"You Can Have A Life You Love Wholeheartedly - Body And Soul."

Flow and the Magic of Making Art

Six Prime Principles Benefit You

• Flow feels good. It feels like a state of grace because it is.
• When you make art, you can feel flow.
• HERE'S THE SECRET - Your Art does NOT have to be good. You don't have to like the final product. Your father doesn't have to like the final product. For the process of making art moves you into flow.
• I'll say it again - You don't have to have ART skills to make art that brings you into flow. You just have to know how to use art to achieve flow.
• This hands-on interactive workshop will show you how to use art so that you can step into flow anywhere, anytime you choose and experience pleasure, joy, and grace.

What Is Flow?

In flow, you feel fully immersed in what you're doing, all self-consciousness disappears, you feel energized and focused, and you experience success, enjoyment, and pleasure in the activity. Time disappears and you live fully in the present moment. It feels like a state of grace. You've experienced flow countless times, but you may not have noticed it or appreciated it because it arises naturally in humans.

It is possible that you may not have enjoyed flow for quite some time. The experience of stress is the opposite of flow and blocks the gates to Paradise.

Again, when you live in flow, you live in the moment. You live in Presence. I want you to live in flow. I want you to live in Presence. Presence is the Kingdom of Heaven, Paradise, and Buddha Mind.

Three Stories

ONE:

The CEO of Hallmark Cards used to speak to school classes. And as a practice when he addressed the classes, he would ask, "How many of you are artists."

When addressing the first graders, every hand shot up with wiggling bodies and big smiles.

When addressing the sixth graders, no one raised a hand. They looked around furtively to see who would be stupid or daring enough to raise their hand.

TWO:

My father was an art museum director. He was known for having one of the best 'eyes' in the field. That means, he could pick a gem out of a pile of junk and he collected only the best for himself and for the museum. Dad acquired 90% of the collection at the Toledo Museum of Art. And the museum is one of the most highly regarded museums in the world. Surprising, I know, but true. (www.ToledoMuseum.org).

I was surrounded by great art at home and the museum was a second home for me. I knew great art. And my stuff wasn't great.

Making art was a challenge for me. It took me years to finally get to the point of not judging my work and comparing it to master pieces. My yardstick became something else.

I asked - Do I like it? That's all. Do I like it?

We have framed art in our home that I created that I would have thrown away because I didn't like it. I eventually learned to ask Suzanne if she liked it before I tossed it or turned it over to paint on the other side.

When I went back to Toledo for my mother's memorial service, I arrived early so I could spend some time in the parks and enjoy the landscape of the region. (As my parents had moved to California, I hadn't been back to my hometown in 14 years.)

I spent time in the woods and meadows that my mother had introduced me to and that had become such a fundamental joy in my life - a place for flow for me.

I found an archetypal soybean field and stood by the road and painted it. I completed the painting with my limited travel pallet at the kitchen table and by the day of the service all that love and grief found a place in the painting. Flow heals grief by the way.

So, why tell you the story?

Here's why. Two things.

One, Dad liked the painting. He genuinely liked it. It had captured the landscape of Ohio that he loved and the season of fall, the season he enjoyed the most in Ohio.

This was the first acknowledgement and approval for my art that I had ever received from him and it came at a good time. I was 50 years old.

Two, painting kept me in flow for hours. It kept me in the present. It allowed me to hold all the losses more easily and to be present for others, including my father.

THREE

When I paint with watercolors, I mean just the process of the wet brush moving along the slightly rough paper, laying down beautiful color, sometimes intense, sometimes sublimely subtle, time stops and I'm in flow. Flow is another name for heavenly joy.

For artists, art is not about the finished product. It's about the sometime ecstatic joy of making of the art. It's a process that transports the maker into a state of flow, a state of timeless, pleasure.

Recently, I finished a painting I had been working on for weeks. I was stuck by not knowing the exact color of my cloud-filled sky that felt best.

Finally, while talking with a friend, it came to me - Celadon, the sublime color of fine jade. I finished the painting, in flow, and happy. Alas, the final product wasn't a keeper. After asking Suzanne for a confirmation on this, I cut it into quarters and started painting on the other side of the paper.

Do you see - process not product? Or, perhaps, you could look at it as a different kind of product. The product is flow - hours of pleasure enjoying the present moment, hours spent in Presence.

Who Will Benefit From The Class?

• This class will help anyone who wants more flow in their life.
• It will bring artphobes and people who don't believe they're artists closer to their innate artist within who's waiting to express.
• It will be useful for the already highly skilled artist as it will clear some debris out of your way and help you to master the negative critic inside and outside.

What You'll Do In The Class

You will make some art in an enjoyable, safe, and easy way. I promise.

You will learn to silence the critic.

You will learn how to be present anytime, anywhere.

You will know how to step into flow and thereby be in a state of grace.

The Class Details

A one-day class at my home in Seattle, Saturday, January 17th 2009. I am limiting the class to six. It will be $97.

It will start at 9:00 and have a bit of an open-ended closing time. Because this is a class in flow and flow lives "off the clock" we may extend elements or shorten them. I expect to end by 4:00, maybe earlier, but certainly not much later.

To Join me call 206.328.2073. You can mail me a check, but call, too, to hold your place.

William Wittmann
4227 E Madison, 2-C
Seattle, WA 98112

Or register on-line with a credit card or PayPal at HERE

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