Connect with Your Creativity: A Playful Exploration

🎨 Tap into your natural, authentic and free self-expression! Join us for a special online class with The Center for Creative Exploration! Whether you're a long-time artist or are new to painting, this class is perfect for all! Space is limited. Reserve your spot now! ✨

What to expect:

🌀 Grounding + guided meditation

🌀 Basic principles and philosophy provided to help you connect with your own intuition and create from your heart

🌀 Intuitive painting time with individual support from our facilitators — without any pressure to perform or produce

🌀 Specific experiential exercises to help get over creative blocks, negative thinking and stuck energy

🌀 Optional group share about your experience and process. You are invited to share, listen and participate in a way that feels comfortable for you

🧑🏽‍🎨What is intuitive painting? Intuitive Painting is a practice of allowing the source of your creativity to lead you as you explore with color and brush in hand. It’s an invitation to let go of deadlines, outcomes, and product in your creative expression. It allows you to tap into or to reconnect with your natural, authentic, free self-expression. No experience necessary - just bring yourself and your curiosity!

📍Class will be held online, and you'll join via Zoom. We have found the creative force is present no matter where we are!

🖌️ What To Bring: Bring whatever supplies you already have at home! Crayons, markers, a few paints, printer paper, old brushes. Anything works.

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"I've been participating in the class via Zoom (online). I love how this class helps me get in touch with myself after being out in the busy, often crazy, world." - Kim B.

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"This studio is amazing. The teachers and community members make it such a special place to express yourself. The workshops and drop in community classes are very meditative." - Eliza D.

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"Very relaxing and fun class. Left feeling peaceful and satisfied. I'm definitely coming back." - Renee M.

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"Even in just two hours, I feel like I’m not only connected with myself but had a wonderful time with my friends for a lovely connection time. I’m definitely coming back." - Onna L.

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"Do you remember the joy of painting as a child? The first time you picked up the brush and luscious colors flowed across the paper?

You can experience that excitement of discovery again at The Center for Creative Exploration. You will be guided in your journey by intuitive painting guide Claudia, whose incredibly perceptive guidance has made it possible for me to re-experience the delight I felt with my first brushstrokes.

This approach is process rather than product oriented. You are guided not to copy, but to draw upon the deepest recesses of your mind, emotions and experience to create something brand new. We start by painting for ourselves, not for some imagined audience. Our painting process is not decorative and sometimes not beautiful in the conventional sense but is an expression of our inner self. As I began painting here, my daily life experience took on more color and hue and I began to feel more deeply. Though painting, with Claudia's facilitation, insight has blossomed.

I hope you will give it a try. Creativity makes the world a happier place." - Shari G.

About us

Established in 1999, the painting studio is a lively place filled with light, color, and the warmth of a community sharing a space in which to explore the creative process. The Center for Creative Exploration is a nonprofit organization and values freedom of expression with brush in hand and beyond. We are committed to creating a sense of community in our painting studio where people feel comfortable to be themselves in whatever way they choose. We are committed to providing an affirming, welcoming, and accessible studio for all people through co-creation and open communication.

We offer weekly adult classes, community classes, workshops, retreats and kids/family classes. Check out our upcoming events here!

🖌️ For additional information on intuitive painting and our studio, please visit our website or email ccepaintingstudio@gmail.com. Follow us on Instagram & Facebook to join our social media community!

Maria Freebairn-Smith is a teacher and Outreach Director at The Center for Creative Exploration. She has been painting and teaching the intuitive painting process for over 30 years. She participated in the first teacher training for The Painting Experience, facilitated by Michele Cassou and Stewart Cubley. Along with Barbara Kaufman and others, Maria was one of CCE’s original founders. She also helped to establish the nonprofit Drawbridge: An Arts Program for Homeless Children, and The Open Circle Cooperative Preschool, both in San Francisco.

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Along with her process painting training, Maria holds a degree in Psychology from Barnard College, Columbia University, and has a graduate Certificate in Restorative Justice Practices. Other advanced trainings include Waldorf Early Childhood Education, Middendorf Breath experience, and Motion Improvisational Theater.

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When Maria began raising a family, she moved to Sonoma County. Focusing on education for children in her new community, she founded The Creative Parenting Center and helped establish Sunridge, a Waldorf-methods charter school. Returning to the CCE painting community, Maria brings a lifetime commitment to body, breath, and inquiry practices that ground her teaching in a broad transpersonal perspective.