Genesis Healing Arts Center

Japan is reeling from its worst crisis since World War II, a triple disaster triggered by a massive 3/11 2:46 pm earthquake, followed minutes later by a catastrophic tsunami and dangerous explosions at the Fukushima nuclear plants. While we in Tokyo are safe, our city unscathed, and out of nuclear harms’ way, we are all moved to take any action any way we can to help the people who are worst hit by this disaster. A limited number of Liane’s original sketchpaper paintings are now for sale with 100 percent of the proceeds going to earthquake relief operations in northern Japan led by our friend Rabbi Binyomin Edery of Chabad House Japan. Read about his amazing and valient efforts here.

To view the paintings and drawings included in this limited collection of art for sale please clink on this link to the Genesis Art Workshop Facebook page.

Greetings from Thailand!
Dear Liane,

I dont know if you’ll remember me but I’m Alejandro from Mexico and I joined you in one of your workshops.

Something courious just happened… I was reading a book at the bungalow Im staying at and I had an envelope inside the book… when I finished reading the book I opened the envelope and found the drawing that one of the guys who also attended the Genesis art meeting drew for me. Wow I was so surprised that the drawing is exactly as where I am staying right now… the style of the bungallow in front of a river with big plants with a shiny sun…

The beauty of manifestation.

I can’t remember the name of the guy but I remember that he is Chinese and he is good with computers… but please, if you see him again tell this to him, and that I’m very thankful that he drew this real scenery for me.

I hope that you and your family are in good health and with lot of happiness in your life.

Cheers,

リアン様

Alejandro

***Im sending you the pictures of the place and the drawing

In 1987 while traveling in southwest England, I chanced upon an old cottage where lived a woman artist who invited me for tea. She took me to her studio which overlooked a lovely lush green garden filled with flowers. I’ll never forget that garden or the small easel standing by the window which had on it not art, but a type-written page that I would need time to mull over. So I took a photograph of this easel and share its contents with you here, for on this simple page are the thoughts of a 19th century anonymous artist and philosopher. I wish I knew who he or she was in recognition of the wonderful gift offered to generations to come. I share it with you so you might see how those words unconsciously left their imprint on me, leading me to create The Genesis Way in the spirit of art as my anonymous inspiration so beautifully puts it: ‘the outward expression of the inward search.’

From an anonymous artist’s easel in Cornwall, England . . .

Art is not concerned merely with great artists, with genius or with prodigious skills. It is, fundamentally, the outward form of an inward search. To participate in this search, on whatever level and with whatever ability, is to be an artist. The equipment of the artist is not found in art shops only, but in his attitude of mind, in his vision and in his emotions.

It is of supreme unimportance whether the artist is possessed of some dazzling vision, like Samuel Palmer or whether he paints almost as a matter of amusement with whatever materials that happen to be at hand, like ¬old Afred Wallis – the important thing, the thing which links all artists together, is the search.

Works of art, sometimes good and sometimes bad, are the outward evidence of this search. But the work of art is really of secondary importance – it is merely the crystallization of an idea or emotion, and a correct understanding of art must take this fact into account.

The true importance lies in its alchemical nature, in its strange power to refine the sensibilities, to heighten visual awareness. This evolution of the spirit is the true aim of art, and anyone who embarks on this spiritual odyssey bears the name of artist.

The practice of art is not directed towards producing artists who can paint or sculpt with real ability, nor towards producing more works to fill our homes and galleries; it is directed towards producing human beings with a sense of wonder at life and that precious ability to enquire into its outward manifestations.

References

Samuel Palmer

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Palmer#The_Shoreham_years

Alfred Wallis

http://www.tate.org.uk/servlet/ArtistWorks?cgroupid=999999961&artistid=577&page=1

1. Genesis Art Workshops require no art background. All ages are welcome.

2. Intuitive art speaks in the affirmative. There is no reason to worry about your artistic abilities when you learn to trust that the artist within is actually a spiritual messenger offering wisdom meant just for you.

2. Everyone can decode practical messages in art that can be immediately applied to living a happier, more fulfilling creative life.

3. When you apply your creative abilities to serve your family, your closest relations, friends and society as a whole, these significant others can “see” what you are thinking, and can join you in making dreams come true.

5. The 44 Genesis Cards guide you to express both the world in front of your eyes, (so-called reality) and the world behind your eyes (imagination).

6. Each Genesis Way art session brings you growing confidence to hear, see and interpret what intuition expresses through your art.

7. The more art you do, the more intuitive you become. That’s the Genesis Way.

Private Consultations explore the powerful healing dimension of the Genesis Cards in one-on-one, couples or family sessions.

One-on-one sessions include layout readings and studio time painting an original work of art that often amplifies, or confirms, practical solutions. ¥8,000 one hour session/¥11,000 90 minute session

Private Group Sessions attended by couples or other family members: two hour Genesis consultation ¥15,000.

RESERVE NOW: 090-4122-6626

If you’ve lived in Japan long enough and tuned into the spiritual world here, you’ve probably heard of Ikuro, Sachiko and Takuro Adachi, the much-loved siblings who have been pioneers in the field of intuitive art for about 20 years. They are role models to a generation who are cutting through the illusion of pure material pursuits and instead seeking to live a path of evolving consciousness through intuition.
The problem is that if you don’t likve on a mountain top, are not a hermit, and have a family to raise and support, then living through intuition is rather scary at first. If you live in Tokyo, a city of 35 million, a busy architecture practice–as is the case of Ikuro Adachi, hold a senior sound enginer job at a major broadcasting company–as was the case with Takuro Adachi, then surrendering to the unpredictable nature of the intuitive world takes a great big leap of faith.
For the Adachi brothers, what prompted them both to catapult into the world of intuitive art was the sudden death of their younger sister, Sachiko Adachi. The story of her creative life and extraordinary last years of intuitive development can be read about in “To Live As We Are.” When Sachiko passed away shortly after her 47th birthday Ikuro Adachi began giving lectures in her place, standing in front of growing numbers of people who were intrigued by Ikuro’s way of explainting that living intuitive is a completely nature state of being for humans. It is, as he writes in “The Law of Undulation,” a journey of increasing our vibration, an evolution of spirit that brings us to study on earth.
This message eventually sunk in to such a degree that everything I experienced seem to come as part of this vibrational evolution, especially the difficult experiences. You look for confirmation that you’re doing the right thing while others around you watch from the sidelines at first. Gradually, tentatively, others try to follow.
Sachiko Adachi described herself in the last years of her life as a cosmic artist. She drew very clean, simple celestial images with pen and chakra color backgrounds that she programmed to have specific positive affects on the consciousness of an individual or a group.
Since July, Takuro and Ikuro are presenting an intuitive art workshop open to the public based on Sachiko’s approach which involved 3 principles: 1) What you’re drawing from the beginning comes from a place of not knowing 2) The seed for a picture comes in the form of a hint. A hint can be a color, a shape, sound or topic that is attractive to you. 3) From the hint you start to create and when your art is finished, a state of completion that you arrive as intuitively, you look and see contained a message.
The process is simple. For this intuitive art session, about 30 of us sat with various art supplies, lose paper or sketchpads in sizes of our own choosing. From our chosen medium, you wait till the inspiration flows. For those who prefer a trigger, there is Sachiko Adachi’s long horizontal picture book called “Intuition.” Flip up the pages to reveal solid planes of rainbow colors, each color marked with dots and curved lines to suggest cosmic activity. Voila. The art flows.
I participated in this three hour workshop keenly aware that my circmstances were not like the others in the room. I am the only non-Japanese in the room. I am the only particpant with two kids in tow, fully expecting to draw their own pictures and vocalize every step of their processes. I’m the only who is a practicing intuitive artist and teaching it for a living. And then there’s the social connection. Takuro is a dear old friend I hang out with, and with Ikuro, I have a wise loving avuncular closeness, mostly in the form of inspirational personal meetings held with Akihiko, my husband, almost from the moment Sachiko passed away.
That’s another story – how I arrived at Sachiko Adachi’s memorial service completely expecting I was going to volunteer at my friend Ai Yoko’s restaurant that warm night in June, 1993. Instead, the restaurant was closed. Close friends of Sachiko had gathered to hear a recording of her last lecture – the one that I would eventually be asked to edit for the English version of “To Live As We Are.” The impact that this book has had on my life as an intuitive artist would be hard to calculate. I had already begun to draw and paint for a few years before the manuscript arrived. But it was after I completed the book in 2000 that I began to reflect upon Sachiko’s message to future generations and assume that I had a role in delivering that message that went beyond the words. If anybody could create intuitive art, as Sachiko suggested, then I was the proof. A journalist turned painter. A mother with two small ones and little free time. If I could do it, anyone could.
Drawing means that you let go of expectations. By letting go, you have fun. You are clueless. The adventure begins. The surprises are certain even when the outcome isn’t. But still there are guidelines. A time frame. Choice of art supplies. A hint or a topic to pursue.
At Takuro and Ikuro’s workshop we were given the topic of birth. My birthday. An energy, a memory, an illustration, it didn’t matter what came out. As the pictures progressed I could see a development or growing organization in the physical body I have assumed in this planetary world. I drew picture after picture, not stopping although I was starting to feel tired. It wasn’t a feeling of pushing myself, but rather a feeling of being in a marathon. I was on track, cruising along on a journey , moving through page of sketchbook page , wanting to keep going in order to reveal the story of my birth.
I reached a natural point of conclusion after 11 pictures. Abstract art transformed into figurative art. And back to abstraction. I stopped when it felt to me like a full cycle had been reached. Please take a moment to enjoy seeing the series, with my thoughts about the process here at: Your comments as always are very welcome and appreciated.

Please watch this video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cbk980jV7Ao

“Validation” is the story of Hugh Newman, a parking garage attendant who serenades people with words of praise and encouragement. Hugh’s enthusiastic word and love for people changes them in extraordinary ways.

We all need Hugh in our lives. Especially artists. We are so prone to laying a heavy one on ourselves . . . where is Hugh when we need him in the art studio?

Validation gave me a sudden realization why the Genesis Cards are so loved by budding artists all over the world. The cards are like 44 “Hugh Newmans” in your pocket. Your art gets validated!

Your art does make a difference to the world. And your art gently encourages you to stay with a positive focus and belief that your creativity can have a hugely positive impact on others.

Since April my elder child, Mirai, 12, has been attending an experimental free school called Tokyo Sudbury School.

It’s experimental because this school is so new–just a year and a half old and there are currently only seven students attending. It’s a free school in the orthodox meaning that children are free to spend their day as they wish.

And still there are plenty of rules to keep the students very much engaged with each other, forming bonds, holding daily meetings, making decisions large and small about how they would like their educational experience to proceed.

The model for this school is based in Boston. The Sudbury Valley School in Framingham is the flagship for about 30 schools around the world that model themselves after the school that Dan Greenberg envisioned back in 1968 as the ultimate in non-schooling education. The idea is simple: give children a beautiful spacious environment and fill it with stimulating people who are happily going about their day sharing their passions, talents, and opinions with the kids in an informal homelike setting.

In Tokyo, the school is in the early phase of self-examination, exploring what it wants to be, what it practically can be, working out of a beautiful home setting, close to every imaginable resource, in one of the most exciting cities on the planet.

But I digress. This blog is meant to introduce you to the recent August activities at Tokyo Sudbury. I co-led an art and music camp with Sudbury head staff member Hiromo Imamura that was challenging because my usual approach when working with children is to “teach” them something new about art materials. The children had all come to explore and learn about art so there was nothing out of the ordinary about “teaching.” But I saw the potential of trying something different here with Hiromi. Instead of leading, we decided to follow the childrens’ interests. Instead of setting a time frame for art and music activities we let certain sessions go over time and others end sooner, depending upon the campers’ overall engagement.

As for choosing what we were going to do at the camp, I came with a plan. By midmorning the first day quite a bit of that plan was scrapped as I got to know the children and see what was driving their interest. For one child, it was the beautiful garden, for another it was new friendship, and so it went.

Art as a medium for story-telling was one activity on the agenda that I preserved as I could see how excited the children were to tell stories through the Genesis Cards. To read more about the Tokyo Sudbury School art and music camp, see photos and related captions here:

In the early half of the 20th century, Swiss psychologist Carl Jung immersed himself in many Eastern traditions and philosophies. This inspiration led him to originate a new branch of psychology that links the mind with creativity and spirit. Explorations with intuitive art led Dr. Jung to pioneer a branch of psychological exploration that is widely practiced today as art therapy.

While a vast amount is known about art therapy, comparatively little is known about the role of synchronicity in the creation and interpretation of intuitive art. Carl Jung was not only aware of the affinity between art and meaningful coincidences. He had first-hand experience of artistic synchronicity. When a request came from his German friend Richard Wilhelm to write a commentary for his new book Jung had just finished painting a mandala with a golden castle at its center.

“I devoured the manuscript at once, for the text gave me undreamed-of-confirmation of my ideas about the mandala and the circumambulation of the center. I became aware of an affinity. I could establish ties with something and someone. In remembrance of this synchronicity, I wrote underneath the picture which had made so Chinese an impression on me: ‘In 1928, when I was painting this picture showing the golden well-fortified castle, Richard Wilhelm in Frankfurt sent me the thousand-year-old text to the Yellow Castle, the germ of the immortal body.’ ”

Could it really be that this artistic synchronicity was so unusual? No, but art’s potential to synchronize with real life events before they have happened has been a socially taboo subject for so long that even Carl Jung refrained from sharing his most intimate art with the public out of concern that it would not be properly understood. Last November, his family made the decision more than 50 years after Jung’s death to publish and exhibit his deeply personal “Red Book” of writing and sketches. This summer in the USA, the Red Book can be seen in exhibitions in New York, DC and Los Angeles.

This is great news, a green light for artists to finally admit and talk about miracles that occur when art synchronizes with an external event of which the artist had no precognition.

I’ve experienced multiple life-changing synchronicities through art and I believe you can too.

The Genesis Cards and Genesis Art Workshops encourage you to start sharing and talking about spiritually meaningful art. When you recognize that art has a higher purpose, to support your soul journey, you no longer doubt the value of “drawing out” your creativity as a matter of habit.

In Genesis art workshops your own brightly colored paintings often mysteriously match the imagery on the 44 Genesis Cards. These seemingly miraculous connections lead you to believe in your creativity and your intuitive gifts and help you see the beautiful synchronicities of life.

This work of art beautifully demonstrates how visual influences come to us consciously and unconsciously. The artist here had selected the “Home” card before she began her drawing. She let go of any preconceived ideas of what the art should look like when she drew with the pastels and didn’t look to see what card she had selected until after her work was done.

The Home Card made her laugh out loud since it was less a suggestion than a confirmation of what she had already been doing. The artist was spending more time at home with her son.

In this extraordinary case, the artist’s image and the card image were strongly alike. This isn’t always so. However, if you gaze softly you can always find some connection, however small. And this connection is not remarkable in itself. It’s that you put the meaning to the link. You stretch your imagination to give a work of art relevance to your life.

The Swiss psychologist Carl Jung explained that we process experiences visually, that deeper than ideas and feelings there is a visual flow very much like a movie.
Dr Jonathan Young, founding curator Joseph Campbell Archives

Soul Travel with Art Supplies

Think of the Genesis Art Journal as soul travel with art supplies. You return from each creative adventure with the souvenir of a picture.

The Setting Off pastel pictured here revealed a subject that felt like a metaphor for the life I’m experiencing as an expatriate in Japan. I’m in the clouds seeing life from a nonordinary perspective. The advantage is the view. The challenge is in feeling the ground.

Certain images pop into the imagination and then recur. When an element mysteriously appears, like the rump of this white horse, I start searching for every shred of evidence that this phantom horse really does have meaning my life. A few years after this image was drawn, our family moved closer to our childrens’ school and it turned out our nearest park was Baji Koen, designed for holding magnificent horse shows! With art, meaning reveals itself over time although I can never anticipate how.

The inspiration for the Setting Off image came from Cinderella. I was reading Marcia’ Brown’s elegant classic to my daughter Mirai frequently. It was her favorite story as it had been mine. After this image was completed, I started noticing horses and carriages in the most unlikely places––while flipping television channels and visiting a gift shop where carriages on handkerchiefs were sold. This made me pay more attention to the message of the Setting Off card. I looked closely at the motifs and the message—and what came to me was to try a new direction, but not with my head turned distractedly away from my objectives. This advice would serve me well over the years I ran a public art studio called Genesis Art Lounge. Raising two young kids while running a business I often felt like the coach driver depicted here.

To have a conversation with your own work of creativity may sound a bit awkward but I do it all the time. Notice how it’s socially acceptable to bubble over about art created by someone else. But your own?

The Genesis art workshops in Tokyo and online give you the opportunity to talk passionately and specifically about your own works of art!