Teaching Statement

I have been teaching through and about art for a long while to many different people in a number of different settings, and what I have come to is this;
I believe artistic sensibilities are universal, inborn human qualities that inform every single thing we say and do; from our choice of food and clothing, words and gestures, to our selection of friends and ideas.
And that the urge to create a world of our choosing rather than being satisfied with the world just as we inherit it, is also universal, inborn and is the engine propelling all human history.

To become free and complete, is to exercise our imagination in the service of forming ever clearer and more determined images of the inner and outer life we desire. Further, I believe that everyone already knows the person they would prefer to be, rather than the person they have come to be.
I believe that everyone already knows what they need to know and do in order to become the person they prefer to be.
I believe that at any single moment every person could open the way to the next phase of his or her preferred life.
I believe the artistic processes are universal strategies that enhance the inherent powers that everyone possesses enabling them to take the next steps in the direction of the quality of life they wish to have.

Most teachers I have met do not hold to these tenets. I do. And I know as a veteran teacher of a broad spectrum of children and adults, of artists, art teachers, and what have you, that a teacher who aligns themselves, mind, body and spirit with that of their students, in the absolute service of the enhanced well being of their student, can achieve all of what these tenets propose; elevated life in all its expressions, artistic and otherwise.
The courses and workshops that I teach first provide a safe and supportive environment where it is safe to say what you know about the life that you have, nothing more and nothing less, and to also describe the life that you would prefer.
Technique and prior art training are never a barrier to full participation.

We are more interested in authenticity than creativity for its own sake, m