I had such an exciting day last Saturday at Kings Arms Church Bedford, teaching a room full of 24 grown ups how to play with paint, and partner with God in their creativity.

But, you know the comment that grabbed my attention the most, was from someone on the actual day, that took me by surprise. I can’t remember her exact words but she was basically expressing her appreciation that I would be willing to share my ‘secrets’ with everyone. She thanked me for my generosity in not keeping my art processes to myself! Isn’t that lovely?!

Should I be worried that people might try to copy my style, or might use my ideas to make better pictures than mine?

What I do is incredibly simple - I’ve taught most of it to children as young as 4, I’ve shared it with rooms of 150 people all in one go and it’s still been effective. My processes have come about through experimentation and play, through trial and error, but most of all through playing with paint and having fun.

I didn’t invent stencilling, or splatting paint, or building up layers, or using circles in ones work. Maybe if this was ‘it’ - if this was going to be my specific style for ever, then I’d feel a bit more protective and guarding of sharing it with people (I don’t know)...

BUT I’m just getting started! I have plans to go much deeper and further and crazier with my paint playing. In fact, I would be most disappointed if my work did stay the same from now on - I’m hungry to keep developing, to keep growing and learning.

What I’ve learnt has been in partnership and relationship with our awesome creator God, and is born out of grace and freedom, why would I want to keep that to myself?!

All I have, has been given by my good, good Father God, and I want to reflect his character, his generous nature to others.

If I can impart a sense of fun and playfulness in people’s creativity, if I can help to free people up to focus on enjoying the process rather than stressing over the results, if I can stir people to invite the Holy Spirit into their creative activity, then I feel the risk is definitely one worth taking.

Eight big beautiful abstract pieces celebrating creativity and brightening the walls of my local primary school.
Last year I enjoyed a week’s art residency at Arbury Primary School, and I’ve recently been back for a visit to see the art we created actually up on their walls.

The week began with me painting on stage in the school assembly. I painted in response to their favourite song ‘A right to be loved’ whilst the 450 pupils sang along and watched the picture evolve, projected onto the large screen.
As the morning progressed each class was invited onto the stage to take a closer look and add their own circle round the edge.

This painting is now pride of place on the back wall of their Expressive Arts Hall

Here is the time-lapse video of the performance art

I photographed their beautiful creations, so the school could purchase some large canvas prints to display around their building.
Here are the seven finished prints that I saw on my recent visit, now hanging in the corresponding year group areas, for the children to remember the fun we had.

To see more pictures and read more detail about my week as artist in residence at Arbury Primary School last year, here is the blog post about:

• the week itself
• and also a post about the idea behind my visit.
  

To make enquiries about booking me for your school, community group or event, please email me at
KateGreenARTand [email protected] and we can discuss a package that is tailor-made to suit your setting.

At Easter I spent a week as the artist in residence at the Christian conference Spring Harvest #SH2019, Minehead (wk 1) and thought I'd share with you what I got up to. The theme this year was Prayer UNLIMITED: Unlimited – Access, Unlimited – Connection, Unlimited – Potential; Unlimited – Hope.
There were three main parts to my role. 1. to provide all age activities for the morning programme called the BIG START. 2. to lead an art workshop for the guests one afternoon and 3. to paint live in the evening celebration. I also had the opportunity of selling my art and merchandise in the bookshop.

The morning sessions were based around the theme of a School of Prayer “No rules, no limits!” The creative team leading this programme had to dress in school uniform – hence the pigtails! I based my activities around the idea of a graffiti wall and each morning added a new word. I'd learnt from the previous year to keep things super simple as there would be a large number of kids, about 10 minutes to do things and it was too loud to give any explanations alongside the songs, games and drama also happening. We used chalks, did handprints, created collage and sketched.

Each evening, next to the stage, I got to paint HUGE pictures, during the worship, the talk and the ministry time. Working so big and with limited time lent itself nicely to expressive, messy work. I barely used a brush or palette, I just threw the paint on the canvas roll and manipulated it with a shower squeegee and sponges.
There was a camera over my shoulder a lot of the time with a live feed to the large screens either side of the venue, with images of me painting interspersed with footage of the 3000+ audience and the band. I was having so much fun that I was mostly able to block this out of my mind and just get on with what I was doing.
I used the theme of each day as inspiration for what I painted and invited the Holy Spirit to partner with me as I worked – I felt that, as well as the pieces having a prophetic nature in their concept, there was also moments of prophetic action/movement that I felt God prompting me to do. For example I was led to paint with a feather at a point where people were responding to God (he whispered to me that he was meeting them with a particular gentleness in that space, and the feather represented this).
One of the evenings I felt God tell me he wanted my painting as an interactive/responsive piece, so I dialogued with the preacher and host about how to incorporate this into the programme. People were invited to put a thumbprint on my picture to represent their sons and daughters who they were interceding for. It was so moving to see 100+ queuing to engage with God through my art.

Each evening I left my paintings to dry over night, then in the morning I hung them on the bleachers. The images are available for guests (and anyone else) to purchase as poster prints in my Etsy shop. Click each picture below for the links to read the explanations for each piece.

It was a full on, tiring week that I thoroughly enjoyed and was a huge privilege to be a part of!

This April I got to show all my favourite paintings in a beautiful gallery space in Cambridge and I thought you might like to take a look!

I called this show COLOUR SONGS as that's how I would describe my pictures - singing with colour.
This poster says 5 - 13th April but the gallery owner was so thrilled with how the exhibition looked that she invited me to extend the show for double the time, at no extra cost!

Here is a video tour for those of you who were not able to make it along in person.

Way back in October I took part in a doodling challenge on Instagram, I realised that I have a variety of footage from it that I've never shared in my blog, so I thought better late than never!!

This challenge was perfect for me in many ways.

1. It was in the middle of a season of admin, so it created a welcome excuse and nudge to be creative at least for 5 minutes every day.
2. It was using crayons, which to me felt unthreatening, something I could be playful and unprecious about.
3. Pat Butynski, the artist who set the challenge turned out to be part of my mentoring programme - a wonderfully inspiring, brave and provoking abstract artist who I'm now honoured to call a friend.
   

I say I have a variety of footage but I actually told myself at the start of doing this that I could be free to play without the pressure of ever having to show anyone what I produced! This was very releasing and meant I could explore to my hearts content.

Here's a little timelapse video of one of them:

So the challenge was to do a #30daycrayonworkout, basically playing with crayons in any way I chose every day for 30 days and posting it as part of a group who were all doing it too. Search #getyourcraycray_on to see the other 1500+ responses.
In December I shared a selection of my sketches at my Open Studio event and even sold a few. Then in January I had the opportunity of exhibiting 12 of them at City Church Cambridge – hoping to inspire some playful 5 minute creativity in others.

There are many creative challenges around on social media and I heartily recommend them to you as a means of thinking outside the box and getting your creative juices flowing! If you find any good ones, I'd love to hear about them!

One of my goals this year was to start doing live videos on social media. Whether that be sharing what I've been doing in my studio, answering questions or doing demonstrations etc.
Live video and vlogging invites people into your life, it's more real, more raw. I want to be engaging with my friends and supporters not always just presenting the finished, polished article. Being an artist, aesthetics are important to me, I can be a bit of a perfectionist, I have an eye for detail, editing video is an art form in itself and there is a place for that but this medium is a different type of beast. If I want to invite you into my arty world, my REAL arty world, then excellence shouldn't be the aim but practice. The only way to improve, to get more confident, more slick and natural, is to do it, and then do it again and again!

I committed to talking into my phone every day for as long as it took to feel ready to give it a go live on social media. Here is a little snippet!

I thought it might take a few months but actually within a few days I was more comfortable and decided I would coincide my 1st 'live' with the launch of my 2nd website.

“Hello is there anybody there? Is this live, is this working, can your hear me?...”
If you want a chuckle – here is a link to my first FB live video

My plan now is to start working towards doing Q & A's each month – sometimes while painting, and sporadically just show you guys what I've been working on in my studio.
I do a number of live painting events and so my next challenge is to go live, when I'm in public!
And then there's IGTV… and so on and so on!

I know when I used to watch people doing this type of thing I would feel it beyond my reach, so hopefully in sharing my little journey with you, you too will feel you can start accomplishing some of your goals a day at a time.
Otherwise I guess this will also help you to see that I'm just getting started with all this stuff, and serve as an apology and plea to bare with me as I learn!

Last weekend I led a 3 hour Colour Song abstract art workshop and I thought you'd enjoy hearing about what we got up to.

We started with a couple of warm up exercises – drawing to music and then thinking in colours. I was thrilled that everyone threw themselves straight into the activities, daring to try something different, trusting me to focus on the process over results.

I then set about taking the group through the techniques I used to create this painting called 'Piece of Peace', step by step, layer upon layer upon layer.

Everyone went home with their own beautiful handcrafted painting!

I've learnt to be adventurous with colour and style, just to 'go for it'.
My favourite part was learning the various stages, each one revealed an additional 'layer' to the work.
I've learnt to experiment and have fun with different ideas, I loved all of it!

Sounded like fun so I signed up! – it only dawned on me later that these weren't going to be just any scientists but Professors and leaders in their field at Cambridge University type scientists! Would I even understand the research, let alone be able to put it into my own words and represent it visually? How would I make this an honouring response to significant study rather than a frivolous caricature?

Here is my painting as it progressed, it's called MIND THE GAP

This is my explanation: We make sense of the things around us through a combination of the world we have experienced and the world that is in front of us. Our brain fills in the gaps between the two as best it can, adjusting to the patterns it learns along the way. Hallucinations can be seen as a consequence of a disturbed negotiation between brain and world, as someone strives to make sense of the ambiguous.
In my painting I symbolise the patterns we've learnt from our experience (internal), layered with the input we receive from our senses (external), and consider the gap between these two that our brains try to fill to make sense of the world around us.
If you are interested in reading more about Dr Paul's work follow this link: http://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/how-hallucinations-emerge-from-trying-to-make-sense-of-an-ambiguous-world

The crowd at the pub seemed to be there more for the science talk than the art I think, but it was a great opportunity to try something new, all good experience. The end of week exhibition was buzzing, it was so lovely to see people seriously engaging with my painting and very interesting to see all the other artists responses to their scientists work.

Here are some of the other pieces of art in the exhibition.

 It was a BIG challenge, one of those things where you don't realise what you've let yourself in for until it's too late, but I'm definitely glad I did it! It was a great opportunity to network with other creatives in my local area, a chance to exhibit amongst a whole new clientelle, it gave me the new experience of presenting a talk in a pub, was something to talk about on social media and add to my CV. It was also a great opportunity to work in partnership with the Holy Spirit in a secular setting. To increase my profile locally in order to draw people towards coming to my future exhibitions, where they can experience more of my God breathed, God filled, God inspired, God celebrating art work. To inject the Cambridge and UK art scene with something of our beautiful, kind, mighty Creator God one painting at a time.

Just before Christmas I had the privilege of being invited to do an interview with Matt Tommey for his podcast 'The Thriving Christian Artist' and it was published this week!

Click on the picture for a link to my interview.

I've received a fair number of new subscribers to my mailing list (welcome, if you are one of them!), new social media followers and some really lovely responses from individuals reaching out to me after hearing my story.

In preparation for the interview I was asked to consider a handful of questions:

• How did you first get started on your artistic journey?
• What’s been your biggest challenge in pursuing art and how are you working overcome it
• What has been the most fruitful habit you have employed in your life to help you thrive as an artist?
• What does thriving as an artist mean to you and what advice would you give artists out there who are wanting to go from surviving to really thriving as a creative?
• How do your relationship with God impact your creative process?

I didn't get to answer all these questions, you never know what tangent this sort of conversation will go off along! I found it a really helpful exercise at this stage in my journey just to stop and consider these things.

I must emphasise that Matt selects people to do his podcast that are at different stages of their artistic journey and business development. His heart is to bring encouragement and inspiration to those getting started.
How would you answer if you were asked these questions? Don't discount yourself and where you are at on your journey. Everyone has a story to tell, we all have people that we are a few steps ahead of, we all have something to share.

For those of you who don't know him, Matt Tommey is a sculptor, weaver, musician, author and speaker, he also runs a mentoring programme called 'Created to Thrive' which I joined January 2018, with over 1000 members now in our closed Facebook group. He has a public Facebook page 'Thriving Christian Artists' with around 10,000 members and he's written some fantastic books: Crafting your brand, Creativity according to the Kingdom, Unlocking the heart of the artist & Created to Thrive

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