Heron Dance:
Art journaling as a tool in creative work and in creating a life.
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Just as an acorn contains in its unconscious the dream of the oak tree and that dream expresses the coming into being of the oak tree, working with a person, we have to have a method of drawing forth what is in the seed of the person, the unlived potentials.
- Ira Progoff, At A Journal Workshop
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An acorn contains within it the dream of a mighty oak.
A life journey, a creative journey, grows out of the seed of one’s song.
Sing us the song only you can sing.
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Listen for the special music — the song that nobody else can sing but you.
Your own karma badly lived is better than someone else's karma lived well.
- Denise Shekerjian, Uncommon Genius
For more on Heron Dance books and art journals in print and e-formats (Substacks), visit here.
Heron Dance publishes two Substack e-journals, A Pause for Beauty Gratitude Journal,
and Creativity as a Way of Life, and related journals and books.
My name is Roderick MacIver. I am the founder of Heron Dance. I have been a full-time artist and author for thirty years. Over those thirty years, and in prior endeavors, journaling has played an important role in my life and in my creative work.
Journaling helps us understand the patterns of our lives, hidden and obvious, the currents of spirituality and subconscious thought that underlie each of our lives, and the myths that guide us without us realizing it. Journaling can reveal what is working in our lives and what isn’t. It can help us come to terms with the uncertainties, setbacks and rejection we and our creative work encounter.
Perhaps most valuably, journaling can help us understand our individual uniqueness. It can help us develop our contribution to others – the unique combination we bring from our experiences, skills, interests and creative vision – and guide us in our dialogue with that uniqueness as if it was a person.
Part of the Heron Dance message and journey is living with gratitude. Our lives are a brief spark between two eternities. We live surrounded by incredible natural beauty and mystery.
Creating a unique life, and creative work, is about shaping the uniqueness each of us possesses with patience, self-discipline and self-knowledge. Journaling nurtures the song within.
All that matters is what you love
and what you love is who you are . . .
- John Squadra, This Ecstasy
One’s art goes as far and as deep as one’s love goes,
and there is no reason for painting but that.
- Andrew Wyeth
There are many pathways in this life and it doesn't matter which one you take, for they all have a common destination, and that is the grave. But some paths give you energy and some take it away.
- Cervantes
Some paths, some work, some people give you energy, and some take it away.
The Substack E-journals:
A Pause For Beauty
Gratitude as a philosophy of life and as a spiritual practice.
Published three times a week.
Each post includes a painting.
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Visit here to receive.
Example post here.
Creativity as a Way of Life
explores the use of journaling in creative work.
Published three days a week.
Drawing from Heron Dance interviews and the journals, memoirs, interviews and autobiographies of creative outsiders, Creativity as a Way of Life contains perspectives on the creative process of working artists, authors, filmmakers and musicians. These quotes are selected based on their insight and potential to spark creativity. Most posts also include a journal reflection on that quote and an abstract painting.
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As creatives we learn from each other, get courage from each other, and get inspired by each other.
Dig deep inside. Create out of that sacred space.
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Both e-journals are supported by reader contributions. There is also a free once-a-week summary and YouTube video, as well as a number of member thank you gifts.
Journaling
A primary tool, both in my own creative process and in those of the creatives I’ve encountered in my travels and in the memoirs, journals and autobiographies of artists I’ve read, is the use of journaling. Heron Dance explores various journaling techniques that have proved to be particularly useful in the creative process. Those tools are explored in depth in the books and Substack blog posts Heron Dance publishes.
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In addition to artists, musicians, filmmakers, poets, novelists and other creatives, Heron Dance also draws on the wisdom of a variety of others who have created unique lives out of their imagination, persistence and hard work:
The backwoods wanderers — Thoreau, Emerson, Sigurd Olson, Whitman, Burroughs.
The ancient Taoist hermit poets of the mountains of South China.
The mystics Rumi, Rabindranath Tagore, Kahlil Gibran, Abraham Joshua Heschel.
Those who probe for the deeper mysteries of the universe underlying science – Einstein, Loren Eiseley, Carl Sagan.
People who devote their lives to some concept of a greater good — those who work in refugee camps, soup kitchens, with the addicted and homeless, people who work to protect wilderness.
We look for wisdom, for insight into this precious gift of life we’ve been given, it’s meaning and potential sources of strength wherever those insights might be found.
We are searchers and seekers.
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Heron Dance has published a number of journals and diaries over the years. These are all sold out except two, The Nurturing the Song Within Art Journal and the related Diary. Two new journals are now available:
Meditations on Beauty and Mystery, A Gratitude Art Journal
The Pausing for Beauty Poetry Journal
Before the end of the year, Heron Dance will also publish a book exploring journaling techniques:
Using An Art Journal to Probe Deep
Reader Reviews
Three Heron Dance books about living a life of beauty, creating work of beauty.
Published In 2024
. . . the devotion required to construct such a work is inspirational in itself. A multifaceted and heartfelt exploration of creative life.
- Kirkus Review of Nurturing the Song Within
Nurturing The Song Within Art Journal And Diary / Planner
Nurturing The Song Within Art Journal: We have a few copies of the first edition left, and don’t plan to print more in this format. 190 pages of paintings and reflections on the beauty and mystery of wild nature, of life. The book explores the inner work that underlies creative work and creating a life. This is a hardcover book printed by a high quality art book printer on premium paper with Smyth sewn layflat binding — the highest standard in art book printing. Less expensive PDF editions are also available.
Nurturing The Song Within Diary Planner: Designed to work with the Art Journal, it provides room for notes, objectives, plans, appointments and an exploration of the underlying current, individual to you, that is guiding you perhaps without your full awareness. Published quarterly. Two pages per day including a painting.
More here.
A person’s life purpose is nothing more than to rediscover, through the detours of art, or love, or passionate work, those one or two images in the presence of which his heart first opened.
- Albert Camus
Earlier Heron Dance Books
The Heron Dance Book Of Love And Gratitude
Meditations on Nature, Meditations On Silence
Art As A Way Of Life
Thoreau And The Art Of Life
The Man Who Planted Trees
Wild Waters And The Tao
Simplicity Is Profound
The Song I Came To Sing
Art Is About The Mystery
Earth My Likeness, The Nature Poetry Of Walt Whitman
Pausing For Beauty, The Heron Dance Poetry Diary
More here.
I didn't trust it for a moment
but I drank it anyway
The wine of my own poetry
It gave me the daring
to take hold of the darkness
and tear it into little pieces.
- Lalla Ded, poetess of 14th century India.
Our life is an apprenticeship to the truth that around every circle another can be drawn; that there is no end in nature,
but every end is a beginning, and under every deep a lower deep opens.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
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There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle.
The other is as though everything is a miracle.
- Albert Einstein
