Valentangle - Healing the Heart through Zentangle

The days are brightening and so too are our spirits!  It hit me this week that while my body had easily (well sort of) moved back to BC, my heart was taking it's sweet time to catch up and needed validation and acknowledgement of all the changes it has endured these past two years. Most of all it needed time to relax and get used to things.  So, over the holidays,  I did a lot of tangling, reading and lounging about in my new surroundings to give my heart quiet space to recover.

Funny how we get attached to places and circumstances and we don't even really know it until we leave. I remember moving from Alberta to Toronto years ago as an adventure and being especially homesick for my tribe of people and as a surprise to me.....wilderness.  I missed the wildness of my surroundings, and now have some of that very wildness in my back yard. 

Before we decided to move to Lumby, BC, from Washington state;  I did a mixed media piece of a personal map, pictured above.  I found it in my archives this week and it was a good reminder of how I was feeling at that time.... as if I were straddling a border. A border of two countries, of two social circles, of two cultures and it was leaving a hole in my heart.   I had the feeling of being pulled in two directions for too long.  

So now I have been granted the opportunity to fill my heart with family, friends, wildness and of course Art! To celebrate I am teaching a special Zentangle Class called Valentangle on Saturday February 10th in Lumby to help fill your heart and mine. Just click on over to the Classes and Workshops tab and sign up and pay online, it's that easy!

"Anything, everything, little or big becomes an adventure when the right person shares it."
- Kathleen Norris

New Horizons

Hi there and welcome to my blog. It feels good to be back living in the Okanagan after many adventurous years away.  I am happy to continue my work as a Teaching Artist in our new home, and I am looking forward to connecting with students and other people that make art happen in this beautiful spot on the earth.

I have been an artist for several years and am a teaching artist as well.  Creating is about flow for me.  Taking things in, distilling them and allowing them to flow from me in some sort of creative activity.  Teaching is a big branch of that river's flow and I love to learn new things and pass them onto others.  I invite you to swim along in this creative river with me for a while.

I have taught many art mediums in the past but now concentrate mainly on two endeavors.  One is Zentangle for which I became certified to teach in 2012 and the other is a SoulCollage for which I became  trained to facilitate in 2016.

Zentangle is a practice like yoga.  It looks like doodling and is often called that, but it's a bit different in it's approach. Zentangle is done expressly to make you feel good inside. Tangles, which the patterns are called, are drawn usually in a specified way in order to make things easier and less stressful for the participant.  You can find out way more about it at Zentangle.com

SoulCollage is a fun and easy way to bring what's going on inside of each of us into the light of day in a gentle and fun way.  The deepest wisest part of ourselves usually speaks to us through images. Simply, by choosing images that we are drawn to and pasting them onto a card we gently give our most inner self a safe place to speak to our egoic self. There by creating a feeling of well being and understanding between the two selves. It is not therapy but, as I can personally attest, it is therapeutic and can be very helpful in day to day life and problem solving.  Because it involves the simple skills, of cutting and pasting it can be enjoyed widely.  Here's the link  to SoulCollage

If you click on the Classes and Workshops tab you can see what I have to offer you to enrich your life. I look forward to meeting you in person one fine day.

Sincerely,

Loretta West