As we draw close to the commencement of The Wonder of Watercolor (WOW!), which starts on Monday, March 20, I find myself intuitively connecting with some of my favorite things from when I was younger. Specifically, I've been listening to Tina Turner's album Private Dancer, as she was my first favorite singer and this album came out when I was 2 years old. My parents were amazing enough to take me to her live concert on her world tour in 1985, and the experience still lives viscerally in my body when I listen to the songs.
These early experiences of creative power and magic live like wonder within me. When I listen to these songs, I feel a part of me wake up. This place is deeply connected to my creative flow, to my sense of aliveness, to my experience of being present in the world. When I listen to the songs, or connect with a similar early memory, I am consciously bringing my body and awareness to the creative energy that feeds me.
I am interested in exploring this, because with WOW we will be getting curious about how to invite moments of wonder into our day to day. Wonder isn't something that can be forced or really planned; it arrives and arises within us as a response to something that awes us and fills us with aliveness. It's magical. It's part of being present in the moment. It's fun, it's playful. It's fresh, it's new, and yet it connects us with something so innate and so familiar within us.
Watercolor painting is a perfect medium to explore this journey with, as the water element combined with the pigment and our presence will invite play into our creation process. I will be sharing more musings on wonder as we draw closer to the initiation to this WOW journey - I hope you can join us!
((Bird photo is from a wondrous moment in my life when I sat on a rooftop in Agra, India, drinking chai after visiting the Taj Mahal in 2010. Witnessing a bird in flight is truly a wondrous experience!)).