The Work
As an artist, I currently work, and am certified to teach, as an Intentional Creativity teacher. Despite my degree in painting from the San Francisco Art Institute years ago, it wasn’t until many chapters had completed before I was able to live as I do now, as a full-time artist / writer. Making the decision to leave my East Coast world and identity to move to the Pacific Northwest, Orcas Island specifically, was a deeply intuitive process, and manifestation of my readiness to fully inhabit my creative life. With that intention, once here on Orcas, my husband and I, with help from some talented friends, built what was meant to be a writing studio to continue the work I had been doing since 2006.
That writing, towards a book, often began in journals, where I continued to draw and sketch as well. When I couldn’t access my blog, Dune Shack Dharma, the blog of Dr. Debra Babcock: Making Art Out of Everyday Life and Getting Healthy in the Process, on our month long cross-country trip (in my Mini-Cooper!), I hesitantly began posting my journal writings and drawings on Facebook. What a surprise, there was so much response!
Once we got to Orcas and I began to fully inhabit myself and eventually my studio, another surprise, one that I still can’t explain— the deeply contemplative and transformative path of art-making, called Intentional Creativity, developed by Shiloh Sophia, came across my path through the internet. I took notice, with resistance. Who was this person, and all of these women, following her? Who makes art with people on the internet? But Shiloh was totally speaking my language, I couldn’t turn away, and once I began there was no turning back. The work itself, coupled with the community of women artists throughout the world practicing, sharing and teaching others to recognize the importance of each of our stories, our insights, and our wisdom, now, is for me, an answer to a deep longing. I believe the world is in desperate need for each of our brave hearts, all of the most authentic truths we can access, our creative and intrepid curiosity, and the realization that we are not meant to do take this journey alone. We are all creators, creating all the time, whether we realize it or not. I choose — Intentional Creativity.
Painting
All of these paintings were created from 2021-2022 while I was part participating in a course taught by Shiloh Sophia called, The Color of Woman, through the Intentional Creativity Foundation. Ninety other women from around the world joined me as we painted our way through the pandemic. They are all acrylic on canvas, and range in size from 18”x24” to 36”x48”.
Creative Journaling
These journals are a conglomeration of the ways that I journal daily, create illustrated story books, and teach others to journal creatively in a course I teach called The Joy of Journaling. They are multi-media collage, watercolor, colored pencil, marker, pen and ink and pencil. Images from the journals often find their way into paintings, or are in preparation for paintings.
writing
Reading from my memoir in progress at Darvill’s, our fantastic bookstore during an Artsmith writing residency here on Orcas.
I am a writer as well as a visual artist, participant in countless writing conferences, salons and classes, especially through Grub Street in Boston, the annual AWP writer’s conferences and the London Writer’s Salon, who will publish a piece of mine in their upcoming anthology 2022. I have been fortunate to be a writer in residence several times, both in the Provincetown Dune Shacks on Cape Cod and here on Orcas, at Artsmith. I published numerous articles on Cape Cod in Cape Healing Arts and wrote the blog Dune Shack Dharma for eight years. In 2021 I published my first book— Crossing the Threshold, the story with images of my year creating the Color of Woman paintings.
We are fortunate to have an extraordinary literary festival on Orcas, of which I am a proud Producer and Board Member. Below is the table at Darvill’s Bookstore highlighting the authors for the 2022 Orcas Island Lit Fest.
My beloved studio writing desk in the forest behind our house.