Healing My Education Wound

I was recently approached by Heather Dinn, a like-hearted Soul I met on Instagram, to be featured at the next New Moon… and here we are! I found myself freshly cracked open while answering Heather’s interview questions

and so I am sharing with you…

(I named this blog post as such because my answer on this topic comprises 80% of the content)

What kind of creator do you call yourself?

I’m a bit of an “aesthetic nomad”. I have made art for over 20 years and tend to cycle around from landscape/figurative art and abstraction, revisiting themes and motifs with added visual nuances collected from my previous journeying. I also cycle through media: oil paint, collage and mixed media with charcoal and shellac, fluid acrylics and alcohol ink with mixed media (also featuring my dear old friend, shellac. Shellac is an insect-secreted resin traditionally used for French polish finishes on furniture. I discovered it while I was at uni and have used it ever since. It’s alcohol base makes it work well with alcohol inks.

Are there any life experiences that are part of your story that you are working through or have worked through in order to choose being a creator that you’d like to share with my community?

Hating school. Suffering at school.

I never felt like I belonged at school.

I felt there was something oppressive and demanding about the curriculum requirements and by the time I finished high school I had given up on any notion that I was intelligent or had anything of value to bring to the world.

There were a few teachers who saw me and their words and energy will always be warming my heart. 

I was good at art (which wasn’t considered a point of academic excellence) and was accepted into Avondale University on NSW Central Coast, Australia. 

It was a relief to be concentrating on something I was already feeling connected to. The lecturers were golden-hearted dudes who were excellent in their craft. 

The academic confidence deficit from my schooling was problematic, though. I felt so completely anxious whenever I was required to do assessments or exams. I often completed artworks the night before they were due. 

I went to counsellors and therapists but nobody could see my education wound and I had no idea at the time that this loomed so large in my pain memory. I just thought there was something wrong with me. 

After finishing my Ba degree in Visual Art (I was set to graduate with a High Distinction for the quality of my art but failed to hand in a mini thesis and graduated with a regular Distinction instead!) I had no direction or confidence to really plan anything out for myself.

This breaks my heart to recall!

Us humans have infinite potential, but I was completely blind to my power and governed by fear.

I focused on my physical appearance, believing that it was the only valuable thing I really had. 

I sank into a deep pit of unemployment and addiction as a result of this aimlessness and it would be several dark years before I would realise that I did actually have something special to bring. 

My main art lecturer Andy Collis had been a great encouragement to me as an artist and as a person. He proposed that I return to college and assist him in his painting labs. I was very good at observational painting, so I would work my way around helping students troubleshoot and improve their still life artworks. I loved it. The students loved it, so they started paying me to continue and it wasn’t long before I was taking the class. 

Pretty soon I was observing that these students were suffering from the same lack of confidence I had experienced, impeding progress and keeping them small, robbing them of the rich experience of creativity. 

They hesitated, some had already excluded themselves from beneficial experiences in learning.. Many were too afraid to be whole-hearted and they did not understand that there was so much more for them! They struggled to trust me in coaxing them out of this fear. 

I began to scrutinise process and mindset with intent to smash through whatever-this-was, and so began an expansive study that would span a lifetime. My supervisor was so pleased with my teaching he let me have free reign and I was able to test mindset recalibration and right-brain-enriching processes in my classes. 

This was EVERYTHING. 

In my time out of the classroom I was consistently looking for clues and experiencing exciting revelations that I would share each week with the class. Truths that brought deep relevance and significance to all our activities. I heard the students saying that “if you’re late to class you’ll miss the meaning of life”!

I was fuelled with such joy in this function, and it came effortlessly as if I was made for it. Slowly but surely my confidence grew and I could feel deep healing taking place. 

The confidence deficit I traced back to primary school.

We had immense creative aptitude as small children. Where did we lose it? 

I realised, too, that the traditional curriculum and approach is great for left-brain development and function but dismissive of right-brain or whole-brain development and function. 

This is why I felt so excluded and inadequate! 

As I learned about left and right brain functions I could see very clearly that I was right-brain dominant and the activities and processes which motivated, energised and intrigued me where nowhere to be seen at school. 

It felt like the precious, compelling thing that made me ME was not required and what WAS required of me felt like something vital and sacred had been stripped, demoted and repurposed. 

Even the creative subjects are administered in a linear sequential format, I call it “left-brained hoop-jumping”… activity irrelevant to me and administered with such inefficiency that everything felt like a kind of drawn-out slavery. 

It was isolating, too, because everyone else seemed to be good at it and since I couldn’t “measure up” I had to at least do my best to project an appearance of adequacy. This was exhausting too. 

I needed subjective, expansive activities which could go in any direction I chose. Without this outlet it was very difficult to see my own value and power. 

Everything school imposed upon me felt like it was in direct competition with the essential part of me, instead of supporting it. 

The worst part: any time I had left over for art or music, my energy was already drained and my mindset was often stuck in the wrong mode to make the most of the little time I had. 

This all meant that I grew up resisting schedules and structure because my experience with it was suffocating instead of supportive. 

I don’t know for sure, but I have a hunch that if there were at least a few opportunities offered regularly that affirmed and nourished this right-brain action I would have maintained enough belief in myself to attempt the left-brain dominant curriculum without the fight/freeze/flight stuff taking over. 

Since I started speaking openly about my “education wound” I have discovered the widespread prevalence of this same wound. 

Many women contact me and say “this was me too, but I had no idea until you said the words. I always believed there was something wrong with me” and then they do my classes and start weeping because of the connection they are having with a deep, long-lost part of themselves, precious to their soul, innately linked to the right brain. 

How has this gone on so long unchecked?? 

Why is the curriculum devoid of the recognition or value of intuitive modes? 

Traditional curriculum was created to make useful and compliant workers, not visionaries. If you fidget and daydream you’ll be medicated so you better fit the mould. You’ll soon forget that your dreams are important or that you had any at all and you’ll stay in line. They don’t want dreamers or revolutionaries because such people will change the culture and set everyone free from the System that allows them to dominate. 

With this part - the intuitive mode - active we are working in our unique purpose we can finally see ourselves and each other.

Love takes hold and triumphs over competition. 

We need this right-brain connection to experience life in fullness, in authenticity and freedom of expression. To understand the beauty of who we are in the process of unfurling LIFE! 

Yes! We start to see ourselves again. 

To see and truly be seen, to know and truly be known. Isn’t this what life is really about?

Experiences which help to unearth and refine us!

So this is what I create - experiences which testify to the brilliance and efficiency of intuitive function, whether it’s just me with a canvas, or with a client in my coaching sessions, or in teaching an online class or in-person Masterclass… I believe the greater our creative confidence (built by meaningful experiences), the greater our experience of abundant life.

And what does this look like?

Our days and conversations and everything we do is charged with purpose, meaning and significance. We connect powerfully with each other and with our mother earth, practicing abundance and generosity and mindfulness instead of competing and rat-racing and compromising health for convenience. 

Imagine it!

Where do you get inspiration from for your creative process?

Oooohhh Everywhere.. there’s actually too much inspiration for only one body. The natural world has endless inspiration and I love to abstract it into an observed essence. In my abstractions I play with organic transient forms like water, cloud and smoke. I loooove the organic. I like to play with organic lines which mimic branches and roots, and incidental marks which have such an authentic sophistication to them. 

When I first looked at Google Earth I was in ecstatic raptures, even moved to tears by the beauty of aerial landscape. I render these “aerialscapes” usually with oils on canvas, in realistic and abstracted styles (depending on how I feel!). This is a theme I am due to revisit and now I have an enthusiastic friend with a drone to add to the mix! 

What do you learn through this process about yourself, life, etc?

I’m struggling to keep my answers succinct because what I learn is so utterly significant and enormous I’m actually writing a book about it all! 

I constantly see parallels between art process and life. Creativity is a wonderful teacher when we position ourselves to learn. 

Creativity teaches me to let go of what I expect or think I need in order to be receptive to a magic far greater than I could possibly conceive for myself. 

Creativity teaches me that what is required of me is surrender, not scheming or slavery.

Do you see your art as an expression of your voice or a particular story to the world? Or, what meaning does your art share/communicate with others?

Absolutely, and our voices we must clarify and resound. 

Because of the role that Creativity plays in my life I see my art as an expression of authenticity, freedom and the triumph of beauty. 

I’m often told by clients that my paintings both energise and soothe them at the same time. 

This is so intriguing to me, because that’s exactly how I feel when I’m painting them. 

I have come to understand that we imprint energy into our art as we create, making it a responsibility now to keep my energy and motives pure and loving and free as I paint. I often pray blessings over the artwork as I’m painting and sing in gratitude and this really helps to keep my energy pure. 

I believe artwork holds incredible vibrational power and is so much more than just a pretty picture on the wall to match the trending decor. It can be a powerful portal of joy, reassurance, enlightenment and vitality. 

What techniques do you use within your work?

It depends on the medium and style I’m engaged with, but currently I’m using acrylics, acrylic and alcohol washes and metallic alcohol ink on canvas for my large, graciously explosive or “whooshing”abstractions. I work with the canvas flat on the floor and manipulate fluid media and washes until it “looks right”. Once it’s dry I tweak the composition with more acrylics or oil paints and sometimes gold leaf. 

It honestly feels more like a collaboration with Creativity itself.. like I’m having an open-ended conversation with the surface and I don’t know what it will say back to me, but I know I’ll be able to intuit my next move spontaneously and it feels INCREDIBLE to work this way. 

What materials do you use? 

Canvas, water spray bottle, scrapey tools like a ruler or plastering tool, acrylic paint, acrylic ink, high flow acrylic, alcohol, metallic alcohol ink, and sometimes metallic leaf and iridescent medium. 

Is there any other information you’d like my community to learn/know about you, your creative process or your overall work?

My heart is set on enabling powerfully confident, non-competitive creative practice in anyone desiring it. I am hooked on seeing women come to life in their creativity through improving their experiences and hearing how the ensuing magic ripples out, improving all facets of their lives. 

Inspiring others is an absolute honour. 

I live to counteract the exclusivity and snobbery of the art world, demystifying process and making art accessible as a therapeutic, ongoing part of everyday life. 

I have online courses and an ongoing Membership class called “Art to Heal a Heart” which has over 50 classes aimed at increasing creative confidence and artistic skill through intuitive and observational process. Everything I learned in my 10 years teaching at uni and more! 

I offer 1-1 coaching and run local Masterclasses twice a year. 

I’m thrilled to connect and inspire and I look forward to hearing from anyone resonating with my story. 

You can connect with Heather, see the New Moon Feature and lots of other inspiring info over on her Instagram. Click here to pop over.

Thank you Heather Dinn for featuring me and cracking me open with your questions!