Bloom True Online Course Gallery, Part Two

"I sell most of my paintings, but I think this one I will keep. It is very special for me." Conni Altmann Sharing some more of the lovely paintings and testimonials that have come out of the Bloom True E-Course. Next class starts June 11! I "Bloom True is an incredible journey of painting through…

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Bloom True Online Course Gallery, Part Three

Continuing to share some of the work produced in my first Bloom True online course.  The next course starts in just eight days, and there is still time to join! "Learning Flora's intuitive painting process has been quite profound. It re-connected me to the most important part of my being-my passionate, creative heart. Incredible!" -Loren…

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Bloom True Online Course Gallery, Part One

"I loved learning all the layering/mark making techniques… I think I am most proud of this painting as I really took my time with it and tried to listen to it unfold." Nathalie Vachon As promised, here is the first glimpse of some paintings that emerged from my first ever Bloom True online course.  I…

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Bloom True Online Course Gallery, Part Four

Another batch of paintings and testimonials from my online course. Next course starts on June 11th! "Learned a lot about play,play, play..and let go! That is the right path I would take. My paintings came to the surface float without any effort. Thanks!" Yvon van Bergen -Yvon van Bergen   "I work in collage and…

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Bloom True Moves!

The amazing Miss Robyn Kautz It is with great pleasure that I am finally able to share with you a very special project I have been dreaming into creation for months— Bloom True Moves!  I am thrilled to join forces with two of my favorite movers who also happen to be two of the most…

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Bloom True Giveaway Winners Announced!

It’s time to celebrate!!

Whohoo! I’m super excited to announce the winners for the Bloom True E-Course Giveaway, but first let me just say WOW…wow wow wow.

We had over 430 incredible nominations for ten tiny gifted spots, and the nominations were all so heartfelt, so sincere, soooo hard to choose! (need a little pick me up?…read these stories.).

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Bloom True Giveaway Time!

Hi friends. It’s GIVEAWAY time around here, and I want to make sure you are all in the know! We are excited to be giving away TEN FREE PLACES for the upcoming Bloom True E-Course beginning on May 12th, but here’s the deal…we want you to nominate someone else to win the prize! Why? …

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Bloom True Boot Camp: Final Prompts + E-Course Winners!

Welcome to our final two days of Bloom True Boot Camp…woohoo, YAY, we did it!

I want to thank you so much for joining me on this month-long creative journey. What started out as tiny flash of inspiration during a swim in a lake turned into such a beautiful and inspiring creative global adventure.

Your posts, pictures and reflections have brought me so much joy and reminded me (once again) how powerful it is to join together with like-hearted people dedicated to their creative paths and waking spirits. {{THANK YOU}}.

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ADDING POP TO YOUR PAINTINGS!

Ever wonder how to get more dynamic POP in your paintings?

Well, you’re in luck!

In this month’s Studio Diary, I get all kinds of geeky over the many ways dynamic contrast can breathe life into a painting.

For example, playing with dynamic color, value, mark, texture, size, shape, mood, speed, materials, and scale (whew!) can all add a potent visual spark to make your paintings SING.

This month’s Diary is packed with fresh creative exercises, painting videos, an awesome interview with painter, Jeremy Szopinski, ideas for exploring contrast in everyday life, and so much more.

With an abundance of creative exercises, I’m happy to pass along one of the full-length videos for you to enjoy right now. This exercise offers some super easy and fun ways to explore Color Contrast.

I hope you enjoy it!

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A YEAR OF CREATIVE GIFTS!

I cherish the days at the end of each year to reflect on all that’s transpired over the past twelve months and to consciously plant new intentions for the coming year. To honor this past year, I’m happy to share a few of my favorite creative tidbits, videos, interviews and downloadable PDFs from 2017.

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A Give Away to Life Book 2014!

Hi everybody. Have you heard about Life Book yet? It’s a really lovely year-long mixed media online art class put together by Tamara LaPorte. I had the pleasure of meeting Tamara last year in the UK and she is super fun and dedicated to spreading the joy of creativity far and wide. Life book offers creative insights through video lessons, prompts, images and writing by 22 amazing teachers throughout the year. What a great way to learn some new approaches and techniques!

Life Book 2014 registration opens next Monday. Join us for the adventure?

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A Beautiful Glimpse Inside a Colorful Workshop

About a month ago, I had the pleasure of returning to the lovely Teahouse Studio in Berkeley, CA, to teach two Bloom True workshops over the course of two weekends.  During the second weekend, my sweet and talented friend, Zipporah Lomax (yes, that's really her name…she goes by Zippy, even cuter) asked if she could…

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30-Day Blog Love Affair::Day #2!

Well hello there and welcome to Day #2 of the Blog Love Affair!! Whahoooo! First of all THANK YOU for all the sweet comments yesterday. I didn’t even consider the ripple effect this little love affair might inspire, but I am so stoked to hear that some of you might join me in re-igniting your blogging relationships.

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30-Day Blog Love Affair:: Day 19!

Hi ya’ll. I thought I would allow myself to do a little *shining* today and share with you my feature in the most recent Where Women Create Magazine. To say I feel honored to be included in this publication would be a serious understatement. A more accurate description of my feelings would be something…

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30-Day Blog Love Affair:: Day 15!

I spent a decent amount of time this morning thinking about happiness, contentment and connection. I was pondering how to cultivate them, how to recognize them and how to maintain them. And, then I heard the news. Another bombing and this time at a freaking MARATHON, a place where people come together to express their…

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30-Day Blog Love Affair:: Day #9!

I woke up yesterday to a text message from one of my oldest and dearest friends who lives in Boston. It read, “Can I come visit you…like tomorrow?” I would be lying if I said this was totally out of the blue, as we’ve been hoping to make this visit happen for awhile now, but WOW, it was suddenly happening…like tomorrow, which is now…like today. Of course my answer was a resounding, “YES!” and in about three hours, I’ll be on my way to the airport to pick Tara up.

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30-Day Blog Love Affair:: Day #5

Oh my. This has been a seriously exciting day. Two pretty major things happened today, both in the category of “dreams coming true” kinda stuff. Interestingly, I’ve been feeling this low grade stress (beneath all the happiness, that is) regarding how to share all this goodness without sounding “braggy” or “too happy.” Blah. blah. blah. …

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30-Day Blog Love Affair:: Day #4

Today’s post will be short and sweet—just a little peak into the current state of affairs in my studio. There’s a lot going on in here! I’m experiencing one of those rare and precious periods of time when my inspiration is flowing effortlessly and everything that is emerging on my canvas feels new and exciting.

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30-Day Blog Love Affair:: Day #29!

Yowza, Day #29, ey? I have to admit that all day I’ve been a little stressed about what I would write today. The “second to last day” of this month-long experiement seems like some kind of big deal that deserves some kind of amazingness. I even considered making a little video for you to really prove how brave I am (ha ha), but after investigating iMovie for about ten minutes, I gave up. My truth tonight is that I’m tired, my hair looks like shit, I’ve been on my computer waaaaay too long already today and I’m definitely not feeling very inspired or inspiring. Huh, I think my shoulders just dropped about two inches after I typed that. The honest truth will do that to you 🙂

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30-Day Blog Love Affair:: Day #28!

I realize this might verge on giving away the ending of a book, but I am going to risk it and share with you the list of “friendly reminders” I offer on the final day of my online course. I hope you find these reminders helpful, and if they leave you craving more elaboration, my next online course starts in one month. I would love for you to join me on the adventure!

I also want to share with you a few of my latest paintings in progress…

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30-Day Blog Love Affair:: Day #27!

For my entire adult life, I have lived communally (yep, like a true hippie) among diverse and wonderfully inspiring groups of creative folks. Over the past four years, I’ve lived with a mandolin player, a photographer/videgrapher, a raw pie maker, a bike shop owner, a massage therapist/gardener and a shaman-in-training. Our house is now famous for it’s house concerts, potlucks, art nights and backyard sauna parties. We have 15 bikes parked under our hand-built bike storage area right next to our front yard food garden. We don’t have chickens anymore, but all our neighbors do, so the air is still filled with the sound of clucking. Basically, we are our own little Portlandia episode around here everyday.

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30-Day Blog Love Affair:: Day #26!

It’s ‘Sweet Reminders Friday’ brought to you by two of my favorite wisdom keepers…

All the possibilities of your human destiny are asleep in your soul. You are here to realize and honor these possibilities. When love comes in to your life, unrecognized dimensions of your destiny awaken and blossom and grow. Possibility is the secret heart of time.— John O’Donohue from Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom

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30-Day Blog Love Affair:: Day #25!

We have an event here in Portland called the Last Thursday Art Walk. It started fourteen years ago as a sort of the rebel offspring of the First Thursday Art Walk held in the downtown galleries. It is truly a renegade DIY event in every aspect of the word—equal parts carnival, garage sale, art fair, burning man, protest, karaoke, dance party, art experiment, parade, ______.

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30-Day Blog Love Affair:: Day #24!

ou asked for crush details, so I’m going to be brave and spill the beans…at least a few beans for now.

If you have been following along in my world at all, you have probably noticed that I never, like ever, talk about my romantic life. In fact, up until this lil’ blog experiment, I’ve talked very little about my personal life off the canvas, AT ALL. There are a couple of reasons for this. One is that I have a story about keeping things private online which is really interesting because I’m really quite the open book in real life. The other reason is that I’m totally scared I might jinx a good thing.

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30-Day Blog Love Affair:: Day #23!

It’s crazy beautiful today in Portland and my spirits are flying high. I spent the day doing exactly what I love to do: painting and connecting with awesome people. My friend and peer, Rachael Rice (aka the Cosmic American) came over for a painting date. We rolled out a big drop cloth, flung open the studio door, cut up some potato stamps and went to town. Our conversations drifted between blogging, boys, current inspirations and our mutual love for fluorescent pink. Rachael is a new friend but hanging with her is always super effortless and inspiring—exactly what I’m welcoming into my life these days.

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30-Day Blog Love Affair:: Day #22!

Today is Day #22 which means I’ve now written 21 blog posts in a row. Wow. What an interesting journey of the soul this has been! I was telling a friend of mine a little bit about the process today and he mentioned that it is supposed to take 21 days to create a new habit. Aha! This totally resonated with me because I can honestly say I feel like writing this daily post has officially become a part of my everyday experience. It is no longer “something I think I should do.” Instead, it is “something I actually do”—everyday. In other words…

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30-Day Blog Love Affair:: Day #21!

After yesterday’s thoughts on how I find inspiration directly from the creative process and taking risks, I thought I would give a nod to some of my more obvious sources of inspiration today. Although I find plenty of inspiration from things like textiles, graffiti, shamanism, tribal patterns, personal transformation and music (hmm, that sounds like…

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30-Day Blog Love Affair:: Day #20!

There’s a question that seems to come up in every single interview I do. It’s the “Where do you find inspiration?” question. It’s easy to answer this question with the obvious: nature, color, form, movement, trips to the woods, looking at other people’s art, etc. But, when I really get to the heart of…

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30-Day Blog Love Affair:: Day #18!

Woah. This week has been so weird. Everyday has turned out to be so different than I expected. Another way to say that would be: I cannot seem to get anything done! All week, I have been battling my own procrastination monsters, along with what seems like a constant string of interruptions (some created by…

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30-Day Blog Love Affair:: Day #17!

Yesterday was my sister’s birthday and this is my Ode to her. Erin is three and a half years older than me and lives with her husband, Jeremy (he is an amazing painter…check him out!) in Minneapolis, MN. There are a few words that definitely come to mind when I think of my sis: smart,…

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