Still, as helpful as it is to have sharper vision when I’m working, I know that another key element is the willingness to see what is actually in front of our eyes.

In a very real way, what we see is always an interpretation of what our brain processes. For instance, because of the way the lens in our eyes works, the image hits the retina wall upside down, but our brains flip it over for us.

The brain also has other tricks, like helping us ignore a slew of visual data in favour of the most important bit of information. Like, if you were trying to escape a burning building, you’d want to be scanning for signs of an exit as opposed to getting distracted by the pretty framed landscape painting on the wall.

All these eye-to-brain tricks have benefits, but they also create a kind of shorthand interpretation that can gloss over the details of what’s really there.

I believe this is why so much early art instruction boils down to teaching folks to really focus on the act of perception as opposed to leaning on the shorthand coming from our brains.

Blind Contour Drawing

If you’ve taken a drawing class at any level from high school on upward, there’s a good chance you’ve encountered some version of the Blind Contour Drawing exercise. I’m aware that there are many ways to do this exercise, but I’m going to guide you through the version that I learned back in the day.

• Step 1: Choose an object that has an interesting shape to it. I recommend something not too complicated to start with, but also has some interesting nooks and crannies.

• Step 2: Get a regular sheet of paper and the drawing tool of your choice. The best drawing tools for this exercise are ones that have a level of smooth flow to them, like a pencil or marker.

• Step 3: Set a timer for two minutes.

• Step 4: Focus intently on your chosen object and imagine cutting it out from the background so that the object itself is the only element in focus.

• Step 5: Start the timer and put your draw tool on the paper while looking only at the object.

• Step 6: For the entire two minutes on the timer, imagine that your eye is like a finger tracing around the edge (or contour) of that object and trace the shape around the object. Do not look at the paper and do not lift your drawing tool. Go slowwwwwly. Consider and capture every little bump and divot.

• Step 7: Stop drawing when the timer is up. If you finish drawing before the timer is up, continue drawing around the shape until it’s done.

As you can see from my drawing, this is not about producing a drawing that looks exactly like the object. And yet, in considering its shape so intently, I’ve also managed to capture its surface contour in detail.

Checking shorthand assumptions against reality

As a person with a visible disability, I’ve had some negative interactions with the public over the years. Weird observations from strangers. Poor customer experiences in stores and restaurants. Frustrating accessibility issues that make me want to tear my hair out at times.

It would be easy to focus only on these negative instances because they stand out so starkly in my mind. Of course, I remember the demeaning comment made by someone I shared Burrard Skytrain Station elevator with years ago and could practically recite it verbatim at this point.

But if I were to only focus on that negative instance, it would be like glossing over all the positive or neutral interactions I had in that very same elevator.

• Every time I pushed the button and the person next to me said nothing.

• Every time I pushed the button and the person next to me said something innocuous about the weather.

• Every time I held the door for someone as they rushed to the elevator and they thanked me.

• Every time someone held the door for me as I rushed to the elevator and thanked them.

• Every rare chance encounter where a genuine connection was made even for a moment

I commuted on Skytrain from Burnaby to downtown Vancouver virtually every weekday for a decade, going up and down that same Burrard Station elevator, probably hundreds of times.

If my commute was the path that I traced around the object, what notch represents that single negative instance? Or even the handful of negative instances I’ve had when commuting? What parts of the path represent all the other instances?

Sure, the negative experience matters, but not to the point that I’m going to say, “Every single time that I leave my apartment, I experience discrimination and abuse because of my disability,” because that simply isn’t true. That’s my mind focusing on the negative and extrapolating those experiences into something bigger.

If I take in the scope of my entire experience, just as I took in the entire shape of the object, I can perceive the good, the bad and the neutral in my situation much more clearly.

Last call for next Sunday’s CreativiTEA workshop

Is this you? Is this someone you know? If so, then come out to our next CreativiTEA for Grown-Ups workshop.

We understand that art-making and creativity hit differently when we become adults and folks need the right environment to recapture what made art so much fun when we were kids.

And if you haven't touched art supplies in forever or are worried about your perceived level of artistic talent—don't be! This is exactly the right place for you.

Inner and Outer Masks
Sunday, October 18th, from 1-3pm
Atelier Artista (4th floor)
cSPACE Marda Loop
1721 29 Avenue SW, Calgary

Tickets are $30 and include all art supplies, tea and delicious goodies.

Get Workshop Tickets

Athena splits her time between being a fine art painter, writer and a creativity coach with Tilted Windmills.

I used part of the grant money to lease space in a co-working hub for my studio, which really made me feel like a true “professional artist.”

So, when my Dad asked me if I could paint the Pillars of Creation nebula for him, I thought, “how hard could that be?” I figured I could knock it out between my exhibit painting work and have it done in time for Christmas.

As it turned out, the painting was much harder than I expected.

I had some ideas on how to tackle it, but it seemed like I was hitting roadblocks at every turn. Try as I might, I couldn’t capture that softness of the nebula’s clouds and I was stumped on how to achieve its radiant glow.

I was largely self-taught as an acrylic painter at that time, and everything about this painting felt outside my wheelhouse. It was a puzzle I just didn’t feel equipped to solve.

This is the only photo I could find on my phone of that first aborted attempt and it soon ended up in a box under my desk at the studio.

I promised myself I would finish the painting eventually, but I never did. I figured what was the point digging it out again if I couldn’t solve the painting’s fundamental challenges.

Waiting for the right time

We might not realize it, but we are constantly adding new skills and experiences to our creative tool kit. What I find particularly interesting are those times when a seemingly unrelated skill will spark something in a completely new way.

For instance, I took piano lessons from age six to sixteen, at which point I quit and have barely touched a piano since. In my early twenties, however, I did two years in computer animation. I was only a few months into my first animation course when I realized I was counting out the beats of my animated actions with the precision and rhythm of a piano metronome.

So, even though I never pursued piano beyond my teenage years, I could still call on some of those skills for an entirely different creative endeavour.

Flash forward four years to yesterday, when I started my second attempt at Dad’s Pillars of Creation painting. The big difference between my last attempt and this one is that it is being done using oil paints, not acrylics.

I have probably completed at least a hundred paintings in acrylics on a wide variety of topics, but only two oil paintings prior to this one. While I’m still learning the ropes with the support of my painting mentor, I do know that because oil paints take so much longer to dry—about a week compared to acrylic’s fifteen minutes—I can create much softer blends between colours. Add in the loan of my mentor’s badger-hair paintbrush, and the difference in the feathery softness of the nebula clouds is like night and day.

After only a few hours of work, I can already see that the painting is now possible for me to complete in the way that I want when it felt entirely impossible not too long ago.

The vision for the painting hasn’t changed during that time, but I have.

I decided that I wanted to try oil painting as something new after finishing all the acrylics for my exhibit.

I brought new resources into my life like attending weekly painting classes to support for my journey as an artist after being a proud self-taught painter for so long.

In other words, I didn’t have what I needed the first time around, but now I do.

It isn’t even the first time that I’ve done multiple attempts of the same painting and I’ve since learned that many artists throughout history have returned to the same subject over and over again as they continue to hone their craft.

So, even if you think you have hit a creative wall with a project and feel ready to bin the idea entirely, don’t be too hasty.

You can hold onto that vision lightly in the back of your mind and someday you might come across what you need for a breakthrough.

Whether we know it or not, we all wear masks. There are aspects of ourselves that we want the world to see. There are aspects of ourselves that we want people to believe.

But what is our interior mask? What parts do we keep just for ourselves? What do we choose to hide?

In October’s workshop, we will explore both sides of our mask using paints and an array of collage materials on white paper masks to create a representation of our inner and outer expressions.

Inner and Outer Masks
Sunday, October 18th, from 1-3pm
Atelier Artista (4th floor)
cSPACE Marda Loop
1721 29 Avenue SW, Calgary

Tickets are $30 and include all art supplies and refreshments.

Get Workshop Tickets

When Stefan returned from his recent trip to Scotland, he was practically glowing from all that he’d seen and experienced. He’d gotten to absorb a wide array of art galleries, beautiful architecture, castles and monuments. There was a definite spark in his eye and spring in his step, despite being quite jet lagged and recovering from a bout of food poisoning.

Ordinarily, I would have attributed his joyful enthusiasm to the novelty of travelling, but he’s travelled quite a bit over the past year to a number of different conferences and had not come home this excited. In the words of Julia Cameron, author of “The Artist’s Way,” he’d clearly filled his well with a bounty of experiences and now it was overflowing in an incredibly positive way.

He attributed the difference to the fact that he’d stayed off his phone for the majority of his time in Scotland.

In contrast, I’d been down with a bad case of the “mehs” while he’d been away. If you’ve seen the Pixar movie “Soul,” you might remember the scene where Joe takes the unborn soul 22 to the Hall of Everything in the hopes of finding her Spark. They try out a wide range of activities, but regardless of their difficulty or her proficiency, her response to all of them was “meh.”

Likewise, I couldn’t seem to get motivated about anything during that time, even activities that normally bring me a lot of joy.

The less motivation I had, the more I seemed to find myself doomscrolling on social media or mindlessly playing my favourite videogame. I was certainly consuming content and experiences, but they were all simulated ones that lacked soul-satisfying sustenance.

Instead of filling my well, it felt like I was polluting it and, by the time Stefan got back, I was looking and feeling pretty miserable.

The experiment

Stefan and I have discussed our phone habits before. Like most folks in our digital age, we recognize that we spend far too much time with our faces glued to our screens, but it’s been hard to break bad habits.

We decided as a starting point to exile our phones from the bedroom. No more puttering about or doomscrolling on our phones before we went to sleep. We’d plug in our phones to charge away from the bed and get ourselves an old-fashioned alarm clock to use instead of the one on the phone.

Simple… or so I thought.

The dreams

On the first night of having the phone away from my bed, I must have woken up three or four times. I’m usually a pretty solid sleeper, so I was surprised by how restless and unsettled I was.

Maybe it was just a fluke.

On the second night, I had full-on nightmares of trying to protect myself and the people I loved from invasive goo monsters. Again, I woke up multiple times, but this time I would slip back into the next chapter of this same bizarre horror story. In one memorable episode, my younger sister was a dancer-ninja-assassin training a group of foster kids to kill the goo things by flinging sewing needles at them.

It only got weirder from there.

On the third night, my nightmare was centred around trying to navigate my life and a confusing new city without my phone. I needed to cancel a dentist appointment… without my phone. I wanted to use Google Maps to get to another part of town… without my phone. I wanted to pay for something in a store… without my phone.

Ahh… could this be the source of my restless anxiety?

Keep in mind, I wasn’t actually trying to go cold turkey on phone use at all. Apart from trying to reduce my social media use a bit more, I was still carrying my phone with me everywhere I went, since I still needed it to track medications, buzz in deliveries to our apartment and similar mundane activities.

All I had done was committed to not having the phone next to me before going to bed… and my unconscious mind completely freaked out in response.

The addiction is real

Thankfully, the wild anxiety dreams have now subsided for the most part and I’m back to sleeping normally again with my phone charging on the dresser on the opposite side of the room.

I am, however, still quite disturbed by my body’s reaction to such a simple change. I knew I was on the phone more than I wanted to be, but I hadn’t suspected quite that level of screen addiction.

Ever since high school, some thirty-odd years ago, I have been a part of the online world. I went from connecting with folks through local online bulletin board systems (BBSs) to connecting with folks through social media from around the world.

For the first 15 years of my career, I built websites and communicated on behalf of organizations, large and small, through email marketing and social media. In my downtime, I’ve spent years and years playing World of Warcraft. I like playing through the stories within the fantasy world and my light interactions with guildmates.

The online world was my ecosystem and I didn’t see anything wrong with that.

But something has changed, particularly in the last few years. The online world feels more demanding and corruptive. Rather than feeding the soul with new connections and experiences, it feels increasingly like it’s chipping away pieces of it one attention-stealing moment at a time.

With this in mind, here are some of the other tactics that I’m using to better control how I experience the online world:

• Whatever it is, it can wait - FOMO (aka “fear of missing out”) has become an integral part of our culture. The fear is that if we aren’t regularly checking social media, we’re going to miss some vital information. As an entrepreneur, I have really struggled with this lately because not being on top of everything feels irresponsible in our current news climate. But, instead of impulsively checking social media in every other moment, I try to check it on my laptop the same way I might check my email. By engaging with it more deliberately, it feels less like a mindless leisure activity and more like work.

• Turn off all notifications - The makers of these apps know that they can use curiosity to suck you back in. Did someone comment on my post? Is there news in that group I like to follow? What am I missing out on? Again, none of these things are actually as urgent as the little red alert makes them out to be and, by hiding notifications, you can better decide when you want to engage with the online world and when you’d rather focus on the real one.

• A little friction can be a good thing - One of the most appealing things about the online world is how easy everything feels. Instead of wandering the aisles of a grocery store, you can simply type in what you’re looking for and be done with it. There can, however, be something magical about that sense of discovery that comes with interacting with the real world. For instance, this past weekend we wandered down to the Beltline to pick up a few items we missed from our online grocery order. Not only did we pick up some multi-colour carrots that we hadn’t planned on, but also ended up trying out a buffet-style hot pot place for the first time. It was a good reminder of the spontaneous bits of adventure that can happen when one allows tasks to be just a little less easy and efficient.

Final thoughts

I don’t think it’s realistic to believe that I’m ever going to be able to completely cut out phone use from my life. The online world is far too interwoven with our real one in our culture to completely escape it.

I can, however, be in choice about how I incorporate the phone and the online world into my life. I can make those interactions conscious decisions as opposed to unconscious impulses.

In this way, I am putting a filter between my internal creative well and the online sludge that threatens it. I’m still struggling with some feelings of “meh,” but at least I feel as if I’ve committed to the actions necessary to dig myself out of it.

Don’t forget that our next CreativiTEA workshop is coming up in a couple weeks!

Presence through Painting
Sunday, September 27th, from 1-3pm
Atelier Artista (4th floor)
cSPACE Marda Loop
1721 29 Avenue SW, Calgary

Tickets are $30 and include all art supplies, tea and delicious goodies.

Get Workshop Tickets

After a busy summer of seeing friends and exercising our own creative practices, we are ready to launch a whole new slate of CreativiTEA for Grown-Ups workshops. One bit of feedback we heard during the spring workshops is that participants were interested in learning what workshops would be coming up, so here are the next four workshops that we have planned for the remainder of 2026.

Presence Through Painting

Sunday, September 27th at 1pm - 3pm

Our always-popular acrylic painting workshop returns! If you missed this one back in February, come learn how the act of painting can calm the mind and bring one into the present moment.

In this workshop, we'll be using acrylic paints, brushes, canvas card, graphite tracing paper, suggested designs and pens.

Tickets: $30

Get Workshop Tickets

Inner and Outer Masks

Sunday, October 18th @ 1pm - 3pm

Whether we know it or not, we all wear masks. There are aspects of ourselves that we want the world to see, and there are aspects that we want to keep to ourselves. Using masks and collage materials, we will explore our inner and outer expressions.

In this workshop, we’ll be using white paper masks, Modge Podge, scissors and collage materials like fabric, tissue paper and magazines.

Tickets: $30

Get Workshop Tickets

Backwards, Forwards

Sunday, November 15th @ 1pm - 3pm

Do you have a goal that you are looking to achieve, but feel stuck on how to get there? Often, it can feel like you’re running in circles inside your own head if it seems like there’s only one path forward.

Based on the work of Angus Fletcher in his book “Primal Intelligence,” we will be using art-making to explore the real motivations behind the goal and how there might be multiple pathways to achieving it.

In this workshop, we will be using markers, pencil crayons and/or crayons on paper.

Tickets: $25

Get Workshop Tickets

Gratitude Time Capsules

Sunday, December 13th @ 1pm - 3pm

Create a new holiday tradition by turning a mason jar into a time capsule of gratitude, goals, challenges and triumphs that can be used for many years to come.

In this workshop, we will be using small mason jars, Modge Podge, scissors, paper and tissue paper.

Tickets: $30

Get Workshop Tickets

Can’t decide?

For the first time, we’re offering a discounted four-workshop pass for $100. The workshop pass can be purchased under any of the above workshops.

A venue that’s certain to get your creativity flowing

We are excited to be once again hosted by Atelier Artista on the 4th floor of the community arts hub, cSPACE Marda Loop (1721 29 Ave SW, Calgary).

Atelier Artista is a skills-based fine art school and studio space that’s focused on fostering appreciation and understanding of well-crafted, beautiful representational artworks through the development of the technical skills necessary to create them. They offer a wide variety of courses in drawing and painting techniques.

And did we mention the desserts?

At every CreativiTEA workshop, our baker Liza outdoes herself in artistry and taste. Thus far, we’ve had brownies, lemon squares, Nanaimo bars and a selection of frosted mini-cupcakes.

If you’re at all hesitant about exercising your creativity—not that you should because there’s no previous experience required for any of our workshops—just remember there will be all kinds of sweet, sweet incentives right at your fingertips.

(Tea and goodies are always included in the ticket price.)

That’s everything CreativiTEA-related that I can think of for now!

If you want to make sure you stay on top of new workshops as they drop—we have a total of 10 workshops planned between September and June of next year—be sure that you’re following CreativiTEA for Grown-Ups on Eventbrite.

But what happens when events unexpectedly attach themselves to the work?

“Rising Together” is a painting I began working on in late 2023 for my solo exhibition on love and disability. From the start, I always knew that it was going to be the painting that encapsulated the exhibit, so I gave myself lots of time and space to chip away at it.

On March 12, 2024, I posted this photo to Instagram as I worked on the painting with the caption: “Sometimes I feel the need to remind myself that this is my job now. 🥰”

I was in my studio. I was working on a beautiful painting for my exhibit. I vividly remember feeling that all was right with the universe, which is why I took the photo to commemorate the moment.

Ten days later, I would be admitted to the hospital with a broken left thigh bone, and my whole world felt like it had been turned upside down.

New threads of meaning

“Rising Together” was always intended to be a meaningful painting. Our wedding photographer perfectly captured a beautiful romantic memory, but also the unusual reality of being an interabled couple.

Circumstances, however, added unintended, painful layers to the painting’s meaning.

As I pressed onwards from my hospital bed, the painting was still the emotional and conceptual tentpole of the exhibit, but I spent a lot of time concealing its rougher, unfinished edges in my promotional materials. The August 2024 exhibit would ultimately include 11 mockups and unfinished paintings alongside the 33 finished pieces, but I still wanted the marketing to have a polished first impression.

The exhibit was a resounding success, but I still considered it a compromised version of my original vision.

Through the long months of my hospital stay and gruelling rehab, I promised myself that someday I would finish all the paintings and stage the exhibit as originally intended.

Of course, when I did finally get out of the hospital in January 2025, my focus was on clawing my way back to my previous level of functionality—or at least as close an approximation to it as I possibly could.

More time passed, and the finished and unfinished works from the exhibit remained packed in boxes at the studio.

Untangling for Tangled

When I was invited to be part of a group exhibition at Tangled Art + Disability in Toronto, I thought it would be just the push I needed to start working on those unfinished paintings from the exhibit again.

So, this past March, I committed “Rising Together” as one of the three paintings I would be sending for the September exhibit. I suspected that there would be resistance, but I figured I would have plenty of time to finish the painting.

I tried to break the process down into the smallest, most manageable steps possible:

• Go through the exhibit boxes at the studio to find the painting

• Bring the painting home and place it somewhere where I can see it

It was around this point that my desire to take slow, careful steps towards my goal turned into an elaborate dance of avoidance and procrastination.

• I should find those missing paints and brushes that are buried somewhere in the studio.

• I should finish the Lucy paint-by-number first, since the company did ask me before my agreement with Tangled.

• I should start a new tiny painting as a warm-up and practice with my stay wet palette.

Realizing my excuses were getting increasingly ridiculous, and that I needed to send out “Rising Together” with the other paintings in less than a month, I finally buckled down this past long weekend.

I needed to start, but when I finally did, it was a painting session unlike any I’ve ever had before.

It began with tension as I laid out my materials. The tension grew as I chose an area to work on—one of those very obvious unfinished areas that I had cropped out in my promo materials at the hospital.

By the time I put brush to canvas, I was on the verge of tears, but I pushed forward. I began muttering to myself, “I don’t need to finish it. I just need to change it,” to remind myself that I didn’t need to finish it in this single session; I only needed to make progress.

When Stefan got back from walking the dog, I was a wreck. The dam burst, and I sobbed in his arms for a time.

Grief. Waves and waves of grief flowed over me.

I had told myself in the hospital that someday I would stage the exhibit with its original vision as I had intended. I realized, however, that I would never be able to turn back the clock in that way.

It had been over two years since I last worked on “Rising Together,” and I couldn’t remember what I had originally intended. More than that, I’d had experiences as an artist and a human that had changed how I painted. I’d done a half dozen different paint-by-numbers from my hospital bed. I’d learned to paint with oils and illustrated an entire children’s picture book using digital painting.

I was grieving the “innocent” person I was before my time in hospital.

I was grieving the “untainted” exhibit that hadn’t been shown before it was truly ready.

I was grieving the path I would never be able to take.

Healing one brushstroke at a time

As I continued to work on the painting, my roiling emotions gradually began to subside.

I recall the tension noticeably easing when I decided to paint tread on the wheelchair’s tire. I had a vague recollection of discussing the tire with my painting mentor during class when I first started the painting. Knowing him, he would have been firmly in the “less is more” camp and, knowing my love of detail, I would have been arguing for “more is more.”

I couldn’t remember how the discussion had been resolved, so I painted the suggestion of tread into the tire anyway.

My instinct that I needed to change the painting had been right, though. The closer I brought the painting to finished in the here and now, the less important the pre-hospital, hypothetical painting became.

I also decided not to linger with it any longer than necessary. I didn’t need to be perfect; it only needed to be finished.

Plus, I had really not anticipated the emotional blowback, and that seemed a good enough reason to leave well enough alone once I got to the point of diminishing returns.

Final Thoughts

I have wrestled with grief around a path not taken before. It was back in 2004 when I was hit by a car at a crosswalk. That recovery had been comparatively easy with a cracked hip and a month and a half in bed.

Still, for years and years, I believed that accident had cost me the dream of working professionally as an animator.

What eventually helped me past that was realizing everything that I had gained.

• If I hadn’t gotten hit by the car, I would have never had the settlement that became the down payment for my first condo.

• If I didn’t own my condo, I wouldn’t have been able to adopt a dog—Lola.

• If I had become an animator, I would have been hustling from contract to contract and never had the kind of steady salaried jobs in tech that I did.

• If I hadn’t had the steady salaried jobs, I wouldn’t have had time to think about finding a partner. I would never have met my husband.

I don’t know if enough years have passed for me to do a similar thought experiment with my hospital stay, but I do not doubt that eventually I will be able to connect similar dots to all the things that matter to me most.

When that happens, I’m sure new layers of meaning will get added to “Rising Together”.

Athena is an artist, writer and creativity coach who believes that anyone can benefit from a healthy creative practice.

I’m old enough to remember when you had to load a roll of 35mm film into a camera that wasn’t part of your phone. It always seemed like such a disaster when you realized after getting the photos back from the developer that you’d wasted one of those precious 36 images because you snapped a photo with the lens cap on or had included the tip of your finger in an otherwise perfect photo.

So what are we doing with this ability to snap a near-limitless number of photos?

In our household, it’s often photos of us when we’re eating out, pictures of cute coffee art, Lucy sleeping in incredibly awkward positions and those “we were there” type photos that get taken on vacation.

Even in an age of abundant snapshots, we tend to take photos of times that we want to remember and revisit.

In contrast, I’ve noticed that I’ll avoid the photos on my phone from my extended stay in the hospital. These were important to me at the time as a way of sharing with folks what I was going through, but I find that looking at them now pricks my sense of unease.

It’s not that I’m trying to block out those memories. Some of those memories were genuinely very happy ones. It’s more that I recognize the importance of not swimming in that type of memory if it doesn’t feel good to me.

Making art from photos and memories

Many of my paintings begin as snapshots taken on my phone of everyday moments.

I had initially assumed that I was choosing particular moments to paint based solely on the aesthetics of the image—for instance, the vibrant colours of a sunset or the play of light and shadow on a set of espresso cups.

What I realized recently is that, because my paintings typically take two or three weeks to complete, I’m choosing photos of memories based on how the memory in that photo makes me feel. I know that through the course of working on that painting, I am going to be immersed in that memory and that feeling for hours and hours.

A memory of calm.

A memory of awe.

A memory of joy.

These are the kind of photos that I am most likely to paint because those are the kind of emotions I want to feel while working on the painting.

I do understand the desire of some creatives to express their pain or trauma through their work, either to process the thornier parts of their history or share that part of their story with others.

It may feel creatively necessary, but I would also add a caution to remember exactly what it is that you are swimming in. Immersing yourself in a memory, particularly an intense one that has a great deal of emotion attached to it, can bring up those same emotions while you’re expressing that moment creatively.

The act may feel therapeutic, or it might feel damaging—particularly if you are choosing to revisit an old wound over and over again.

I believe the most important piece is to be in choice.

If you notice that the subject matter of your creativity is bringing you down, perhaps try switching it up for a bit as a palette cleanser. (No pun intended.)

• Dig through your playlist and find a song that makes you want to sing and dance along, then throw your whole body into singing and dancing along.

• Create a painting about a time when you felt completely at peace as you drifted in a kayak on a sunlit lake.

• Make a nostalgic collage using wrappers from all your favourite candies from childhood.

What memories will you choose to immerse yourself in today?

Athena is an artist, writer and creativity coach who believes that anyone can benefit from a healthy creative practice.

I recently sent my debut fantasy novel off to an editor, and it got me thinking about getting feedback on our creative works. I know for many folks that fear of feedback is something that can hamper their artistic practice. A part of them wants to improve, but they are afraid of how they might…

Read more

As I write this, it’s raining heavily in Calgary, and the city is on edge.

Ever since the massive 2013 flood, whenever the mountain snow starts to melt, and seasonal rain causes the rivers to rise, the city’s anxiety rises with it.

It’s understandable. The 2013 event—the biggest flood the city had exper…

Read more

I am taking a winding staircase down deeper and deeper…

I am being rocked gently as I float along a stream…

I am allowing my body to be suffused with a warm healing light…

Each morning, Stefan’s voice is my tether as we engage in our new daily practice of trance work. We’ve been doing this every day for a few weeks now and have fallen into a rhythm that fe…

Read more

“Settle in and settle down.”

Stefan and I recently started doing some trance meditation work right after breakfast each morning. He’ll ask me what I want to work on and then sculpt a trance around that theme.

I’m finding now that that opening phrase alone — “settle in and settle down” — is enough to slow down my breath and start me slipping into the tranc…

Read more

A woman holds up her sheet of paper and chuckles nervously, “Sorry, I can’t draw.” The other folks around the meeting table grin and chuckle as well in a camaraderie fashion.

My inner creativity coach winces.

I’m participating in one of those icebreaker activities at a work function. The activity involves some drawing of abstract concepts, and I’m noting that virtually every person around the table begins the sharing of their work with some variation of “I can’t draw.”

No one is being cruel or mocking their drawing efforts, either. It’s more like these people want you to understand that they know they can’t draw, so we, the audience, aren’t judging them for it.

But think about that for a moment…

• Have you ever joined in with singing “Happy Birthday” to a friend and felt the need to declare to everyone around you that you aren’t a good singer?

• Have you ever cooked for friends and family and, before setting the meal down, warned folks that you aren’t a good cook?

• Have you ever gone out clubbing and announced to every person who wanted to dance with you that you’re a terrible dancer?

Perhaps you are, in fact, that self deprecating. I’m betting, however, that you didn’t feel the same compulsion because we understand that those who casually sing, cook, or dance aren’t likely to be as skilled as a seasoned professional.

So, why is it we fear judgment about our art-making abilities? I believe it’s because so many adults are nursing art scars.

What is an art scar?

I first encountered the concept of an art scar in Julia Cameron’s book, “The Artist's Way.” She describes them as artistic scar tissue that is the result of leftover emotional damage that has been caused by creative criticism, rejection, loss and/or shame.

From what I’ve seen in my work as a creativity coach, there is often a transition point in our childhood between when our art-making efforts are encouraged or, at the very least, allowed to flourish unimpeded and when those efforts start to be scrutinized more seriously.

• A parent goes from putting every piece of artwork on the fridge to urging the child to stop wasting their time drawing and work on their academic homework

• A teacher goes from giving her students free rein over their artwork to grading their artwork in accordance with the “right way” to do the exercise

• A child goes from happily sharing their artwork with friends to being afraid of what those same friends will say if the lion they’ve drawn doesn’t look sufficiently like a lion

With persistence and emotional weight behind them, all of these could lead to lingering art scars in adults. I believe they are why so many adults default to statements like “I can’t draw” or “I’m not creative” when faced with any kind of art-making activity.

Sadly, art scars like these also prevent people from experiencing the enjoyment and benefits that can be derived from even a casual artistic practice.

The path to healing art scars

When we began crafting the CreativiTEA for Grown-ups workshops, I knew that the biggest obstacle we would have would be these lingering art scars. It felt important to address our participants’ unspoken fears head-on to ensure that folks would feel like they were making art in a safe environment.

If you look at the slide above, you may recognize that these ground rules are, in essence, deliberately designed to reproduce the kind of art-making environment that we allow for children, but not for adults.

• Kids create art for the sake of creating art. They are all about the process.

• Kids aren’t obsessed with creating realism in their art. Cats, dogs, houses, people… so long as they know what they intended to draw, and that’s all that matters.

• Kids are more than happy to be supportive and encouraging of the art-making of their peers—at least until they start absorbing lessons from the adults around them about what constitutes “good art” and “bad art.”

So, the next time you find yourself criticizing your own art-making efforts, take a moment to ask yourself why. Where is that criticism coming from? What purpose does it serve?

Are you saying “I can’t draw” because you’re unconsciously afraid that if you don’t, then someone else will?

Our next workshop is this coming Sunday

There are still a few tickets left for our upcoming workshop exploring the Inner Critic and the Wild Child. The workshop will be happening this Sunday, April 12th, from 1-3pm at Atelier Artista on the 4th floor of cSPACE Marda Loop.

Tickets are only $25 and include all art supplies, tea and delicious desserts.

Hope to see you there!

Get Your Tickets

Athena Cooper splits her time between being a fine art painter, writer and a creativity coach with Tilted Windmills.

I have probably done at least a dozen different paint-by-number kits over the past five years, and they’ve ranged from high quality to so poor as to be unfinishable.

I hadn’t encountered Davincified before, so I took a quick look over at their website, which had a very wide range of kits. Many fell …

Read more

Late last year, I began working on the fantasy novel project that I hadn’t touched in a good decade or so. Stefan and I began by simply reading it together before bed, and I was surprised to find myself falling back into the story with greater ease than I expected.

After we completed reading aloud the 200 pages or so that I had already written, I told hi…

Read more

Here’s an article from the archives where I discuss why adults often struggle with giving themselves permission to play with…

Read more

So, the upcoming CreativiTEA painting workshop… there’s paint, and there are beverages… It’s just like a Paint and Sip, right?

Not exactly.

As someone with over 20 years of painting experience, I’ve done a fair few painting workshops over the years. I’ve done classes to learn new media like watercolour and oil painting. I’ve done classes to learn techniq…

Read more

Lin-Manuel Miranda is best known as the creator and star of the Broadway smash musical Hamilton, but his list of credits and awards is as jaw-dropping as his numerous songs. In addition to Hamilton, he wrote and starred in another multi-award-winning musical, In the Heights, as well as writing songs for Disney’s Moana and Encanto. He’s the recipient of …

Read more

I…

Read more

Many folks might be surprised to learn that I’ve suffered significant creative blocks several times in my life.

And when I say blocks, I mean deeply creatively blocked, where even contemplating creating anything caused a downward spiral of self-judgment and anxiety. During those years, my creative drive was like an old-timey engine that spluttered and co…

Read more

Oof… It's been quite the year, so it's understandable if you’re feeling pretty burned out at this point.

But what does it mean to feel “burned out”?

While there are many definitions of the phrase, ranging from psychological to occupational, I think the simplest is physical and mental exhaustion stemming from having too much on your plate. As the year win…

Read more

What is a CreativiTEA?

CreativiTEA is an in-person workshop series for grown-ups that combines fun, insightful art-m…

Read more