Paint, Paper, and Pens--why bother?

When I was married I read A Room of One's Own until it fell apart. Then I got another copy and had this idea that if we all were in a house with an extra room, I'd have a place other than the dining room table in which to paint a write.

Wrong.

My husband took over the spare room as his study and dressing room, and he cleared a small corner of the room for my "Stuff." I had a rolling table with the then cutting-edge word processor and its paper, and for my meager drawing and painting supplies. To keep it in there meant my rolling it down the hall into the -- you guessed it -- dining room to use. So I put it in the corner of the dining room and thus had, once again, no space that was mine. The kids had their own rooms and took over the family room. Everything else was shared.

I was picking up and taking down and gave up eventually.

Now, in desperation, I return to a dream of my youth and to my late daughter's voice. We don't really lose ourselves, we just don't always locate the right voice for the right audience or the right time in our lives to let that "self" be expressed. Her name was Jessie and the business model in my head was "Jessie's Voice." For now I say "Reinvented Voices" to broaden what was HER idea, that we reinvent the voice we use to let ourselves out.

My first venture into helping people do this for themselves is Paint, Paper, & Pens. Running art workshops in the morning, afternoon and/or evening to help people be a kid. No. Not explore their inner child. Just be a kid. Make a mess without having to clean up. Paint a purple tree or a kitty that looks like a cow. A place where you are charged a quarter when you put your own work down and kicked out for criticizing others. Eight part workshops to start, with right-brain activities to warn up, some group painting exercises, and the last three sessions to create anything people want, together, separately, or some combination of the two.

I'm not an artist, but I can paint well. It's an exploration for me, though I've attended painting classes and creativity and writing workshops. I'm a writer who paints. I would like to see whether I am also a painter. In the meantime, I can work with others to help them explore and remember--remember what it was to paint or draw without worrying about the rules or other people's opinions. To be in the company of other people who want to do the same, and to laugh.

I think this economy needs laughter. I think many of us need some affordable activities that offer us the opportunity to DO, not be done to or to watch others doing. And for many of us, our uncensored creativity was squashed out of us the first time someone said, "That kitty looks like a PIG" or "You went outside the lines!" or "Trees are NOT purple."

Creativity from art spills over into other areas of our lives. I hope to post links to sites on creativity in the future. I hope that people who inquire about my workshops in Connecticut, start checking creativity sites themselves, or take a painting class at college, or move on to many things. Mostly I hope that I can make a modest living while connecting a creative, silly community in the land of Malls and sameness.