The Practice Workshops
Abstract Watercolor Windows
A Five-Week Therapeutic Arts Workshop · Spring 2026
Here’s what I’ve learned making these: they surprise me every time.
What starts as a grid of empty rectangles becomes something I can’t stop looking at by the end. Every single time. I didn’t expect that the first time I made these and I still don’t see it coming.
What You’ll Make
Abstract Watercolor Windows is a five-week mixed media practice that layers three things you may have already tried separately into one small, contained piece of art: mark making, watercolor washes, and slow drawing.
Each rectangle is its own world. Color, line, pattern, texture.
The creative practice moves through three different registers. The first mark making lines are gestural expressive marks. The watercolor washes can be geometric, organic, precise or gestural—you choose. And then slow drawing: small, deliberate, responsive lines. By that point the page already has a life and you’re in conversation with it, not directing it.
Each step engages your senses differently. And the little rectangles do something I didn’t expect the first time I made these: they hold things. Whatever you’re carrying that day goes somewhere. The container is small enough to feel manageable. The finished piece has huge impact.
This practice is a way of staying with yourself for a while each week, in stages, around whatever may be happening.
How It Works
The workshop is designed for bodies managing chronic illness. Four pre-recorded lessons released weekly so you can follow along or watch first and make later. Drying time is built into the pacing.
Two live Zoom Open Studios: one in Week 3 to paint alongside each other, and one at the end to celebrate and reflect. Pajamas are fine. The live sessions won’t be recorded.
Week 1, April 20: Welcome, overview, palette selection, and supplies.
Week 2, April 27: Making your first marks.
Week 3, May 4 & 6: Painting your watercolor windows + Live Zoom Open Studio (May 6)
Week 4, May 11: Slow drawing in your windows.
Week 5, May 18: Live Zoom Closing Studio — slow drawing, sharing, reflection and celebrating together.
You don’t need prior art experience. You need a willingness to stay with the process.
This Workshop Is for You If…
You have a chronic illness — MCAS, POTS, EDS, Long COVID, Sarcoidosis, or another rare or complex condition — and you’re looking for a creative practice designed around your reality, not adapted from one that wasn’t.
You’ve thought about making art but kept waiting until you felt better, had more energy, or had something worth saying.
You’re tired of wellness content that asks you to perform recovery.
Who This Is Not For
People without chronic illness looking for a general art class. You’re welcome to register, but the community and the facilitation are built around this specific experience and won’t shift to accommodate a different context.
People looking for a general wellness activity or mood boost. This practice goes somewhere harder than that.
A Note on Energy
This workshop is rated 4–5 on the Crooked Path Studios energy scale — moderate, but paceable. If you’re in a severe flare right now, consider waiting for the next cohort. We run workshops seasonally. There will be another one.
About Me
I am a multidisciplinary artist and the founder of Crooked Path Studios. My creative practice — collage, mixed media, experimental printmaking, and textile work — is grounded in materials that let me explore the rhythms of vulnerability, resilience, and repair. I spent more than twenty-five years assessing the impact of arts and health programs across community, nonprofit, and public health settings. I am also a certified therapeutic community arts facilitator who lives with MCAS and Sarcoidosis. Crooked Path Studios is rooted in my lived experience and exists because I couldn’t find what I needed and decided to build it.
15 spots. Workshop begins April 20, 2026.
Registration closes 4/13/2026
$65 · You will be taken to my Buy Me a Coffee Shop to register
Already a Wayfinding member? This workshop is included in your membership. Watch for the Week 1 post in your inbox.
Not a Wayfinding member? You’ll get three months free membership when you register for the workshop. After that you’ll be given the opportunity to join Wayfinding.
Thinking about Wayfinding? It’s the therapeutic arts membership that includes workshops like this one, monthly Open Studios, and the full archive — $15/month or $150/year.
Crooked Path Studios · Because healing isn’t linear and neither is art.