Find Your Inner Artist: The Cruise - Part 2

They’re just like you…but different.

We started our journey in Miami, crossing the Atlantic to Palma de Mallorca and other Spanish ports, on to Naples, Rome and the Amalfi coast, followed by the Greek islands and Athens, and then more Greek islands and Turkish islands and ultimately Istanbul. Not too shabby! A truly beautiful itinerary.

And a “crossing” is a very cool thing, all by itself. It’s a spa-like retreat with a wrap-around water view. It’s also a very popular time to be an Artist-in-Residence, when ports of call are non-existent and there’s a captive audience of passengers asking, “What do I do between lunch and teatime or cooking class and wine tasting or mahjong and the daily Mensa test?”

And that’s where we come in, to assist people in finding their inner artist. Nice, right? Nine out of ten people who sign up for classes like this introduce themselves by saying the same thing – “I can’t draw a stick.” Well, I’m here to tell you and all of them, that in my very long career, I have never been asked to draw a stick. There’s very little calling for stick drawings, so that’s not something to worry about. 

They sign up, they show up, they paint, they talk. They laugh, they get surprisingly quiet, and they learn something about themselves and how they see things. I teach them things in a soft-sell, lounge act kind of way and they seem to enjoy it. And as fluffy as that sounds, the underlying message is the point – I want to help them to not only look at things, but to see them, really see them. And that extends through all of the creatively tied senses – don’t listen to the music, hear it; don’t eat the food, taste it; don’t smell the aroma, inhale it; don’t touch the object, caress it! Take it all in. It will change you, I promise.

And if I’m very lucky, and in this case, I was, the students who show up are really interesting, surprisingly open to self-discovery, and very kind. Moments are created. Moments are shared. Many will become true friends.

Some already have.

 “The privilege of a lifetime is to become who you truly are. ”

— Carl Jung