The Unstoppable Artist: Discovering the Artist Inside Yourself

By Barbara L. McCulloch

Can you imagine feeling the joy of being a creative artist and exploring new ideas courageously? Would you appreciate the peace of knowing you are truly on the right path by creating colorful art so powerful that viewers crave it? Can you imagine feeling your spiritual connection and knowing your art has an important purpose?

In The Unstoppable Artist, author Barbara L. McCulloch guides you through step-by-step projects to empower you on your journey as an inspired, creative artist. Part one helps ignite your deepest passion and opens the door to growth through inspirational stories, exploring possibilities, releasing creative blocks, and projects to discover your higher purpose and empower your artistic journey.

Part two gives you an experience of creating unique art. It offers projects designed to guide you forward with confidence to develop drawing and painting skills, design strong engaging art, master color schemes to create a powerful mood, and explore techniques to develop your personal creative expression.

Through the contributions of ten artists, The Unstoppable Artist shows eight discovery projects, forty-seven skills projects, nineteen study examples, and forty-one illustrations to transform you from stuck to unstoppable, from dreaming to doing, and from craving to creating.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Archway Publishing
• Release date: Jul 5, 2022
• ISBN: 9781665723084

Barbara L. McCulloch

Barbara L. McCulloch, an artist and instructor, works from her studio in Santa Fe, New Mexico. She has a strong background in both creating and teaching drawing, painting, and portraiture in a wide range of media and style. Her current work in abstract, gestural oil is inspired by the beauty of the surrounding landscape. Making time for creative exploration is a passion she transmits to new artists.

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Copyright © 2022 Barbara L. McCulloch.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Archway Publishing

1663 Liberty Drive

Bloomington, IN 47403

www.archwaypublishing.com

844-669-3957

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Interior Image Credit:

Barbara L. McCulloch

Anne Bedrick

Carole Belliveau

Deco (Bernadette Freeman)

Suzanne Frazier

Michele LeMaitre

Courtney Miley

Angela Muller

Ryn Weisz

Jill Williams

and Gabriella Marks, photographer

ISBN: 978-1-6657-2307-7 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-6657-2309-1 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-6657-2308-4 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2022908354

Archway Publishing rev. date: 07/01/2022

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Contents

Foreword

Preface

Acknowledgments

Introduction: Possibilities, Freedom, Purpose, Creativity, Skills

Part 1 Discovering the Artist Inside Yourself

Chapter 1 Become Open: Projects Designed to Help You Explore Possibilities

Chapter 2 Become Free: Projects Designed to Help You Release Creative Blocks

Chapter 3 Become Empowered: Projects to Empower You to Create with Purpose

Chapter 4 Become Creative: Exploring Your Heart Center to Envision Your Style

Intermission: Taking Time to Pause and Reflect on Your Journey

Chapter 5 Stories: How a Creative Art Can Change Your Life

Part 2 Creating Soulful Art

Chapter 6 Become the Student: Basic Drawing and Painting Techniques

Chapter 7 Become the Designer: Creating Strong, Dramatic Compositions

Chapter 8 Become the Musician: Mastering Color to Create Mood

Chapter 9 Become the Unstoppable Artist: Discovering the Power of Personal Expression

References

This book is

dedicated to artists searching for a strong creative

voice to empower their visions for a better world.

Foreword

Barbara McCulloch and I met in 2002 at a contemplative art retreat I was teaching at the Abbey of St. Walburga in Virginia Dale, Colorado. During the first art session on Friday night, I noticed Barbara immersed herself into the creative process. I didn’t know anything about this woman who sat at the furthest end of the table. During the two Saturday art sessions, I watched her dive into every suggestion I made to the group. At the end of the last session for the day, she wiped away a few tears and disappeared into her retreat room.

By the last day of the retreat, on Sunday, I was curious about this incredibly focused woman who made beautiful art. At the end of the retreat, she shyly spoke to me about her experience as an artist and why she was at the retreat. She attended the retreat because she wanted to change her artistic direction and thought the approach to art making that I was presenting might help. I found out that she had spent most of her artistic life creating a strong personal expression. She had already succeeded as a working artist, creating ceramics, watercolors of Glacier National Park, and oil paintings. She had sold her work for years in galleries through the National Park system and owned her own profitable gallery in Kalispell, Montana. Barbara has much more art experience than I did, yet she sat all weekend at the art table and devoured my suggestions.

Since that time we have become art friends, comparing notes, coaching each other, and exhibiting our work together. I am so grateful that she appeared at the art retreat all those years ago. I have benefited greatly from her gentle style of sharing her knowledge and expertise.

What Barbara and I have in common is years of experience as working artists. I have been a full-time working and teaching artist since 1989, after I graduated from the University of Colorado, Boulder, with a BA degree in studio art. This degree, added to my BA degree in philosophy from Lake Erie College in 1969, helped me to create a philosophical/meditative approach to art making. Since 1994, I have been teaching contemplative art retreats to inspire others to create from a contemplative perspective. In September 2015, I published Contemplative Art, a book describing my meditative painting process and definition for contemplative art amid images of my cloud paintings. In 2019, I joined D’art Gallery, located in the Art District on Santa Fe in Denver, Colorado, as founding and exhibiting artist.

From my personal perspective and years of art-making experience, I can wholeheartedly recommend this book, especially if you are looking for a way to start your creative journey or enhance your creative expression. Barbara knows from her life journey what she is sharing.

This book is based on her years of experience as an artist and her openness to expressing her creativity without holding back. This book is not a how-to. Rather, it’s an invitation to investigate, nurture, and discover your creative expression. It will guide you on a personal journey of discovery, growth, creativity, and expansiveness. I invite you to join her through her words into a wonderful world of art making.

Every person, at any level of creativity, should be guided to create his or her personal expression, not copy another artist’s style. This is what this book will help you to find—your personal style that only belongs to you.

I invite you to jump completely into this book and discover for yourself the artist that you already are, but just don’t know it yet. Go for it!

Suzanne Frazier

Preface

I almost gave up my dream of becoming a creative artist twenty years ago. I was stuck in a style, successful but so frustrated, and certain that I had progressed to my limit without ever achieving that old childhood vision. It was depressing. I was depressing. Life was depressing, and I understood hopelessness at depth as my behavior became self-destructive. The hour came when I had to choose, and I chose to ask for help. As the knots became unraveled, my voice became clear in creativity and in speaking with other artists with a passion to inspire them, not to stop, but to search for that open door, that class, or that heart-centered resonance to remind them that their talents are such powerful gifts that just might change the world.

Eight years ago I began writing a manuscript titled Watercolor and Beyond. It was to contain all I knew about painting and teaching watercolor. The beyond referred to a large group of my mindset tips. Twelve years of traveling and hosting workshops had convinced me I had a method that facilitated the learning speed for students and helped them to become comfortable exploring materials and processes. However, life intervened, and the working manuscript sat on a shelf.

In the intervening years, I became focused on my own creative explorations and realized a dream of setting up a studio attached to my home in Santa Fe. When the pandemic of 2020 arrived, I decided that I was going to come out of it with new work. I spent hours in my studio and on the trails, creating a body of abstract oils inspired by the high desert landscape. During that year, I remained in contact with students, helping them remotely. Remembering that initial manuscript, the idea formed to expand it and include all the subjects I had experience creating and teaching. Those initial mindset tips grew to become the first section of this book.

My students had taught me that inspiration and motivation were paramount to successful skill development. Life taught me that having a spiritual grounding gave purpose to my work, and I became aware that this was a large factor in the underlying success of many artists. Heart and soul, I poured my days into writing and rewriting with the belief that I might change one life, and that person might go on to do so also. Months passed as I created and gathered artwork to assist the projects. I am indebted to the generous contributions of artist friends for their work that cannot help but be inspirational and to my language-loving, philosopher husband for his kindness in only critiquing my intention and not my writing.

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Barbara L. McCulloch,

Photography by