DARE TO BE WILD! / Issue #1
BECOMING YOUR INNER VISION ... SAYING YES!

Book Review

Making Art a Practice, 30 ways to paint a pipe (How to be the artist you are), Cat Bennett, 2013, Findhorn Press

Cat Bennett skillfully explains how making art a practice grows the creative spirit, provides a place to discover who we are as artists, helps us be ourselves, explores technique, ideas, helps us go where we want to go and helps us bring our art into the world.  She aptly calls art practice Creative Liberation Practice.

In the book she outlines the 5 components of art practice:

1.  Declaring the intention to do art practice and commit as an artist

2.  Exploring all manner of creativity to find what really speaks to the heart.

3.  Working with the mind to overcome negative thinking and reinforce discernment as a way of using the mind to help the creative process flourish.

"Our practice will teach us how to watch our thoughts, replace the negative with the positive, and also to realize that there is a higher self beyond our fleeting thoughts and feelings.  We'll learn how to reside more and more in our higher self as we make art.......And, we'll engage in positive creative Fe actions that will become our new reality so, in the future, we needn't struggle in quite the same way."

Picasso------"Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life."

4. Letting go of judgements, knowing there is no right or wrong, only what excites, inspires and motivates.

5. Connecting with the world through art. 

She answers the question what is art?  "Art is where our life experience meets our inner knowing." 

Cat sets out a strong argument for the necessity of doing art every day, creating a strong foundation and gives all kinds of practice ways to set up studio practice, some of them based on Yoga,  and to work everyday to explore, enhance, discover, bring courage and fearlessness to forge our own unique individual path of creative expression and bring it to the world.  This is a very good book for the beginner as well as the seasoned artist to remember and to deepen into the very heart of our creative souls.

Cat Bennett is an illustrator, author, teacher, and exhibiting artist, interested in making positive change in ourselves and in the world.  She also wrote The Confident Creative/Drawing to Free the Hand and the Mind. 

http://catbennett.net/