GROUP PAINTING—A MODEL OF COLLABORATION IN COMMUNITY

Collaborative art processes involve inclusion, letting go of judgment, surrendering the ego, allowing vulnerability and learning to trust--the same conditions that create community. They take us out of our habitual reality into a shared space of pure possibility where we directly experience the higher creativity of the group mind. Through shared creation, we naturally absorb the wisdom and skills of others and learn to appreciate our own unique gifts and special role in the group.

From a COLLABORALCHEMY WORKSHOP
Nine of us paint together, gathering around a huge canvas. First we just sit gazing into the blank canvas as if it were a crystal ball. After a while someone makes the first move, picking up a brush and dividing the surface into a simple pattern, a triangle, a circle or an abstract form. We all start painting at once, with brushes and sponges, chalk, acrylics, water color and pens. In silence and total absorption we watch this piece develop. Each of us has a unique role to play in the painting. One creates bold patches of color; another’s strength is detail; someone draws elegantly shaded three dimensional forms; someone else paints childlike, sumi brushstrokes. I seem to be the one who connects separate parts of the painting, integrating them into a greater whole.

We absorb each other’s skills and styles. A detail person draws the veins in everyone's leaves and the branches on their trees. A color person paints a wide wet swath through the the densest area of detail. For a moment we shrink with horror... All that work ruined! But then we notice how the pigments in the tiny branches are released. Crystalline blossoms that no human could have painted magically bloom on the trees!