Arts & Culture
Artist helps others transform through creative process
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Artist Roberta Veatch believes creativity can guide many human processes. |
Roberta Veatch believes that anyone can learn to express themselves creatively whether they’re an artist or not, and she sees remarkable benefits in learning how to be creative.
In her Alchemy Arts Studio on Cedros, Veatch not only creates oil, acrylic and encaustic paintings herself, she leads creativity workshops on everything from journaling to creating sacred spaces, storytelling, writing poetry and painting. Using her training in expressive arts, Veatch leads people in three-hour workshops that are designed to teach them how to let go, so that they can become more creative in their work environment, relationships, homes and daily life. By year’s end, she will complete her certification for her expressive arts studies with Dr. Jane Goldberg in Laguna Beach, and then she plans to offer 12-week workshops.
“Expressive arts is the new psychology as far as I'm concerned because creativity is so healing,” she said. “It’s not art therapy; it’s the process of creating something, whether it’s a poem, a painting or a creative journal.”
Veatch said that the process involves taking that innate soul creative quality and allowing people to dive in and come up with their own treasures.
According to Veatch, people always feel like they’ve been transformed in some way after taking one of her workshops.
She said that people experience a variety of benefits from going through the process, including everything from just cleaning a room to improving a relationship.
“We’re not looking for a product in the workshops; it’s really more about the process, then we talk about what happened,” she said. “I’ve done a lot of work with the intuitive arts, which blends with the expressive arts, and we do a lot of workshops that really lend themselves to having people open up.”
Veatch is no stranger to the creative process herself. She’s been painting since she was 5 years old and later studied fine arts at Arizona State University for several years before getting married.
While in her early 20s, Veatch had a daughter and then took a break from the art world. She and her family moved to Houston, Texas, where she became involved in a motivational speaking career. She didn’t return to the creative life until age 40 after she and her family returned to Arizona. She promptly renewed her interest in painting and joined the Tempe Art League. Soon after that, she opened her first Alchemy Arts Gallery in Chandler, Arizona, where she painted and began giving creative workshops.
Always intrigued with color, Veatch also studied color therapy through Stonebridge Associated Colleges in the United Kingdom where she completed a three-year course in one year.
A longtime impressionist/realist painter, Veatch recently began doing abstracts after taking a workshop in encaustic painting.
“Encaustic is wax and oil,” she said. “It means to burn pigment into the wax, and the process goes back to 5th century Greece.”
Veatch tries to be in her studio every day if she can. She mediates before she starts to paint and then usually paints at least three to five hours at a time. She prefers painting 15-by-20-inch sized paintings on canvas.
“When I sit down to paint, I pretty much trust the source, let go and don’t worry about the product and let the process of creativity come through,” she said.
Because she and her husband found Arizona’s weather so confining, they moved to Del Mar over four years ago. She couldn’t be happier with the climate and the artistic ambiance. She finds it liberating to be an artist in California where the ocean holds a special allure for her.
“To be able to look out and see the sea and the dolphins is like something out of a dream for me,” she said.
Veatch continues to show her work at the Del Mar Art Center Gallery on the plaza and participated in an exhibit with fellow members during the recent Art Stroll.
She looks forward to the next Third Thursday on Cedros when the Design District will celebrate its 10th anniversary on Oct. 18 from 5:30 to 8:30 p.m.
On Feb. 22-24, Veatch will display her work at the Santa Monica Arts Festival in their Civic Auditorium. And on April 26-27, she will show her work at the San Diego Art Walk, from noon to 6 p.m. in San Diego’s Little Italy district.
Visit Veatch at her Alchemy Arts studio at 341 South Cedros Ave, Suite A or view her artwork at www.bead1.com.
