BOOKS ABOUT MINDFULNESS AND CREATIVE PROCESS
Alisa’s has written books on mindfulness painting, painting memories, liminal space art, spiritual memoir, and spiritual autobiography. These books are an opportunity for adults to discover, enjoy, and explore. Read below to learn more about Alisa’s books which can be found on Amazon. You can also contact Alisa regarding bulk orders.
Realize deeply that the present moment is all you have. – Eckhart Tolle
Mindfulness Painting Books:
Alisa shares the power of mindfulness painting in her latest book titled Mindfulness Paintings: A Book of Creative Meditation Exercises, Artwork and Art Activities. This book explores mindfulness painting and its power to bring us peace, enter us into the present moment, and make us more fully aware. Whether you are a beginner or an experienced artist, this book will help you enter the “Mindful Zone” through a variety of painting and meditative experiences.
About Mindfulness Paintings:
Paint, Think, Notice and Be Mindful…
Mindfulness Paintings is a book full of creative meditation exercises, artwork, and art activities that will help you embrace the present moment. You will find suggestions for noticing and accepting your thoughts and feelings through creative techniques.
Mindfulness Paintings will help you become more aware of how your body and mind are connected as you try some calming art experiences. An artist’s voice will lead you to notice and observe your own thoughts without judgement or distraction. You will develop more compassion for yourself and others as you quiet your mind and make something new.
With each line, stroke, color, and shape you make, you just might pay attention to things you have not noticed before. You will have the opportunity to feel new joy and peace as you hear the voice of your artist at work, as you play with art making tools, and as you try some simple mindfulness art techniques and exercises. Open this book, pick up your paintbrush, and allow your journey into the present moment begin!
About Shrines, Altars, and Spiritual Things
In “Shrines, Altars, and Spiritual Things,” Alisa guides readers on a transformative journey through the intersection of art and spirituality. This book delves into three-dimensional explorations, encouraging us to navigate life’s liminal spaces by crafting personal “shrines, altars, and spiritual things” imbued with sacred meaning. Alisa shares her own creative journey, offering images of her assemblage altars, shrines, and spiritual works, along with QR codes linking to YouTube videos for a more immersive experience.
This book underscores the uniqueness of each individual’s exploration, shaped by personal experiences and reflections. Alisa inspires readers to pursue their own artistic practices, fostering a profound connection to the creative process. She encourages crafting altars of reflection that nurture faith in art’s transformative power, reconnecting us with both our deeper selves and the shared human experience. This compelling collection of sculptures, assemblages, and spiritual art reveals how creativity can be a vessel for remembrance, meaning-making, and spiritual growth, inviting everyone to embrace their own artistic journeys.
About Painting Memories
I dream about the past on my canvas. I see the loved ones that I have lost. I imagine seeing them within the places we lived life together. One day, I will return to these people and the places and spaces that we shared. Until that day comes, I paint it all. Art gives me a way to make sense of my past in the present moment. Each canvas is an opportunity to capture memories and express the feelings they release. Through example, inspiration, word, and image, “Painting Memories” encourages the expression of memory and emotion through creative process.
Creative Process is an Opportunity…..
Looking back on my paintings leaves me grounded in truth. It’s the truth that tomorrow I will have my paintbrush ready. I see how much I have grown and learned on my journey, and I thank my canvas. It lets me move ahead with my memories. It lets me experience the past. I journey back, sit in the present moment, and move forward to a more hopeful future with a stroke of red, a splotch of black, and a scrape that reveals bright yellow. I dig in my paints, and I remember. I cut, scrape, pull, and swirl the colors as I recall the past. The process of reflecting on memories and experiencing the emotions they evoke lets me see the hope. I do this with a canvas and a paintbrush. I can’t imagine a world where others don’t do this too. Read Painting Memories. Then, please paint with me and remember.
Liminal Space Books:
Alisa shares her art along with reflections that explore liminality’s influence upon it. Liminal spaces are seen through the lens of a mindful art maker. The spaces are then painted and described with an artistic eye. A deeper understanding of the time we spend between “What Has Already Happened” and “What’s Coming Next” is found through the artist’s process. From within the creative flow, in-between moments are captured with a paintbrush and the artist’s voice. A better understanding of our “In-Betweens,” and the ways art can give us hope in those places no matter how hard our present places may seem, waits inside Art and Liminal Space.
About Art and Liminal Space:
Transient, Ephemeral and Undefinable Things….
A freshly painted canvas is my map for understanding where I am in time and space. This map gives unique perspective. It’s a map that creative expression gives to any art maker—objectivity that most can’t find a voice for. Art makers are left with some kind of work that lets them reflect on where they are at any given time and in any given space. Their work shows them where they have been, where they are, and where they are going. Art itself can capture our place in a liminal space.
With great unease, I now take on a daunting task. I will try and catch it (liminality) with my words and painter’s hands—to express this intangible, abstract and fleeting thing. I choose this rocky path that I pray will lead you and me to transformation. May we hover in the “Not Knowing” of the “In-Between” and then stand at the threshold of “What’s Next”—peering in to see a new place taking shape and glimpsing the fruits of crossing over that threshold and into something new.
To better understand the great lessons we learned while we waited in the powerful “In-Between” would be a most amazing thing. Precious would it be to see this strange liminal space that most often keeps us in one place, yet takes us on journeys to where we never thought we’d go. By the grace of God, these meek pages will help us better understand these transient, ephemeral, and undefinable things.
Learn More about Liminal Space Art at:
Spiritual Autobiography and Spiritual Memoir Books
Alisa has been long delving into her creative process and discovering its meditative benefits. We now describe these benefits with words like “meditation” and “mindfulness” or “creative flow.” Alisa began describing that “mindful creative flow” through the writing of her own spiritual autobiography. Using words and art, she found voice for peace, hope, and awareness of God’s constant presence in her daily life. This all helped her spiritual memoir, Dancing in the Doghouse, take form. Alisa now seeks ways to share this mindful, spiritual journey and its many meditative and healing benefits. Alisa trusts that by sharing the creative ways she faced the challenges of her own journey, she will be able to help others and encourage them. She hopes they will explore the benefits of “creative flow” and find a creative way to be more mindful and present through art making, writing, and story sharing. Alisa’s spiritual autobiography, Dancing in the Doghouse: Sharing God’s Presence in Everyday Places, invites people to join her on this exciting journey towards being more present, peaceful and aware. Whether this happens with a pen, a piece of paper, a canvas, or a paintbrush does not matter to Alisa. She only hopes others will find their creative voice and explore its spiritual benefits. Alisa shares with the hope of igniting a journey for others: a journey to understand and share their spiritual stories.
About Dancing in the Doghouse:
-an ordinary story, an ordinary life, extraordinary hope
Alisa’s life hasn’t been easy. Like most, her past is filled with ordinary (yet considerable) challenges -common things not easily overcome. Looking back, she sees struggle and suffering, but she also finds much hope mingled with it. Alisa can see the hope because she has kept an account of it: on papers with a pencil, upon canvases with a paintbrush, using torn papers, pastels, glitter and ink. Reflecting on this account, Alisa discovers that someone has been with her through it all: an ever-present, personal and loving God. Dancing in the Doghouse is Alisa’s inspirational story of hope. She shares it for the chance that others will see its hope, know it and share it too.
Learn more about Dancing in the Doghouse at:
Michigan Literary Network and Dancing in the Doghouse
Host Sylvia Hubbard Interviews Alisa E. Clark on Blog Talk Radio
Click on the link to hear the interview:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/michiganliterarynetwork/2010/04/21/michigan-literary-network-sh