Starting to paint or being on the artist's journey can be quite challenging. When I am creating a course, teaching a workshop or guiding a retreat I always try to keep the moments in mind when I started painting. Now a long time artist and art instructor, I can look back and see my beginner struggles from an outside perspective and understand better how I was thinking. The mistakes I made then I am forever grateful for, because it meant that I dared to try, which is one of the most important practices in art. 

 

  There were a few things that helped me to stay on this journey with the ups and downs that it entails and to keep me creating no matter what.

 

  Sometimes we focus just on the practice but we forget about the mindset. In my opinion the mindset is equally important as it’s helping us to stay focused and to deal with frustrations and failures in a positive way. I can say that through art I discovered and revealed a completely new side of mine. There were years of not knowing who I was as an artist but by continuously making art the artist in me slowly emerged like a butterfly coming out of its cocoon.

 

  I mistakenly thought in the beginning that I have to just use my right side of the brain, always paint intuitively and be in the flow continuously. After hitting a creative wall, though, I understood that this is not the way. There is a beautiful organic dance between both brain hemispheres that has to be allowed during the creative process. Being “in the flow” is an extensive subject but it is not always necessary in the creative process. Sometimes we need to think, evaluate, realize that we make progress and set boundaries and hence, use your left brain hemisphere. That means that intuition and goal orientation can and have to go hand in hand. 

 

  Through my courses you have access not just to the large variety of techniques I teach, but also to the way I think during the creative process and to my daily practices.