How to be Present, Innovative and Make a Difference in the World

Creativity and spirituality are intertwined…

Creativity is...

Live Fully and With Grace by Kathy Crabbe

For me, being creative means constantly challenging myself to explore new frontiers, develop skills, play, dream and live fully in the present. Creativity helps one be present and in the moment. When you’re creating you’re not in your head. Taking action can get you going and feels intense and amazing.

How can being creative make a difference in the world?

Art, artists and all creative beings can teach people that there is a greater purpose in life beyond just surviving: there is the possibility of creating something so beautiful, thought provoking, intelligent, funny, magical that one can touch people on a soul level and change their life. The world can become a better place for everyone in the process; people can come together in peace and love to appreciate all the arts. Art can help us care about life, make it worth living, and make it worth fighting for the things that matters.

Art reminds us that we have a soul.

Art reminds us to laugh at ourselves.

Art shakes us out of our complacency.

Art wakes us up to our potential.

Ar reminds us to live each moment in the present.

Art is life.

Margaret Atwood

Creative People I admire and why

Margaret Atwood: brilliant, edgy, biting wit, environmentalist, great writer working with integrity, makes me laugh and wince.

Maude (from the movie 'Harold and Maude'): great fighting spirit, passionate, young at heart, amazing home (a railway car), feisty, daring and loving.

Contemporary Japanese woodblock printmakers: their art is abstract, nature based, simplified, textural, primitive looking, graphic, bold yet subtle, beautiful use of color. Artists: Shiko Munakata, Naoko Matsubara

Success is...

- Knowing there are new frontiers to explore every day - being alone with one’s thoughts and creating - helping others through sharing, loving, kindness, compassion and insight .

Integrity is...

- Making a difference in people's lives through creating, writing and sharing with heart, soul, intuition, passion and intelligence.

My Story

I have always been involved in the creative arts: painting, drawing, making music, writing, journaling, dancing and have pursued these passions with much intensity and focus, often preferring my own company to anyone else. Being creative opened a door for me into the world of imagination.

At thirteen I began a dream journal which helped me connect with other worlds and realms of consciousness. I learned how to trust and request dream guidance for the important questions in my life.

In my early twenties I was guided towards meditation to further my spiritual quest and found a class led by a wonderful teacher called 'Om' who had been trained by the guru, Sri Chinmoy. I continue to practice meditation along with yoga, dream journaling and creative expression and this forms the basis of my intuitive and spiritual development. Because I have learned how to access and trust my inner voice and visions I am able to connect with the Divines.

Kathy Crabbe in Laguna Beach

Shortly after moving to Southern California (Laguna Beach) at age thirty I experienced a Rebirthing session during which I envisioned an entire business scheme for my LuLu Design artwork to be sold as cards, prints, clothing and originals. Soon after I discovered the perfect medium, silk painting and within one year I had been in over fifteen art fairs selling my work. I was also accepted into Laguna Beach's Sawdust Art Festival where I showed my work for eight years. Each year my husband would build a two story booth for the two month long (10 am - 10 pm) show involving over 200 artists - what an incredibly fun, successful, beautiful creative community that was!

During this time I continued to celebrate the seasons with sacred circles, ritual, tarot, dreamwork and meditation and my visions increased. Laguna Beach is also a mecca for astrologers, another passion of mine so I had the chance to study firsthand with many wonderful astrologers such as Steven Forrest, Jeffrey Wolf Green, Donna Cunningham, and privately with Patty Davidson.

Capricorn Goddess by Kathy Crabbe

I also spent an intensely creative month creating, painting and writing a Goddess Zodiac Playbook based upon channeled meditations for each of the zodiac signs in combination with the moon. As the moon entered each zodiac sign where it stayed for two days I created a sacred circle filled with all the symbols, foods and colors associated with that sign. I researched goddess lore for each sign (which wasn't easy to since most astrology books were not goddess oriented), meditated, wrote and channeled the energy of that sign which turned out to be an incredibly powerful experience! Then I would paint this energy as Goddesses. I also included poetry, stories and myth into the book and then gathered together a circle to experience the book firsthand - it was truly created to be an interactive experience.

In early 2000 I started drawing and painting exclusively with my non-dominant left hand, also known as the intuitive hand because it's controlled by the intuitive right brain (if you're right handed that is) and for five years drew only with my left hand. Because I had recently moved to an isolated spot in the countryside I had no friends for the first five years and so the 'Lefties' were born and I discovered over 500 new 'friends'!

During this time I turned forty and Uranus Opposition kicked in to help push me to really, really stretch and grow. I realized that I had absorbed and learned all I could (I felt very full!) and that I MUST share it by giving psychic readings using my art. It was the Lefties who suggested in a dream that I turn them into Lefty 'Tarot' cards and give psychic readings online (along with encouragement from my husband, favorite psychic and a wonderful life coach) and so the next day I did just that! I started offering free mini readings in the Etsy forum where I had previously set up a shop selling my artwork and I ended up giving 100's of free readings, learning a ton in the process!

Giving Psychic Readings at Karma Boutique, San Diego

I also started giving psychic readings at a local new age store, but soon discovered that distance readings (where I never met the client face-to-face) worked better for everyone because there were no distractions preventing me from connecting and channeling the Divine. When I give readings I always prepare myself through yoga, meditation, flute playing and with crystals so that I can become as clear, still and focused as possible. I receive clairvoyant visions, and sometimes smells, words and feeling sensations in my body which I immediately write down in my spiral note pad which rests at my side. I am usually guided towards specific crystals and oracle cards (I only work with cards of my own design). More about my technique can be found here.

It's been a lifelong journey of discovery, creation and intuitive, spiritual awakening so to be able to share it with you and connect others of like mind is a gift I will always be grateful for. We, each and every one of us have within us, the seeds to be intuitive, creative beings, for truly, we are all one.

Wise Woman Radio Interview: I'm interviewed by Susun Weed, founder of the Wise Woman School.

Reluctant Medium Radio Interview: Ghostbuster Jamie & I chat about past lives, spirits, developing intuition and more.

Purchase a Soul Reading here.

In the Lefty Spotlight: Virginia Breaks Through Creative Blocks

Virginia and I met through The 52 Project; a 52 week art journaling event hosted by the Riverside Art Museum. Virginia was intrigued by my non-dominant hand drawing and decided to give it a whirl and here's what happened!

Virginia: I am fairly new to the art world. I started out with a mixed media class at the Riverside Art museum and I got hooked. I started an art journal in September 2015. I found that sometimes I would create a background on a page but would be stuck beyond that. Recently I repainted a page several times because I did not like what was there and I felt blocked. Nothing creative was coming out. I finally thought about Kathy Crabbe’s lefty cards and something I had read describing how writing, scribbling or drawing with your non-dominant hand helps to get you going again when you are creatively blocked. I scribbled and wrote with my left hand on this page. It was like magic! As soon as I filled the page with my lefty scribbles I was able to create again. Thank you Kathy Crabbe!

About Virginia, Mixed Media Artist and Art Instructor

Virginia Godoy retired from her career as a Wastewater Chemist for the City of Riverside after 30 years of service. During her last year in service at the City of Riverside, she discovered a love for mixed media art after taking a class at the Riverside Art Museum.  Since that time, Ms Godoy has judged several art competitions and started a new career as an Art Instructor for the Riverside Art Museum’s Art-to-go program. Ms Godoy is currently teaching art with History and Science as well as Fine Arts to 5th and 6th graders in the Riverside Unified School District. Ms Godoy occasionally teaches youth and adult art classes at the Riverside Art Museum.

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The creative brain: where does inspiration come from?

Once artists are free to admit that they are crazily passionate about some thing outside of art, that still nourishes their art, you'd be surprised what you hear. I've learned that one artist gets most of her ideas not in the studio but in her garden, another was replenished with ideas by taking the same walk through town every day, another responds to stoop sales and street finds, another was into obscure horror movies, another horse-racing, another visited candy stores and bakeries, and so on. Also, while normal people may have to travel the world to get inspired, it doesn't take a lot to get a creative brain going. This passionate thing, therefore, is usually quite specific, controlled by a careful protocol, often quite secret, hidden, in the manner of Kepler's statement, "I live in a secret frenzy" - possibly the best two-word description ever of the creative brain at work (J.W. Connor, Kepler's Witch, 2004, p. 329), under the surface of an otherwise nondescript life.

This thing, in my view, is a reflection in conscious life and in art of the jumble of images in Andreasen's associative cortex that precedes a eureka moment: it sets the stage, creates a predisposition, for the eureka moment.

Essay by Robert Mahoney, "Eureka: The Creative Brain" from Accelerating on the Curves The Artist's Roadmap to Success by Katharine T. Carter & Associates.

For me, the thing that set off and inspired my Journey into Intimacy series was my desire to find a container, a tabula rasa, a safe place to let out my emotions. It was emotional pain that drove me insistently and unrepentantly to start this series. I literally RAN to find all my painting and drawing materials so that I could start creating BIG. This new series had a lot of emotion to express and capture and it felt BIG. So I grabbed a bolt of silk, attached it to the wall, set out all my acrylics, brushes, pastels and charcoal and began. That was in October of 2009 and I haven't stopped since.

Although the pain that initiated this series has gone away I find myself questioning what thing apart from my art itself, deeply and unconsciously informs my current paintings (still from the Journey into Intimacy series) now painted on canvas since 2012.

The first painting I'd like to explore is "Beginning to see the light" (see above). My emotions around this painting were intense. My best friend, a revolutionary, writer and fighter for the under-dog was visiting me at the time and she was working non-stop, hell-bent on saving the world and especially the United States. I was reading a book she loaned me by Chris Hedges called "Death of the Liberal Class", we visited Mexico (Tijuana), took walks in nature around my property and visited the vineyards nearby where my friend was appalled by the fakery and plastic-ness of the women she encountered. All the tensions and oppositions between the natural beauty of inland Southern California and the horrific damage wrought upon the women here who are madly creating a plastic persona to 'keep up with the Joneses' exploded into this, my first painting on a black gessoed background and before I knew it I'd painted my vision of this horrible beauty; a vision both intoxicating-ly magical and horrifying-ly frightening. The painting felt channeled; it appeared so suddenly and so brilliantly, capturing a split second fluttering in time where amidst the ruin of a culture I felt...something good. So that's why I paint and continue to paint and draw every day.

Gillian & the Faery Folk – New Moon Wisdom

New Moon in Cancer July 11, 2010 12:40 pm pdt

Cancerian Artist Gillian

"With the Moon in Cancer our feelings take the lead. Cancer encourages the wisdom rising out of our oceanic unconscious through moods and feelings. Ground in the magic of our home as a temple. Ask what needs protecting and feeding. Plant, fertilize and water your garden." ~ Excerpted from the We'Moon Datebook

Spotlight on Cancerian Artist - Gillian Guelph, Ontario, Canada Shop: Miss Quite Contrary

I am a self taught photographer and art history student from Guelph, Ontario, Canada. Since I first held a toy camera in my little toddler hands, I've been taking photographs, but it has only been in the past couple of years that I thought I might be able to pursue this love professionally.

Since those very early years with a little baby camera, it was my Cancer sensitivity and emotion that were my main drive to take photos - to try to capture my feelings about a time or place and preserve them and express them to others in a way I couldn't otherwise - to help others see the world the way I see it.

Gillian, Bertha's Window. Photographic print, 8 x 10 inches. © 2010

This is an altered version of my 'Rochester's Window' photograph. This photo was inspired by Bertha Mason, the 'madwoman in the attic' of Charlotte Bronte's Victorian Gothic novel, Jane Eyre. It was created with a vintage camera and found antique photographs.

I think my work is instantly recognizable as the work of a Cancer. My shyness and tendency to remain 'in my shell' come through in my chosen locations - often abandoned, isolated or forgotten corners of the world, and in the dusk like lighting I love so much - the approach of evening and rise of the moon are my favourite time of day. I'm inspired by ideas of things hidden, decaying, dusty and ethereal, and am particularly interested in nature, animals, fairy and folk tales and Gothic novels.

I think my attraction to the past, and interest in history, is the Cancerian trait most visible in my work. I attempt to capture a glimpse of otherworldly beauty in the everyday, as well as incorporate elements of the past by using antique, vintage and toy cameras, printing photographs onto the dusty pages of old books and tattered ephemera, and occasionally integrating hand embroidery, scraps of antique textiles, found antique photographs and other found objects into mixed media and wearable pieces.

Gillian comments on her post: Thank you so much for featuring me - it was a fun thing to do and I like how it made me think about my work in a really different way!

You can find more New Moon Artist features here.