Art feeds and enriches our souls in the same way food nourishes our bodies. Reading books, watching films, looking at paintings, and listening to music or poetry can elevate everyday reality to something sublime.
But, because we are more than consumers, we also crave opportunities to contribute something of ourselves to the conversation. We need to see and hear ourselves to know the truth of who we are, through our own creative expressions.
When we play, like children, with materials, only for the joy of discovering who we are, what we like, what we don't like—this truly feeds us.
It's also incredibly powerful to work with images—even if we identify more as writers who create literary images than visual artists. Images speak to us on a soul level. They bypass our rational, critical mind and allow us to feel whatever they evoke in us, intuitively.
We are all visually literate, and through collage, we can create our own language and meaning. By cutting up glossy magazines and collaging commercially printed detritus, we change it into something else, not an externally directed expectation of who we should compare ourselves to or aspire to be, but our own reflection instead. We reappropriate the media and propaganda used to "sell" us who we are and turn it on its head.
You don't need to know how to paint or draw to work visually. Collage is accessible to everyone, and it's so natural and human to create. And, because different disciplines inform each other, Kissing the Muse also incorporates other expressive art modalities, like music, poetry, writing, and movement. It also brings in everyday modes of creative expression, like food and relationships, so you begin to nourish yourself in your ordinary daily rituals.
By cutting, pasting, and manipulating materials and images we make sense of our world, both inner and outer. We become collaborators with the ultimate reality: infinite, ceaselessly dynamic, swirling, potential—adding our unique voice to the world, which ultimately nourishes us all.
If you're interested in joining "Kissing the Muse: A Messy, Magical, Art-Making Adventure," my 6-week online course offered through the Transformative Language Arts Network, there are still spots available. But hurry, it starts on October 14.