Art as a spiritual practice

Nancy Azara is a sculptor who has been teaching for 35 years. She came of age during the feminist movement of the 1960s and began a lifelong spiritual practice that has influenced her art and led her to teach and perform psychic healing circles. My personal goals are very much in line with Nancy, who says she wants to goive people insight into their expression of a visual language and how that can be applied to your life as a catalyst for growth and change.

Nancy identifies seven gifts that come from working from your inner world that I absolutely adore.  They are:

• The courage to sit and wait.
• The curiosity to open closed doors and explore what is behind them.
• The ability to listen to yourself.
• An appreciation for the experience of all life.
• A respect for the power of your imagination.
• The compassion to try to embrace all things with unconditional acceptance.
• And an awe for the path of knowing.

Here is an example exercise of Nancy’s that I just love:

Surround yourself with your crayons and drawing pad and begin to draw with them. Be a child and play with the colours and shapes. Scribble on the paper, if you dare. Break your crayons in two if you like and remove the paper around them. Use these crayons on their side to make wide strokes across the pad or use only the points. Make many marks on the paper, varying the lengths and widths. Consider the whole paper. Don’t forget the edges and corners of the pad. Let the crayons go off the pad if you feel like it. Overlap your colours.

• Now draw your child.
• Draw the picture that she made for you.
• Draw her world as she has shown it to you and capture her message.