Creativity Coaching Update. Sunlight Strikes Ft. Worth

It has been a real pleasure starting up with a dozen new creativity coaching clients this year. As we tend to chat every other week, the majority of them now have had their second session with me. Last week I posted before-coaching and after-coaching images from Gabrielle Swain, images that she produced shortly after our first session. Today I am posting some images that arose several days later as she continued the process of breaking free of her previous iconography and previous artistic identity.

Gabrielle is also in my “meaning group” in cyberspace and has been adopting some of the incantations that I am teaching to that group as aids in her exploration process. You will hear some of those “meaning prompts” in the email she sent me about her process. Gabrielle wrote:

“Even though my hard drive crash created a great deal of chaos, I managed to find some time in the studio. Certainly released plenty of anger with this time. While I had to force myself to do the work, once I started working ‘centered’ the energy became focused and calm. The first two pieces didn't make the cut. I realized I had not done any incantations before starting the work. Quickly, I stopped, left the studio and took a few moments to do ‘meaning is a wellspring,’ ‘I nominate myself,’ and ‘I make my own meaning.’ Back to the studio, I started a new piece with a completely different energy.

“What was the difference? An awareness that my studio is not just a room in which to work but a sacred space. The meaning lives within me but there has to be an atmosphere in the place where I work that encourages and allows the meaning to be released. Even though the studio is in good working order organizationally, when I return home from Australia I am going to focus on some areas as inspirational space.”

Here are the four images that Gabrielle sent me. The first released anger. The second and third continued the releasing-and-exploring process. The fourth did something else: it settled into an experience of a shaft of light cutting across Ft. Worth, rendered in a way entirely new to her.

If you would like to get in touch with Gabrielle, she can be reached at gsw149@airmail.net and visited at http://www.gabrielleswain.com/