The Painting EXperience Journey
Through the Decades
The 1970s
In 1976, Michele Cassou and Stewart Cubley started The Painting Experience in their San Francisco apartment near Haight Street, dragging the mattress out of the bedroom to make a weekly space for painters. Stewart began as a participant in the classes and workshops and later moved on to teaching process painting to children at the French-American Bilingual School in San Francisco and later to adults.
In 1978, Stewart and Michele rented a house on Noriega Street in the Inner Sunset neighborhood and turned the two-car garage into a painting studio. The living room was the meeting space and the dining room became a sandplay area. After ten years, the studio became so popular that the neighbors began to complain about parking. Stewart and Michele moved The Painting Experience to a larger commercial location on Quintara Street off of 19th Avenue.
The first Painting Experience workshop at Esalen was held in 1979, and shortly thereafter, at Omega Institute.
The 1980s
In 1982, Stewart and Michele formed The Institute for Art and Living, incorporating the organization as a 501(c)(3) California nonprofit and established The Painting Experience as an officially trademarked business.
At the Quintara studio, classes and workshops continued to grow. Michele and Stewart trained Barbara Kaufman, Jan Haller and Susan Lockary as facilitators and employees who led their own classes. At its peak, the Quintara studio held six classes per week, periodic weekend workshops and two concurrent training programs, with over 100 participants using the studio weekly.
The 1990s
In 1996, Jeremy Tarcher (now Tarcher/Penguin) published Life, Paint & Passion: Reclaiming the Magic of Spontaneous Expression. In 1997, Stewart and Michele divorced and closed the Quintara studio. Barbara Kaufman moved on to open the Center For Creative Exploration in San Francisco the next year.
In the late 1990s, Stewart began the practice of traveling and teaching that he still maintains today. He also worked for three years conducting workshops at Lucent technologies in Naperville, Illinois. Around this time, the first Painting Experience website was born, developed by Stewart and graphic designer Annie Danberg, who would soon become a process painting facilitator.
The 2000s
Stewart continued to develop an annual roster of workshops in the United States, Canada and Europe. He met and trained Annie Rousseau, Matt Belay, and Betsy Vingle as facilitators.
Later in the decade, The Painting Experience continued to embrace life online, finding its way onto Facebook and other social media platforms under the direction of Shae Irving. The organization experimented with offering post-workshop study groups with Annie Danberg and Annie Rousseau, using conference calls and a blog platform to keep in touch. A wider network of participants began to form as the organization expanded its web presence.
The 2010s
In 2014, Stewart introduced the Painting Experience Apprenticeship Program. Since then, Stewart, Annie Rousseau and Aziza Balle have partnered to train new apprentices: Molly Siddoway King, Lydia Marshall, Caroline McCartie and Anne Pechovnik.
In 2016, after several years in development, The Painting Experience launched a new processarts.com website. The same year, Stewart released his first online course, Introduction to Facilitating Process Arts, as well as offering online painting sessions for the first time. This was soon followed by another online course, The Art of Facilitating, providing an avenue for those interested in facilitating process arts.
The 2020s
The organization’s presence continues to grow as interested participants discover our work from many different corners of the globe. We continue to maintain an active schedule of online classes and workshops while developing new ways of bringing process painting to people in person. Stewart will soon be publishing a new book, The Sacred and the Wild, a memoir about his own journey and how it led to midwifing the birth of The Painting Experience.