Leader
Kathie MacDuffKathie MacDuff is an artist, graphic designer and journalist who captures her artistic passions within her signature program, Creative Journaling. For the past 26 years, she has been teaching creative journaling as well as courses in watercolour, mixed media and a wide assortment of paper arts including book binding.
She is the Expressive Arts Team Lead at Wellspring Calgary where she’s been a regular facilitator offering many and varied courses over the past fourteen years in person and on Zoom. She was a forerunner instructor with the Tom Baker Cancer Center leading to the establishment of their Medicine in Art initiative and was involved with a year-long research program with the Primary Care Network Pain Clinic studying the effects of creativity on pain and depression.
She facilitated classes at the Good Shepherd Art Studio in Calgary since its inception in 2006 to 2022 and is a regular guest instructor and speaker at many retreat and conference centres throughout Alberta and British Columbia.
Most recently, she relocated to British Columbia where she works as Associate Director of the Sorrento Conference and Retreat Centre overseeing Expressive Arts programming amongst other things.
Her vision is to facilitate creative experiences that encourage connections, validate emotions, and nourish the soul. She finds fulfillment of these goals thanks to the wonderful people she gets to hang out with!
Following the Surrealists: A Mixed Media Homecoming
$400/week. Course fee $150 plus the $250 Activity fee
The Surreal art movement began in the 1920’s thanks to Andre Breton, a French writer and poet. It rejected society’s oppressive rationality and explored the irrational and the subconscious mind. Breton was highly influenced by Sigmund Freud who theorized that the unconscious mind (which expressed itself through dreams) was the source of creativity. Surrealist artists employed many innovative approaches to unlock ideas from their subconscious and we will follow their lead. Some of these approaches, like collage and calligrams, may be familiar, and some, like bulletism and parsemage, may not be. This will be an adventure and all you need is a curious and playful attitude.
We will be working on 8.5 x 11 inch mixed media paper as well as notepaper to capture our thoughts, processes and experiments in a binder which will serve as a source of inspiration for future creativity.
