No More Secondhand Art

Book excerpt: This book is about using art as an instrument of personal transformation, enabling us to move from an inherited to a chosen state of being. Peter London offers inspiration and fresh ideas to artists, art students, and art teachers—as well as to people who think they can't draw a straight line but want to explore the joys of creative expression. Inside every person, he believes, there is an original, creative self that has been covered over by secondhand ideas, borrowed beliefs, and conditioned behavior. By freeing the capacity for visual expression—a natural human language possessed by everyone—we can awaken and release the full powers of that original self. Among the topics and exercises included are: • How to increase the ability to visualize, fantasize, and dream • Obstacles to the creative encounter and what to do about them • Experimenting with art media as true mediators between imagination and expression • Making masks to reveal the hidden self • Painting with "forbidden" colors • Arranging found objects as metaphors for one's life