Are you a shadow artist?

We start week 1 of the Artist's Way today. This week we create a safe space for your inner 'artist'. This 12 week course by Julia Cameron will help you discover and recover your creative self.

Photo by Anne Nygård on Unsplash

“In order to move from the realm of the shadows into the light of creativity, shadow artists must learn to take themselves seriously. With gentle deliberate effort, they must nurture their artist child.” Julia Cameron

As creative beings, what we need most is support, says Cameron.

We need encouragement, kindness, a little gentle championing.

But mostly, we get the opposite.

Disinterest and calls to ‘be realistic’ at best and harsh criticism and insults at worst.

Our inner artists may have gone underground, if they have managed to journey into the light at all.

This week, we’re going to gentle encourage our inner artists out into the warm sunshine of positive affirmations, we’re going to go down memory lane and remember all those lovely things someone once said to us about our writing/art/songwriting.

First, we’re going to identify the negative beliefs that take us out at the legs every time we start to feel any sense of hope of doing things differently.

Often our negative beliefs lurk without truly showing themselves, encouraging our shadow artists to stay in the shadows.

So let’s shine a light on those negative beliefs.

Complete this sentence: “I can’t be a successful, prolific, artist because….’

Now for each thing you write down - create a positive statement, an antidote to that negative statement.

Now try these exercises:

• List 3 enemies of your creative self worth. Your enemies planted the seeds of your negative beliefs

• List 3 champions of your creative self worth. Write them a thank you letter.

• Write about one happy piece of encouragement of your creative work.

We start at 1pm today with an one hour class.

Let’s support each other.

Here’s the zoom link