The Artist Inside - by Tom Crockett (Paperback)

About the Book

This liberating handbook provides breakthrough techniques for mining the content of one's dreams to rediscover what it means to live a creative life. Exercises include seeing the waking world as a dream, using your imagination to return to and interact with the landscape of an especially powerful dream, and creating sacred space for the work of art.

Book Synopsis

A fresh new approach to tapping into our own creativity, using the images and artifacts of our dreams.

Getting inspired is one of the toughest parts of being an artist, whether we're a beginner or a seasoned professional. But as Tom Crockett shows us in this new book, finding ideas for our artwork is easier than we think. By simply exploring the images of our sleeping and waking dream states, we can discover a wealth of ideas and inspiration that are more authentic and powerful because they reveal our underlying spiritual self.

Recognizing the importance of allowing our spiritual side to infuse our art and the fulfillment this can bring, Tom Crockett has created a program to teach us all, no matter what level of artistic experience we have, how to bring art and spirit into one. The four different types of creative expression Crockett has identified--Finding, Arranging, Altering, and Making--open up artistic options for everyone, even for those of us who cannot yet imagine that we have the ability to create art. Filled with personal anecdotes from the author's creativity workshops and practical, easy-to-implement advice for tapping into our hidden creativity, The Artist Inside teaches us:

how to access the dreaming world to heighten creativity
that we can create in each piece of artwork a temporary home for the spirit
how creating a spiritual path can energize us and increase our intuitive capacity

When the process of making art is guided by the inner vision of our sleeping and waking dream states, we connect with something larger than ourselves and rediscover that creativity can be both a spiritual path and an important life tool.

From the Back Cover

A fresh new approach to tapping in to our own creativity, using the images and artifacts of our dreams.

Getting inspired is one of the toughest parts of being an artist, whether we're a beginner or a seasoned professional. But as Tom Crockett shows us in this new book, finding ideas for our artwork is easier than we think. By simply exploring the images of our sleeping and waking dream states, we can discover a wealth of ideas and inspiration that are more authentic and powerful because they reveal our underlying spiritual self.

Having recognized the importance and fulfillment that comes from allowing our spiritual side to infuse our art, Tom Crockett has created a program to teach us, no matter what level of artistic experience, how to bring art and spirit into one. The four different types of creative expression Crockett has identified -- Finding, Arranging, Altering, and Making -- open up artistic options for everyone, even for those of us who cannot yet imagine that we have the ability to create art. Full of personal anecdotes from the author's creativity workshops and practical, easy-to-implement advice for tapping in to our hidden creativity, The Artist Inside teaches us:

how to access the dreaming world to heighten creativity that we can create in each piece of artwork a temporary home for spirit how creating a spiritual path can energize us and increase our intuitive capacity

When the process of making art is guided by the inner vision of our sleeping and waking dream states, we connect with something larger than ourself and rediscover that creativity can be both a spiritual path and an important life tool.

About the Author

Tom Crockett is a writer, an artist, a teacher, and a shamanic practitioner. He has a Master of Fine Arts degree from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and has continued his study of dreams, art, and indigenous shamanic traditions for over 15 years. In addition to exhibiting his artwork in nationally recognized museums and galleries, he has taught both at the high school and university level. He is currently an education consultant to the Polaroid Corporation and develops curriculum materials for creative teaching and visual learning. He also directs an after-school, arts-based mentoring program in Norfolk, Virginia, called ArtQuest.