Collages

My favorite way of accessing my right brain is by making simple collages.  I gather up some magazines that have pictures of things I think I might like, put on some upbeat music, and give myself thirty minutes to rip out pictures of anything that appeals to me.  I purposely do not censor myself or think about what I'm looking for.  I'm just on an exploration of what jumps out at me and tugs at my heart when I'm rapidly turning pages in those magazines.  By the end of the 30 minutes I have a big stack of ripped out pages. 

I have on hand some scissors, glue and poster board.  My next step is to take 30 minutes to cut out the pictures I've ripped out and put them on the poster board.  I don't glue them down until I have them looking the way I want them to.  I look at the colors and shapes rather than the content.  I usually have many more pages than I have room for on the poster board so I have to cull out some of the ones that don't seem that pretty or that don't seem to fit in.  During this process I am still not looking at the content of the pictures.  I'm just arranging them in a way that is pleasing to my eye.  Once I'm satisfied with the arrangement, I glue them down.

At this point I let my left brain look at the collage I've made and analyze what my right brain has told me about my heart, soul and creativity.  Sometime it takes me a few days to understand the symbols I've pasted down.  For example, the last collage I made I had put a picture of a giraffe with a flower in it's mouth right at the very center.  I had no earthly idea what that meant.  Much later I thought that giraffe's "stick their necks out" and maybe my right brain was telling me it was time to take some risks.