Spirit of Color brings exciting new ideas to the creation of art and the use of color — ideas that combine meditation, art therapy, and hands-on exploration of the creative experience.

Sensory awareness, the technique used here, is similar to Buddhist meditation. Author Connie Smith Siegel takes readers through a series of visual experiments that teach the relationships between touching, seeing, and moving. Soon, artists are able to find the movements, shapes, and colors that express what they are experiencing in the moment.

Exercises build to help artists create more complex color visuals — visuals that express our lives through color, that explore the elements of air, earth, fire, and water, that celebrate the expressive freedom of collage, that reveal the union of drawing and color, and that use color as a healing language. Part art instruction, part art therapy, Spirit of Color captures the true spirit of artistic self-expression.

Connie Smith Siegel has more than 40 years of experience as an artist and teacher, and her work has been exhibited across the country. She has studied meditation, Gestalt theory, and expressive art therapy in depth. She lives in Woodacre, California.

Author — Connie Smith Siegel.

Paperback. 176 pages. 10½" × 8½" (27 cm × 22 cm).