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Art lessons Austin TX

You know that place inside our psyche that is crawling with cobwebs, ghost of the past, hurdled with fear, guilt and shame…. seldom visited or mentioned unless it is to shut it up, hide it away, ignore it, push it down, repress it….or most destructively…we judge IT as scary, evil… bad and then we project it onto those innocent people around us as it is too painful for us to embrace. It is in dark contrast to who we think we are…. or the persona we work so hard to display to the world.


The dark is any part of our wholeness that we deny…. including our more affirmative attributes. Our brilliance. Our right to abundance and personal prosperity. Our own confidence, power and genius. We deny it within ourselves and then we judge, blame others for having it.

celebrate the dark.

I invite you to move beyond the duality of good and bad and embrace the fullness of our human experience. Did you know that is where all of your personal power lies hidden? Do you know that is where our untapped creative wells reside?


Do you? …do you realize what you are turning away from?

One of the most powerful and influential books was given to me by a mentor over 10 years ago was The Dark Side of the Light Chasers, by Debbie Ford. This book changed my life.


It invited me to look at all

the parts of myself that I was afraid of, the parts I was ashamed of that I didn’t want anyone to see. Can you imagine how much energy is required to keep this darkness away from the conscious mind? I learned that this was my shadow. I learned to find freedom in shining the light on, accepting and transforming… the DARK.


Carl Jung coined the term ‘shadow’ as those parts of our psyche which we repress or keep in the ‘dark’… the parts that our persona, our the identity that we desire to express to the world, doesn’t deem acceptable…that which we want to hide and keep unconscious. We all have a shadow and then of course, culturally we have a collective shadow. The microcosm in the macrocosm. Can you imagine how much energy is required to keep these fears away from the conscious mind?

So much of what we explore in the painting laboratory at the studio is those places in that we meet in our creative process that frighten us. Those dark places guide us to our sources of life force that live buried deep within.


And the cool thing about meeting those dark places creatively in the studio… it is just paint and it’s just paper. We can explore our fears, accept and transcend them as we unleash our creative power in a safe environment surrounded by a community of others willing to also take a guided, lighted walk into the dark.


So meet me in the Dark. I will see you there…and I will bring the lighted torch and walk with you in the darkness…and into the light.