Artistic Entrepreneur Creates Fire Tree Studios

I met Melissa D’Antoni at the RISE workshop I gave in Austin this past March. She opened Fire Tree Studios just a couple of years ago. The purpose for Fire Tree Studios is to provide “a safe and sacred space for clients to discover and explore their creativity, joy and personal truth utilizing the expressive arts, coaching and yoga modalities”, according to Melissa.

I received a newsletter from Melissa this week and thought this excerpt from it was an interesting read in light of the last couple of posts I have written.
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“As the sun illumines the moon and the stars, so let us illumine one another.”
-Anonymous

by Melissa D’Antoni

This morning a client of mine had a powerful experience in her painting process. As I observed her as she painted, I could tell she was stuck in her process…her energy had stopped flowing. Her body stiffened, eyebrows squinted and she physically began to contract. I could almost hear the inner critic doing it’s ‘number’ within her mind, trying to sabotage her creativity by inviting her to doubt herself.

I asked her what she was thinking about. She said that she wanted to de-emphasize several images and focus on one central image in the center of her painting. As she spoke, she used her hands to communicate and she pushed away the images that she didn’t want to see and used a welcoming gesture to communicate how she wanted to bring this central image out more into the forefront.

As I mirrored these hand gestures to her, immediately she was able to see that she was actually more focused on pushing away something she doesn’t want, rather than focusing on what it is that
she DID want to bring into the limelight of her experience. Painting is a kinesthetic process and she was using her hands to express what she was feeling-by moving the energy in her body it brought her to a greater understanding of herself. This is a great example of how self-expression can deepen our creative process and even our life experience.