An essay on how a workshop can help you find your inner artist . . .

” . . . . I am interested in the artist’s voice, the storyteller within each of us. I am s storyteller, an image-maker, workshop leader and mentor. I am fascinated by the process, and by this deep desire to share experiences and discoveries with others. We all have stories to tell, and some of us are called to make a living from the stories we tell. It is through stories that we learn in school, and it’s the stories we read and hear throughout life that continue to enlighten us. The workshops and programs I create are all about storytelling, whether for a photographer, a writer, journalist or filmmaker or the technicians who support the storytelling process. As we are telling the world’s stories, we are telling our own as well. My job is to help those who attend one of my workshops, even workshops taught by others, to acquire the mastery over the technology and the methodologies by which you tell stories, but more importantly, mastery over the self, command over ego and our own blocks and perceptions. I am excited by the new technologies that allow us to create books, multimedia slide shows, blogs, websites and get our work into theatres, on television and online to share with others. It is an exciting world, this work with images, still and moving, words, graphic design, music and sound, typography, color, and page flow, and we have the Internet, DVDs, and streaming multi-media and HD video presentations to get our observations and opinions out to the world. But all the technology and publishing options are for naught with out content, without the story.

    Every artist and storyteller is on a personal quest, a search for life’s purpose and spiritual meaning.  Attending a workshops can be part of that quest. A one-week workshop (and no less than one-week)  will provide an insight into the process of seeing, feeling, observing and of finding the story within. We do this in a community of like minded individuals, led by a guide who has made the voyage before, and with a goal for sharing the results of the voyage. A one or two-week workshop can be a transformational experience. Let me explain . . .

The Transformational Experience
“Over the past 30-plus years, I’ve watched thousands of people go through the one-week “workshop process.” They come for a variety of reasons, but one thing they all share in common . . . a desire to reach a higher level of artistic accomplishment. This is a very personal search and it requires courage to share your photographs or showreel with a class full of strangers. It also requires courage to tackle an assignment or project for the week, and to come in each morning for a critique of the previous day’s work, for not only are your images studied, dissected and critiqued, your way of working is called into question. This can be very hard on a person’s ego, but it is necessary if real growth is to be achieved. By midweek (we call it BMW day: Bitch and Moan Wednesday), participants may find themselves at their lowest, but this signals the opportunity where real growth can begin. It is not technical knowledge that’s the reward for a week’s worth of struggle, it’s an awareness of one’s gifts, an insight into the process and knowledge of where one has yet to go that is the reward. It is this “Transformational Process.” that has intrigued me for 35 years. I 1973, I founded a summer school for photographers in a small harbor village on the Maine Coast.  It was my way of sharing my first workshop experience, and to learn more about this image-making process from the world’s great masters. Over the last three decades I’ve  worked to create meaningful experiences to enrich other photographers lives, to awaken and expand each student’s intuition, for it is the intuition from which all art and creativity comes. Following a one-week Master Class or workshop, students return home perhaps more confused than when then arrive, but soon they find there are making better decisions, better choices. It is through experience, attempts, failure, and attempts again that the intuition learns. As we do something, create something, then look at what it was we did and how we did it . . . If we listen to the work we learn how the process works, what the work itself wants from us. As we do more of this doing-looking-listening, we may realize there is something at work deep within us that is trying to get out, some inner voice wanting to speak. Artists often speak of the work, the message, massing through them, but being not of them. This to me is the artists soul, which is connected to all other souls, to that repository of  shared human experience. We do this through the Intuition, biut there stands in the way the Internal Editor, the Intellect, who demands control over you, and stands in the way of the Intuition is a valuable part of your Psyche and will guild you, even in the face of logic and reason. Experience is the teacher of the artist, and the Intuitive mind . . . for it is the experiences in our lives that show us the way, which can often counter our rational thinking.

A workshop, even a one-week workshop, is a time to explore this process, to release the inner voice, in a safe, nurturing environment where attempt and failure are applauded and encouraged.  By the end of an intensive, week-long workshop, you will have acquired a deeper appreciation fore your unique talent and your purpose in life. You may find the courage and support you need to alter or completely change careers, or to return home renewed and energizes, ready to commit to their present career path.

© 2008 David H. Lyman

Rockport, Maine