Awaken The Artist Within

Week of August 3, 2024

Jumpstart your creativity and break through creative barriers.

During this multi-day art immersion, you’ll explore a variety of mediums and techniques to find entry into creative expression.

Together we will play with color, line, proportion, texture, value, and contrast, while practicing time-honored ways into connection with energy sources that will empower your own personal voice.

Bold color block painting, torn paper collage, timed writing exercises, the Magic Dot, and other surprising methods will engage your curiosity and workaround your creativity “killers”: self-doubt and excessive self-judgment.

Whether you are a seasoned professional in the arts, or you’ve never picked up a paintbrush, these playful sessions will awaken your inner artist and help you to make peace with your inner critic.

For those who already have a creative practice, use this as a jumpstart of inspiration. If you’ve never found a way into the creative arts, but you’ve always wanted to try, this is a great place to start.

 

An award-winning painter and author, Erin Gafill has inspired people around the world with her inspirational art, heartfelt stories, and uniquely engaging teaching methods. Her work bridges art, craft, and community, weaving observation, intuition, and imagination into her painting, writing, teaching, and public speaking. A fifth-generation California artist, she was born in Big Sur, California in 1963, the daughter of a beatnik and a flower child. She is the great-great-granddaughter of Carmel’s first artist-in-residence. Growing up at her grandparents’ legendary restaurant, Nepenthe, a mecca for poets, bohemians and dreamers, she drew inspiration from its ever-changing cast of characters as well as the stunning and mystical beauty of the coast.

Erin is the founder of the nonprofit Big Sur Arts Initiative, and a founding member of the Monterey Bay Plein Air Painters Association (MBPAPA). In 2001 Erin was honored to serve as the first American Artist-in-Residence at the Hamada International Children’s Museum, Hamada, Japan.

In 2009, she and her husband Tom Birmingham were named Champions of the Arts by the Arts Council of Monterey County and were honored by the United States Congress for their service to the community through the arts.

Her exhibit Color Duets was the featured 2021 Spring/Summer show for the Monterey Museum of Art, Monterey, California, followed the next summer by a solo exhibit, California Atmosphere at the Morris Graves Museum of Art, Eureka, California. She is the author of a coffee-table art book, Color Duets, with Kaffe Fassett, and a memoir about life/work balance, Drinking from a Cold Spring, a Little Book of Hope. Both books are available at www.colorduets.com. eringafill.com