DEEP DIVE INTO INTENTIONAL CREATIVITY

What happens when you let the brush speak for itself? What happens if you do not dominate the process? What is hidden within that will knock your socks right off? Will you dare?

What is Intentional Creativity?

Intentional Creativity® is a philosophy for approaching what we make. We infuse what we make with intention, through mindfulness and embodiment. This approach to making our art can be applied to any medium and any thematic topic. Anyone can use it. Anyone. Everyone uses it even if they don't call it that. Our species have always made what we make this way. Good, bad or otherwise, all stuff we make and bring into form has a level of intention.  

Our work specifically, is to make this approach conscious, practice it in our art forms and the ways we live. We bring awareness to others about the impacts creating this way can have in our lives. Working with this level of awareness can cause awakening at an exponential level, as well as catalyze healing and move stuck energy. The frequency of Intentional Creativity with the power of love is having incredible impact in our communities - many claim it has been life saving.  

When we make something we infuse it with our energy. As it becomes infused, it takes a charge and becomes a resonator. This charge of energy is returned back to us, based on what we put into it. This is reciprocity at the quantum level. We recieve what we are giving instantly.  

If we choose to, we can also send this same feeling energy out to others, and yes, it travels there instantly. This is quantum connection. Even after we are done with what we make, years later it can still carry the 'charge' from our intention in the molecules. This is measurable science, intention in action. And we hope, love in motion.  

Intentional Creativity through focused imagination draws upon the energetic through intention with our hearts, minds, and the physical through the motions of our body as we 'commit art.'

Creating with intentional symbolism to communicate and tell story is ancient and pervasive the world over. From the Red Hand Cave paintings of Aboriginal peoples of Australia, the Japanese Tea Ceremony, Egyptian glyph and myths, Russian icons coded with story and symbol, Shaman drums painted with personal medicine, sacred theater in Ancient Greece, Black Madonna rituals like the Sous Terre in Chartres Cathedral, skin story tattoos of the Hawaiian Islands, Native American beadwork, baskets and garments, Taize Musical Worship from France, African dances for birth and death, to the modern movement of intuitive art being globally practiced – the references are truly ever-present and endless and in every culture in the world. The common red thread of telling stories across cultures, weaves us together.  

What Intentional Creativity is Not!  

A person, a painting, a painting style, 13 steps, a specific process, a brand, a company. Intentional Creativity is not me or you, it is all of us (hence Musea). Those of us who are teachers and coaches hold a practiced resonance, a frequency and teachings for how to apply it that we can share based on our experience with this work. The person is not the philosophy, but a practitioner of that idea. Their work may use Intentional Creativity, but that does not mean their style is Intentional Creativity in and of itself. Intentional Creativity as a philosophy cannot be bought or sold. It can only be given.  

In addition to MUSEA: Centers for Intentional Creativity, we also have our own 501c3. The Intentional Creativity Foundation preserves and illuminates an enduring legacy of four generations of art making. We provide education, research & community building, focused on creating with intention. Our field of practice and study, Intentional Creativity, is an emergent discipline combining creativity with mindfulness. Our projects to share this work with others are piloted by the global Intentional Creativity Guild.  

What We Are All About  

Our focus on creativity and culture is summoned from the deepest heart within our community to serve the planet and all beings into the future. Our unique part is to steward the contemporary creative and symbolic arts as part of the story we are telling about who we are as a people at this time. Artists and writers have always been the storytellers of each epoch - shaping how the story is told, what parts, and in what way.  

Why This Matters  

We feel it is time to tell a new story. Yet that story is intricately woven with stories of artists of the past. Especially as it relates to Intentional Creativity. All creative acts are intentional one way or another. With the advent of industrialization we lost the capacity to impact each creation with care for sustainability, beauty or impact. In earlier times our limitation of travel, time, resources and production automatically impacted our capacity to mass produce. While we call what we have done, progress, the impact on the environment, climate, living cultures and creatures has been devastating.  

A move towards greater intention creates consciousness because the one creating considers all aspects of their creation. When a creative chooses to bring an idea into form, a quantum collapse from concept to matter is realized. Matter, coalesced in form, is the result. However, as it unfolds, the considerations which happen automatically are inherent within the act of creation. Experience, process, context, function, resources, impact, timing, renewability, workforce, materials, longevity and aesthetics, to name a few. Without an artist even being aware of it, a myriad of choices are flowing through impacting the design. All of this is impacted by a form of intention. Someone could make a house, a bomb, a garden or a painting and all of these features of implementation during the creative process are considered to varying degrees.  

What Happens?  

What happens when the one creating chooses to be truly intentional, with an intent to uplift, to bless, to further, to nurture, to heal, to honor, to preserve? At the very level of particles, we know that the “matter” cannot NOT be impacted. When the creative is aware of this phenomenon, the capacity to implement this kind of focus/energy is able to be consciousnessly amplified. For example, many ancient cultures participated in the making of various forms of talismans. Talisman comes from the Greek, Telo, meaning to consecrate. Whether that was in the form of a jewelry or a bowl, or a tool, the maker was in essence ‘consecrating’ the item with their mind, heart and body. Physicists agree that these objects de’ art contain a charge, registered by the field. And in the case of a museum, or often visited site, a certain painting, sculpture or physical location could be ‘charged up’ energetically in the field, impacting the environment and the visitors and the quality of both. All of the senses, from scent to sight register the experience, and especially if one is open and even attuned to it. Our work will seek to illuminate what the field of science is acknowledging, what culture has always known, that HOW we create something might matter more, or just as much, as WHAT gets created.  

Imagine hearing your favorite piece of music and how it makes you feel. Recall an early childhood scent, and what image it conjures. Think about the last time you were presented food and the difference between smears and disorder on the plate, or a presentation curated with love. It is not a mystery that human beings by and large, prefer something curated with mindfulness from the maker - although all may not have the luxury of this experience or even the conscious awareness to prefer it. Industries like fair trade, green products, farm to table are all nods to this reality. In our work we are bringing awareness of, and an invitation to practice through intention. As well as the call for all beings to begin to understand, and wield their creative capacities in activism, self care, as well as leisure and well being.  

Ancient art has been used to learn about our ancestors, and who they were, yet focus on the artists themselves, as storytellers have been less illuminated. This poses several challenges, in that we are looking at the creation, instead of the creative. Who was the person that created that first star map, or placed those thirteen dots, or placed their hands upon the wall? (need documentation at the bottom) And what was it they, personally, were trying to communicate, what did they want us to know? Too often dominant culture has shaped those meanings to their own ends, and then, a different story gets told. We may never know the real story, but when stories arise in image that tell a different story than the one being promoted in popular culture, it gives us cause to thoughtfully look back. Specifically regarding women, we have learned that features attributed to men actually were shared by women, the art tells us something different. Examples are ideas like When the women were drummers, women as deacons as a lost part of history, ‘restoring women to cultural memory’. Our focus is not to go back and point out every incident where a different story is being told, our historical focus will be brought into light through specific shows and artists who work with historical material as it relates to their personal creations.  

We are choosing to uplift, celebrate, and preserve the living arts practiced by artists and creatives who have within their scope a desire to serve, contribute, transform and offer healing. Our concepts are focused on the lives of artists, the contexts in which they create, the culture, their activism, their responses, their intentions and literally their lifestyles. Who they were, where they lived, why they did what they did, and what is the story being told about them by them, or by us if they are no longer living.  

Intentional Creativity has been practiced by all beings of all epochs. We are choosing to name and claim ‘intention’ as a distinct function of mindfulness in regards to what we create. Intention initiates action, as well as the quantum reality of how the creative impacts the creation, and in turn, how that creation impacts the one creating. Then how a potential viewer may be personally impacted through their engagement with the work. In our research, we also explore how quantum mechanics impact the creation, the creative and the world at large. The sciences that point to the tipping point, the ripple or the butterfly effect, let us know that indeed we are all connected. Our work is an invitation to connect to what we make at a conscious level.  

We will have shows both digitally, as well as in-person exhibits at the global level. We currently have locations in Australia, the United States, Mexico and Denmark that are featuring aspects of Intentional Creativity collection and educational curriculum. Intentional Creativity is practiced in homes, hospitals, social work settings, foster care, cancer recovery, business environments, homeless shelters, classrooms, and circles. It is also used in ceremonies like wakes, births, or weddings.  

Why We Do it 

Painting. Music. Language. Cuisine. Culture. Architecture. Poetry. Theater. Pottery. Drawing. Sculpting. Dance. All mediums, when made with a sacred intent, tell a story. A story of the artist, and the time they were living in, as well as what they wanted us to know about who we were as a people at that point in history. Our museum has chosen this framework for ‘viewing’ art making in development for over 25 years through research with thousands and thousands of participants about the impact of creation on our lives, past, present and future. We have occupied a physical campus for over fifteen years, and prior to that art galleries for ten years, all in all, featuring hundreds of artists. We have over 200 teachers trained in Intentional Creativity around the world, offering it to kindergarteners, veterans, people in the corporate world, the prison system, social services, foster care, hospitals, therapy, and so much more.  

The Intentional Creativity Foundation preserves and illuminates an enduring legacy in mindful art making. We provide education, research & community building, focused on creating with intention. Our field of practice and study, Intentional Creativity, is an emergent discipline combining creativity with mindfulness. Our project is piloted by the global Intentional Creativity Guild.  

Tree of Life, Sue Hoya Sellars 2019


Explanation of Our Color Wheel

  • HEART CONNECTIONS : Red ~ We are a global collective of creatives committed to strengthening our connections through Intentional Creativity
  • INSPIRED PHILOSOPHY : Red Orange ~ We are innovators of emergent culture rising from self expression through image, language and inquiry
  • LEGENDARY EMPOWERMENT : Orange ~ We are storytellers at cause for weaving a new mythic tale of chosen transformation with our members  
  • TRANSFORMATIONAL SERVICE : Yellow ~ We are gatekeepers of the inner world often inhabited by artists, writers, teachers and healers who choose translate our gifts into offerings
  • PHILANTHROPY Yellow Green ~ We are philanthropists of reciprocity who sustain art making as central to our lives and create sacred containers rooted in collaboration  
  • FULL SELF EXPRESSION : Green ~ We are artists who gather and uplift community to bring their body of work to life and share it with the world
  • COMPASSIONATE VIGILANCE : Blue ~ We are protectors of the creative soul and we hold that all beings are inherently creative and have a right to self expression  
  • GATHERING OURSELVES: Turquoise ~ We are gatherers of diverse and curious tribes coming together to break bread, share stories, and co-create installations in global venues
  • RELEVANT TEACHINGS : Indigo ~ We are innovators with visionary natures who connect science, mystery, technology and creativity to equip ourselves and future generations  
  • ENDURING LEGACY : Purple : We are cosmic librarians of the lineage of Intentional Creativity, and all of our ancestors who mindfully crafted their matter into form  
  • IMAGINATION Magenta ~ We are curators of futuristic museums and art making venues that invite participation, celebration, collaboration, art education, and collecting