About PFTS:

Painting from the Source® is for men and women who have considered painting, but never thought they could. It is also for people who are trained in the arts, and would like to explore and expand the source of their creativity. The workshops are for anyone who wants to awaken their artist's soul. It will rekindle your sense of freedom and will affect other areas of your life as well. Many who have experienced the workshop have found this painting process to be genuinely transformative. For a tiny taste of the vast soul feast available in Aviva's workshops and book try this sampler: HANDS ON: A "taste" of The Painting from the Source Experience

Please note: Workshops involve a commitment to inner work and group process. The book, Painting from the Source, is required reading prior to all workshops, and is available at the PFTS Online Store.

PAINTING FROM THE SOURCE: A VISION QUEST THROUGH CREATIVE EXPRESSION

Come, venture in, apply paint to paper as a Path to radical breakthrough, a path to awakened artist soul, to open heart, to love, to renewed vitality and purpose. Imagine staying in one single painting that can be multi layered, can shrink and grow, for 5 days! How can this be possible? Certainly, previous painting experience is not an advantage here. Anyone with a willing heart and adventurous spirit can vision quest Painting From the Source.

Just show up at the empty paper in our safe, sacred, kindergarten painting chapel, available to and your fellow soul seekers around the clock. Paint vibrant colors, fire orange, midnight black, deep pool blue, all of creamy sensuous child Tempera paint. Paint your heart out. Paint as deep prayer. Paint your worst fears and deepest passion. Paint to feel, experience, be embodied. Paint not for outcome, but to experience "being" in the moment. Paint as if you will burn it, as your yoga, riding your edge, cuddling up to your challenge. Paint till your mind releases judgments, comparisons, interpretations, and personal stories. Paint ugly for beauty, death for rebirth, beauty for grief. Move, dance, scream, cry, growl, clown your painting. Paint till the painting paints you. Speak the Beauty of its authentic unashamed truth. This is the Indigenous Medicine way. This is living poetic myth. Alter an image from this place, and your body and dreams are altered. In this setting painters and paintings bond into a united open hearted community where a triumph for one becomes a triumph for all.

PFTS is a deep healing intensive that uses paint and other creative modalities as a vehicle to go deep into the collective source of all creation and healing, similar to Carl Jung's process of "Active Imagination". It is not a painting class. But the subsequent authentic beauty far surpasses any painting class. For success and the necessary solid safe container, this workshop requires a commitment to an extended schedule, retreat from outside distractions, abstain from over stimulating substances, staying present with possible strong emotions in self and others, and to reading and following preparation guidelines that will be sent to you upon registration.

It is required to read Painting From the Source by Aviva Gold.

Aviva leads Painting from the Source workshops both nationally and internationally within the following forums:

• Workshops at alternative educational centers, Sacred Sites worldwide, and by invitation.
• PFTS Teacher Training for prospective PFTS Practitioners. Rooted in love and mutual support, individual leadership and a teaching style emerge while learning how to help others connect with their truth through creative expression.
• Corporate seminars to facilitate the intuitive process for problem-solving, team-building, stress-reduction, decisions with integrity
• Individual and group consultations for creative breakthrough.

Letter from PFTS Participant:

I wanted to write and thank each of you in Aviva's workshop this past week. For me, it was an extraordinary experience. Driving home on Sunday, and on Monday, and even today, my mind has been filled with images, memories, and appreciation of the gifts each of you gave, to the group and to me. I've been to personal growth workshops, yoga workshops, shamanic circles, Buddhist groups, you name it!, for years and years, and I've never experienced the degree of COMFORT, trust, and intimacy that WE created, together, in just a few days, with Aviva's guidance, of course.

For me, at least, this great ease came from my own belief that we all shared a willingness to entertain the possibility that a Source does exist, that it's beyond our normal conscious small ego, and that, furthermore, we can be willing for that Source to express itself through us. With that shared foundation, I then found each person's completely unique, different expressions not only acceptable, but mysterious, powerful, and wonderful, and I mean both our expressions in Paint AND our expressions in Personality.

Whether true or not, I assumed everybody else also accepted my own spontaneous expressions without judgment, and so I experienced an ease and naturalness in doing, in speaking (or being silent), and in painting, which I seldom if ever have experienced in a group of people,let alone a group of "strangers".

As an educator, I've long been committed to "valuing diversity", and in our interactions with each other, and in our painting together, I really experienced what it FEELS like to appreciate and delight in all the differences we brought into the same room, paradoxically making our shared humanity all the clearer.

The commitment to being open to Source, and to not judging anyone else's way of connecting with or expressing their own experience, was different than sharing a set of religious beliefs and practices. While I've certainly benefitted from my many years in various Buddhist groups, it was such relief NOT to have any "doctrine" built on top of that basic commitment. The specifics of belief and "right" and "wrong" didn't seem relevant . . . what a relief!!

Aviva's prayer, on the last day, seemed to describe my experience: she prayed for us humans to discover that we could put down our weapons and tools of destruction (and now I see that judgments are a thoughtform that can evntually manifest as guns) and would decide instead to play guitar for each other, or sing, dance, create beauty for each other. It seems so simple, yet so powerful. What we created, together, gave me a taste of what that would be like as a living, breathing reality, not alone, but with others. The ritual we spontaneously co-created at the end, when Eileen invited us to put purple trust dots on her painting, powerfully embodied that new way of being together.

After most courses and workshops, I'm eager to return to my peaceful house on the lake, with my cats. For the first time I can remember, I wished I could just stay there, painting, with all of you, completely unpractical, but on a feeling level I could have done so.

Blessings to you all and thank you again.

Lark Hammond, High School English Teacher

About Aviva:

Biography of an Art Medicine Woman

Aviva Gold MFA, MPS, CSW, ATR-BC, REAT, calls herself a painting witch. And like most witches throughout history, Aviva is steeped in the womanly art of midwifery. Why a witch? Because she is intimately conversant with the mysteries and magic that underlie everyday reality, and with the alchemy that taps into them to bring healing and integration. Why a midwife? Because she is a skilled guide to those on the path to the deepest truth and the complex process of spiritual evolution. This dual personae is the medium Aviva uses to make her teaching unique and uniquely powerful: painting is her channel to the truth.

Abundantly gifted as a professional, widely exhibited artist, teacher, group leader, and public speaker, Aviva Gold has evolved from art therapist/teacher and psychotherapist in private practice into a spiritual guide through painting. Whose reputation precedes her nationally and around the world. Her workshops and lectures on the innovative method she calls "Painting From The Source," draws seekers of every stripe, from beginners who have never before dared to put brush to paper: to experienced professional artists with their own worldwide reputations; neophytes on the evolutionary path who are just beginning their explorations to highly evolved spiritual seekers, fully aware of the myriad paths to the source. From deeply troubled individuals daring to look inward for the first time to integrated students at home in their evolving selves. Notable among Aviva's characteristics as a teacher and guide is her ability to reach the full range of students who come to her workshops and presentations. The diversity of her students is one of the most wonderful aspects of her work.

As her book, Painting From the Source: Awakening the Artist's Soul in Everyone (HarperCollins) and her work demonstrate, Aviva's message that painting can be a conduit to humankind's most profound wisdom- has messianic quality: one hears it and begins to nod in agreement. For this reason, Aviva has spent much of her professional life seeking out and welcoming opportunities to describe the principles and method of Painting from the Source. She has presented her message, through lectures and workshops, in many personal growth centers throughout the world. These include workshops at Interface, Boston, Massachusetts; Omega Institute, Rhinebeck, New York; Kripalu, Lenox, Massachusetts; Common Boundary Conference, Washington D.C.; Synergia Ranch, Santa Fe, New Mexico (where she conducts extended workshops on a regular schedule); Knowledge Network, Albany, New York; Wainwright House, Rye, New York; Leading Edge Seminars, Asheville, North Carolina; Atsitsa, Skyros Island, Greece; Center for Harmonious Living, Athens, Greece; Open Center, New York City; Sedona Fellowship Center, Sedona, Arizona; Rowe Conference Center, Rowe, Massachusetts. Beginning in 1996, and at regular intervals Aviva has retreats at her own creative arts center, in Spencertown, New York.

Aviva's academic background has led her to serve as a lecturer on aspects of creative and emotional development at the New Hope Guild Mental Health Clinic, Brooklyn, New York, from 1986 through 1991, and on dream work, the precursor to the Painting from the Source method, in the Continuing Education department of Queens College, Flushing, New York. She has lectured extensively in many other academic venues as well. Besides a long background teaching to children, kindergarten through high school in New York City, she taught painting, drawing and art history at New Mexico State College in 1972, in Alamorgordo, New Mexico. See Aviva's Resume for more.

Aviva has been interviewed extensively on radio, television, and for art periodicals and other publications (for example: Art Times and New Age Journal-Sept.98 issue), and is a highly engaging speaker on her passion, Painting from the Source, for example, on 'Art Beat,' a radio program). She is enthusiastic about participating in the marketing of her book and can bring to bear her years of experience in telling the world her deep and compelling message.

Internationally, Aviva Gold has taught people from all over Europe who have traveled to Atsitsa and a yoga ashram in Greece, and her work there has been widely reported in various European and English publications. She is also included in Transformative Adventures, Vacations and Retreats, an international directory of more than three hundred host organizations assembled by John Benson. Recently, Ms. Gold has been invited to be a presenter at the annual International Conference on the Creative Arts in St. Petersburg, Russia, and Vilnius, Lithuania. Further plans include bringing groups to Costa Rica, Bali, and Nepal, where she has visited and laid the groundwork for these projects. She has participated with an International Group based in Tucson, Arizona, called Visions of Global Unity: Inspired Images from Global Art Project, which matches up artists from around the world who exchange work with one another. In that and other global projects, a DVD depicting Painting from the Source has been received enthusiastically in many countries.

In 2000, Aviva Gold completed her instructional DVD, Painting From The Source, and began her first 2 year Art Medicine Training Program, preparing 16 individuals to teach Painting From The Source.

In answer for our cultures current call for creative openings, Aviva Gold's life work culminates with the release of her book, Painting From the Source: Awakening the Artist's Soul in Everyone (HarperCollins), a national book and media tour, and the article, A Soul's Palette by Paul. Block, in the Sept/Oct. issue of New Age Journal, featuring her book and workshops.

Updated Resume

* MFA- Master of Fine Arts with minor in Dance Therapy, CSW- Certified Clinical Social Worker, ATR-BC- Art Therapist, Registered, Board Certified, REAT- Registered Expressive Arts Therapist, MPS - Masters of Professional Studies in Art Therapy

"Authentic soul touching art comes from a divine place deep within and the ritual of creating and viewing such art is central to the healing of individuals, organizations, communities and the planet." -Aviva Gold

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