Tens of thousands of people from all over the world who have attended Painting From the Source retreats for the past 35 years continue to experience powerful heart openings, personal epiphanies, empowerment and healings of body, mind and spirit. But recently a new more compelling theme is emerging. Despair over environmental devastation has begun to enter our spontaneous unplanned paintings as well as nature spirits asking for our help.

Suzanne Lindgren summarizes in a review of the new Zine, “Guide to Fighting The Big Sad” by Adam Gnade, “[In this Zine]… there’s the subversive assumption that sadness, anger, and depression is a NATURAL response to our culture and the ways we’re expected to relate to and interact with it.”

 UNIQUE & ESSENTAIL CONTRIBUTION OF CREATIVE PASSAGE

Innumerable innovative open source technological, scientific, educational and social solutions have surfaced to meet the challenges of our times. But it will take a change of “heart” as well as “mind” for necessary transformation to occur. Creative expression offers the universal spark- the necessary ignited imagination for change of heart. Creative Passage is devoted to this essential missing piece; re-enchantment through it’s comprehensive mission for collaboration, methodical discovery and innovative applications of creative ritual experiences applied to social and environmental challenges. Our approach addresses the reparation of  our long and insidious split from Spirit and Nature ( and our true nature)  in contemporary civilizations by replenishing spiiritual reconnection through ritual , nature and authentic art participation.

“ Aviva Gold speaks of Art making as an activist ACT… placing the power in OUR HANDS. In our painting group we dare to show up and wrestle with our shadow giving it voice and body to tell its own story,   … we bring our pain home and in doing so we take a personal/collective step in reclaiming ‘ peace on earth’… By creating together we also draw forth the dynamic energy that is emerging from the archetypal zeitgeist of our time… and this is needed right now for the salvation of our planet.”– Kathleen Profit, Artist and Founder/Facilitator of Embodied Arts

AN UNCOMMON CAUSE ( which addresses the original “cause” of current disintergration.)

The reality of ecological devastation and suffering of people, even when not directly in our face, lies always on the edge of our psyche.  All else seems secondary while our air, water, food, night sky, silence and earth becomes polluted. Having diligence in recycling, using less carbon based energy, eating local organic food is not enough.  In answer to our culture’s current call for creative openings and heartfelt solutions, the Creative Passage provides a gateway for personal, community and planetary re-enchantment through art and ritual, which addresses and repairs our long ago split from nature and from our artist self.  Supporting the Creative Passage may be your path of “activist involvement” – a path, though less traveled, effectively penetrates the subterranean layers of inertia, fear and denial so prevelent in our time of overwhelming challenges.