This year has been a challenge, yes?

At the beginning of 2020 when I launched my teaching schedule there were such high hopes for what the year would bring from my travels, from gathering, and from working with groups of artists in my studio. As I sit here in November, looking back on it all with grace and gratitude, I see many shifts that were life changing and several new opportunities for growth professionally, despite not being able to gather. One of the absolute threads of grace for me has been my online classes and the amazing artists I have had the privilege to work with throughout the ups and downs of this year.

Weaving a thread of growth through my online courses was extremely important to me. Sketch and journal practice led the way and set a foundation for learning to see. Tapping in to our own interests and fascinations was the next layer to build a strong connection for distortion, abstraction, and pattern. As we explored all of these concepts, we learned a ton about some of the master painters that blazed trails for us. All in all, the courses and experiences were designed to equip painters with a skill set to help them identify and grow their own visual language.

As the last course of the year wraps up next week, I have felt it in my heart that I needed to stay connected to my creative hub and end this historical year together with many of them.

I wanted to build an experience based around hope for our future.

I wanted to build an experience around using our own creativity to process our world through pigment, paper, and voice.

I wanted to offer a bridge to all my students to take their year long learning further so that they summarized well.

I also wanted to tap into the beauty of the Thanksgiving and Christmas seasons ahead and use those to GATHERWELL with a group of beautiful humans.

This year has been hard on so many levels and rather than end it feeling the weight of that, I am choosing to end it connected to grace, creativity, hope, laughter, and passion for life.

Between November 17th – January 1, 2021, we will gather in a private online classroom on Facebook. Our emphasis will be multi-layered.

It will be an experience to continue your studies from any of the courses this year and get feedback from me.

It will be an experience to receive weekly prompts based on creative thinking strategies which can be applied to any subject matter you are working in.

It will be an experience to journal, to write, to record, and to express our connection with the changing world around us through written words and journaling.

It will be an experience to view a live session once a week to set the tone for your creative practice and get questions answered based on any course you have taken with me.

It will be a place to feel accepted, uplifted, and safe to share your works in progress.

It will be a place where community and compassion thrive. There will be no politics there, just our imperfectly beautiful selves and our honest connection to one another.

We will explore a bit of color, craft, ideas, sketching, and tradition intertwined with our studies from this past year and the seasons ahead.

We will share links to recipes and things that make us full of wonder.

We will discuss ideas and set some goals for the new page of 2021.

We will move the line, we will paint, we will reevaluate what worked and didnt for our professional goals.

The experience will be somewhat organic and We will GATHERWELL together.

To register go to www.ardithgoodwin.com/gatherwell