JAM SESSION: Experiential Drawing and Painting Paperback – May 1, 2022

Ever wonder why we "play" music but do art "work"? Learn how to improvise and enliven your work both alone and with your artist friends in this informative and instructional handbook. Revised and reformatted in 2025 for Amazon, JAM Session explores the conflict many painters face between the desire to intuitively discover their voice through spontaneous expression, and the need or desire to focus on the end result or product. And it presents a case and method for strengthening our ability to surrender to the paint and allow what is waiting to be revealed.As adults we have a tendency to think that the undefined or unintentionned is frivolous. In JAM Session, Experiential Drawing and Painting, we learn the value and even critical importance of that time in unplanned experiential engagement with our painting. Thanks to neuroscience, we now know that part of our brain is responsible for being in the moment, open to the new, unexpected and empathic, and we know how important it is to strengthen that kind of receptive, unbiased attention. As painters we also know the importance of being intentional about our work and use of our skills and critical thinking. Painters often face the confounding choice of allowing their work to be intuitively discovered, or, deliberately contrive a product to meet a need, goal or expectation. JAM Session presents a model for working with these competing agendas.This is the handbook for the workshop of the same name the author facilitated for over a decade. It is a marriage between her career as a psychotherapist with a M.S. in Clinical Psychology and her first degree in painting with many years in the studio. (www.dianasanford.com). Revelations from the field of neuroscience brought clarity to her own painting process and resulted in the workshop and eventually this handbook. In this short but dense and richly illustrated volume you will:*Gain insight into the neurobiology of your painting process*Learn how to identify the competing agendas and how to mediate them*Learn a model for how to honor and value each in your art making*Learn how to strengthen the intuitive/receptive part of your brain through a series of structured exercises that teach you how to surrender and see in new ways.*Learn how to facilitate your own JAM Session for painters with your friends or in your community.*Gain insight into your own personal motivations and relationship with your process as a painter.This handbook is for painters of all levels, beginner to advanced (and other creatives may find it interesting also). A suggested materials list is included for use with the exercises but can be modified for use with your materials of choice.Allowing ourselves to be in the paint is not easy. We can think of many reasons why that doesn't make sense or isn't worth it. This handbook will teach you how very important and worth it that surrendering is. Read more