me.

Somehow it showed me a part of myself I hadn’t even realized was lost. A part of me that was living, alive, more alive then I knew was possible. And I couldn’t not have it. So I set out on a journey to learn what to do. In the process, I encountered road block after road block, and countless obstacles meant to deter me before I even got started. Every single one of them was all in my head.

All that life experience I had, all of that scar tissue that had formed, it was all manifesting it’s way into my studio time with loud angry voices wanting to know just what the hell I was doing. It’s called resistance. And that sucker is strong.

So I knew if I ever wanted to create like those people whose art I saw in those pages, I was going to have to do something about it. Not just teach myself how to glue, but how to identify what voices to trust, and which to tune out, and who to kick to the curb altogether. And because there was nobody there to teach me that part of the process, I had to teach myself.

Which paper goes where? Should I really use that fancy one? What if I screw it up? Maybe I should wait until I’m better? The work I’ve done to get to where I am as an artist today wasn’t all just learning techniques and composition skills, nope, half the battle was learning to listen to the right voice- the one called intuition.

Intuition is vital to the creative process. It represents all the good you carry inside. It’s what connects you to your own one true authentic voice. It doesn’t matter if you work in collage or oil paint, if your work is abstract or representational. It’s the most important part of the game.

Really without intuition, you can still paint a pretty picture, but it is a little like cotton candy. Give it a bit of pressure and that thing just goes flat.

Your intuition is your guide, your informant, your very very best friend. You need it. Trust me!

Trust me? Nah, intuition is about learning to trust you. You trusting you. Me trusting that still small voice inside.

So here I am, after yet another burst of inspiration for that class, getting really excited to be there and sitting up waaaay past my bedtime, because suddenly it occurred to me that I actually want every one of you to be there! Yes it’s only 3 weeks away, but Southwest usually always has great deals and you can’t beat the two free bags when you are going to a workshop!

So what do you say? Grab one of those last few seats and let me show you how to uncover your own intuitive voice? You won’t be sorry (unless you miss it): Follow this link for more information.