Seven Ways To Reconnect With Your Muse

Happy New Year Dear Friends!!!!!

I hope that your 2016 is off to a fantastic start!  I have some exciting new things planned for Dirty Footprints Studio this year — including weekly guest posts every Wednesday written by the amazing artists that are my Peer Mentors in this year’s session of IGNITE (which happened to sell out in December and starts on Monday!)

IGNITE Peer Mentors are women who successfully completed my IGNITE Online Intensive and are eager to deepen their own skills and intentions as heart guided artists by mentoring a new circle of women in IGNITE.  This is the first year that I am incorporating Peer Mentors into my program and I am absolutely thrilled to work side-by-side with such an inspiring bunch!  

So with great honor and joy, I introduce to you IGNITE Peer Mentor: Mixy Gregory who is kicking off our IGNITE Wednesday series with a fun little tip-sheet on how to reconnect with your muse!  

With Love, Connie 

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Seven Ways To Reconnect With Your Muse

1. Hone a practice you usually veer away from – do you avoid drawing in perspective? or faces and hands? Or exploring new media? Confront where you want to retreat! Challenge yourself to just try, dedicate five minutes a day for a week and see what difference it makes. 

2. Reconnect with the past. Not your past – the big universal past. Being in the woods, the desert, gazing out to sea or up into the sky. Spending time in nature is timeless. These are the views that haven’t changed since our ancestors walked these steps. Close the gap of centuries to feel the connection. 

3. Feed your mind with fresh imagery: look for the patterns and shapes in the everyday – in nature, in architecture, in the people around you. See the colour combinations, listen for rhythms and tunes. Explore your environment. Let your imagination run barefoot. 

4. Step away from the usual and explore someplace new: do you avoid lettering or sewing or getting paint on your hands? Are you always 2D or 3D? Working big or focusing on the miniature? If you don’t like it there then coming home will be so sweet. Or you might find you want to stay. 

5. Choose just one colour, or shape, one medium or one way of mark making. Or choose a word and explore all its meanings, its nuances and definitions. How does it sound and look and feel in different languages? Dig deep to explore. Explore for a page, a week, a project, a duration of your choosing – but just past the point you feel it’s exhausted. Then some more. Stretch yourself! 

6. Escape. Unplug & go analogue for a while! Switch off the media – put away the phone, leave the computer, the TV, even the music. Cut off the input and give your thoughts some space to swim, take time to listen to your senses. Delight in feeling your breath, follow its movement through you. Watch your thoughts as they pass by. 

7. Develop a regular practice, from art journaling to daily writing, a meditation or breath practice with affirmations. Make it a routine. Allow yourself the grace. Honour your muse. The outcome is only one of the benefits, as a regular practice offers up unexpected findings of self-discovery. 

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Today’s Guest Post was written by Mixy Gregory, Peer Mentor for IGNITE 2016.  Here is a little about Mixy…

Mixy resides in Amersham, Buckinghamshire, United Kingdom and can be found online HERE.

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