Sample Chapter Titles:

• you are lucky if you don't know how to paint!

• chaos, the soil of creation

• do I have talent?

• is it therapy?

• resistance

• the myth of inspiration

• you are not your painting

• feeling and painting

• to create is to be a little lost

• levels of completion

• the body knows

• creative destruction

• awaken your image maker

• art process as spiritual practice

"It is our hope that as the chapters unfold, you will discover a growing excitement about painting, an instinctual urge to play with color and form as you did when you were a child. Play is one of the most basic and primitive elements of the human psyche, and ultimately art is simply a deep and essential play. Tools for playing with brushes, paint, and paper are presented in a simplified and accessible way in the appendix at the end of the book.

Our experience, after working with many different types of people, is that a hidden wave of passion lies just below the surface of most people's lives, a passion yearning to be liberated from the paralyzing myths of talent, skill, inspiration, accomplishment, success and failure, and just plain not being good enough. This book is about daring to let that passion speak. It is time to throw off the shackles, to reclaim that which every child knows and is taught to forget: the essential right to create without interference or shame."

Michell Cassou

Stewart Cubley