It's been a while...

Bonjour, it’s been a while.

Around 14 months or so since my last journal entry here, by the looks of it. A lot has happened since then. So where to begin?

When a lot has transpired in such a short space of time and it feels overwhelming to write down, I know it’s best to start from where I am, rather than try to make sense and order of all that has been. This is my third attempt at writing this catch up post, the first two did begin with a summarisation of sorts, but I know it’s not possible to sum up events when the aftermath is still in effect, reverberating and spinning, creating new events, piling on top of each other. Have you felt this too?

The world as we have known it is wobbling, and it’s not easy to keep your feet on the ground, especially for those of us who feel a lot: There is currently a lot to feel. I’ve learnt the best thing to do is be still. To rest. To do your absolute best to not do much at all.  That’s why, in hindsight, I see that posting and updating what I’ve been up to hasn’t happened. Something had to give for me to make room to rest, to breathe, and it was letting go of these particular ‘doing’ things. It also helped me to make some space to adjust my focus on supporting our family of 3 through the various stages of staying-at-home, keeping healthy, and maintaining a sense of joy.  

I have been quietly creating, continuing to divide my working hours between photoshoots for Happinez, mentoring long-time clients, writing, shooting commissions, sharing ideas and ways of sparking joy and connection on patreon, and supporting women on their creative journeys. So, I’d like to try to catch up as best I can now, sharing some of what I’ve been working on, let’s see how I go.

It’s still such a surreal time for most of us, and there is so much grief. I hope as you read this, you are able to take a moment to breathe and rest in this stillness, releasing the resistance to the unknown that is still upon us.

Pia xx

PS I just discovered you can create spotify music playlists, so I made one called Vivent Les Artistes if you’d like to listen while you create.

{inner child} create your own colour...

At the end of last year, I held another art workshop for 50 students in year 2 (age 8) at Laly’s school. This time, I focussed on colour and chatted to the kids about the power of colour in our lives. I was inspired by my faraway friend, artist & educator Lisa Solomon’s new book A Field Guide to Color - it is full of fantastic techniques on understanding colour through watercolour. And the paper throughout the book is ideal to apply watercolour paint, so you can do the exercises directly in the book which I love…

I took the book in and taught the children a little about Lisa’s art, what I personally love about her work, and some of her colour work techniques like Colour Meditation.

They were all very excited to be making colour! They knew the basic principles of making different colours (red + yellow = orange etc) but I wanted to stretch this a bit further, to get them to experiment, to not just take a colour from a tube and go with that but to adjust it according to their mood, and to use their intuition when creating a new colour.

We created a few different stations in the classroom so that the kids could go from one to the other, allowing a few children at a time a few minutes at my station - the colour making station. As I mentioned, one of the many things that Lisa does is create colour meditations with watercolour, it’s a wonderful activity so I used this idea as one of the stations for the kids. At this table, they were to repeat a marking on their paper over and over again using a different coloured marker for each one. Another station I set up with a whole bunch of colour samples from the paint section of the local hardware store. These I had gathered over the previous months for my own photoshoots, as I use them to create colour palettes in my storyboarding. For this station, the idea was to look at the names of the colours to gather inspiration, and to then come up with a name for their colour that they will be creating. They came up with so many creative names!

At my station, it was all about the mixing. It was no easy feat to manage this to accomodate 50 kids in two hours! Their excitement and gratitude though was worth every drop of sweat as I frantically prepped for each round of children. I let them choose a base colour from a group of mixing vessels I’d prepared before they arrived at the table, and then we got adding - I asked them what colour they would like to add to see what happens, and off they went. I tried my best to teach them that the more colour they added, the more it could become brown, but at the same time I also know that they need to learn this from trying themselves. Stepping back to allow their own lessons to transpire while also being available to teach them when they need it is a challenge. I have always had immense gratitude to the teachers of the world who manage this daily, in their own journey to find their own balance.

After they’d mixed their colour, they went to the painting station to paint their colour onto a piece of paper and write the name of their colour and their name onto the paper. So. much. fun.

Meanwhile at home, I’d been making my own colour palette for a backdrop and painting I was working on. I’ll be sharing the process in detail of developing a shoot from start to finish on the Wandering Hearts Collective in the coming week, as this process is transferrable to how I design intuitive websites for my mentoring clients as well as intuitive business practice.

Although I hosted this workshop for children, it’s an activity I would recommend to my clients and anyone at all who is needing to connect with their intuition, creativity, and inner child.

And if you’ve been wanting to learn how to play with watercolours and deepen your knowledge of colour, then Lisa’s book is definitely for you.

With love & colours,

Pia xx

Creative Women in Conversation, February 29, 2020

…turned out the beautiful Mistress of Ceremonies Cynthia and I were wearing the exact same colour combination, even with loop earrings and high bun! Nothing like sweet synchronicity to know you’ve met a kindred spirit. X

Last Saturday, I was honoured to be one of the guest speakers at this year’s Creative Women In Conversation event held at the fabulous North Sydney Community Centre. I’d heard so many wonderful things about it from past speakers and audience members, and it certainly lived up to its reputation, I had a fabulous time! I felt so completely nurtured while up on stage, and I’m so grateful to everyone for sharing their enthusiasm for all I had to share, and for the incredible feedback I received throughout the day. This was Shona Smith and my first official live event together which we eagerly announced on our podcast at the end of last year, and we had such a great time. Having been in dialogue for a year now on It’s All Up From Here, we were ready to try our hand at opening the dialogue with a live audience, it was such a treat…

snapshots with thanks to Cynthia Sciberras

We talked about what it means to live a creative life; how ideas form; what some of the most common creative blocks are and what mine have been; how to manage being a multi-passionate creative; the importance of mentoring and using our intuition; and how global events affect the creative flow. We had so many great questions from the audience, each one sparked new ideas and topics that we’d love to extend on in future podcasts and live, intimate events.

I absolutely loved listening to the other speakers, learning more about their work and how they manage their own creative blocks and life experiences while still engaging their creative passions. Sharing this day with them was a wonderful experience.

I’d like to say a huge thank you to Joanna Goodwin, the centre’s director, for inviting me to participate this year, she truly is incredible at connecting people and bringing creativity into the everyday, not just through this fabulous yearly event in celebration of International Women’s Day, but also through the centre’s workshops, hosted by incredible artists.

The talks were recorded for the North Sydney Centre podcast, and Shona and I will be adding our talk as a special episode of It’s All Up From Here too, so you can listen then, I’ll let you know on social media when it’s live.

Thank you again to everyone who bought books on the day, and those who expressed interest in mentoring, you can check out the mentoring packages here, or send me an email.

xx