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Pam Swing, PhD is an artist who is deeply interested in how we access and sustain creativity, both for her own practices and as an offering to others. Her workshops offer a meditative yet exuberant environment in which creative impulses can emerge and be nurtured. They include Claiming your Inner Spark, SoulCollage®, Image Poems, Labyrinth Walks and Mornings of Silence. She is a trained facilitator for SoulCollage® and Deep River Within and served on the Greenfire Women’s Retreat board and staff. Her photographs often reveal aspects of the feminine divine and have been in many solo and group shows in the Boston area and beyond. She loves to sing and is a member of the Concord Women's Chorus. She is currently writing a book about stones in her life. |
Musings on the Creative Process
Each of us is a creative and spiritual being.
Opening up to creative energy is a way of aligning yourself with your life’s purpose. Recognizing our ability to shape our own path adds immeasurable richness to our lives. Creativity can be as simple as choosing what to put on your kitchen windowsill, or as life-altering as discerning ways to engage your passions.
How do we access and sustain creative energy?
Creativity is sparked at the intersection of mindfulness and play. We can begin to discover our unique voice by becoming aware of how we are taking in the world, then engaging with what intrigues us in a lighthearted and playful way. What kinds of things catch your attention?
Make you feel alert?
A fragment of overheard conversation? Clouds racing across the sky? The smell of toast? The collective excitement at a ball game? The world is a happening place. Yet we take it in differently—if you asked five people who had just walked down the same street to describe what they had experienced, each account would be unique. For starters, some people are more visual, others more aural or kinesthetic. We also respond to what we notice in our own unique way.
How does your response take shape?
With words? With movement? With sound? With color? With feelings …?
If we gave each person who had walked down that street an opportunity to depict their experience in whatever medium they wished, they might draw, dance, sing, write a poem or a play, sculpt—the possibilities are infinite.
When we allow ourselves to play with our response, we have opened up to our creative energy.
There is a natural rhythm to the creative process
Inspiration …
Seeking form …
Revising …
Reworking …
The inevitable dry time when ideas lie fallow …
And finally, the moment when a creation is released into the world.
How can you nurture yourself through the ebb and flow of creative energy?
--The gift of regular time and place to work on your creative project.
--Find or form groups of other people interested in the same sort of activity, such as a writing group.
--Although our culture suggests otherwise, we are not wired to have our “on” switch constantly engaged. We need down time, a pause between endeavors, times of reflection, a chance to “be” and not “do.”
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And you can seek help from the shared wisdom of other creative seekers.
Pam Swing offers a wide variety of workshops and retreats that are designed to be a safe environment for you to discover your creative voice. These workshops are for all ages, and are open to anyone. Formal artistic training is unnecessary.
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More Biographical Information
Pam Swing was born in Chicago, Illinois and raised in Swarthmore, Pennsylvania. Her second photography show was featured as a Special Event in the Boston Sunday Globe Northwest Weekly. In 2001, she received an honorable mention from the Concord Art Association. From 2004-2007, she had three-year grant for school workshops from Community Foundation Silicon Valley, and has also received funding from the Georges River Educational Foundation. Some of her Maine photographs appear in Camden-Mid Coast: A Photographic Portrait (2001). While doing research in the Shetland Isles of Scotland, she co-authored (with Tom Anderson) a classroom textbook of traditional Shetland Isles fiddle tunes and stories, illustrated by Shetland children, called Haand Me Doon Da Fiddle (1978), which is still used in Shetland Isles schools. Her doctoral dissertation is on the program of teaching traditional fiddle in Shetland Isles schools. Pam lives in Concord, Massachusetts with her husband and two children.
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About Pam Swing 