Courageous Creativity with Dominque Hurley

The exercise with Dominque Hurley was to create a mandala. To get the images for the mandala, she led us through a guided meditation. First we identified a feeling. What came up for me was loving acceptance and the colors associated with that were royal blue which merged into bright green. She had us think of a location-- mine was a field by a stream and then to picture a gateway of some sort. Mine looked like an arch of stones.  She led us through some more exercises but what was particularly salient for me was asking our "guides" what I can do in my everyday life to achieve this feeling. She told us to accept their gifts and answers to our question. The first guide that popped up for me was Buddha who touched my head and then touched the earth. The second guide was Kwan Yin who gathered me up in her many arms and hugged me.  Her answer to me was to "listen." She then turned me around and gently nudged me forward.  So the outer circle of my mandala became Kwan Yin's hands. I carved this into a stamp and then stamped around the circle and colored it in with watercolor pencil followed up with Derwent ink sticks.  I really love how it turned out, although I do wish I'd stamped the hands in black instead of brown. I ended up outlining the eye so that it stood out more.

Here's what the hand stamp looks like on its own.