A hands-on workbook for self-discovery through artistic expression.

In this workbook, art educator and mentor Annette Luycx leads women through twelve dimensions of artistic expression from personal narrative to final exhibition. She encourages women to look inward, find inspiration in personal experiences, and generate their own themes, images and symbols, ultimately discovering what is meaningful to them and learning how to express that visually. Luycx takes women through a step-by-step process using self-reflective thinking, visualizing, journaling, and other creative practices. With twenty-four practical exercises and twelve art assignments, this book guides women in developing self-awareness and personal power through making art.

Included are the first-hand experiences of three participating women, reflections about their studio process, and the impact of the workshop on their identity as they learned to trust their life experiences as sources of inspired art-making.

From Art to Empowerment is an insightful, hands-on workbook that takes women on an empowering journey of self-discovery through artistic expression.

"In the beginning it was difficult for me. Now I let myself. The process has become easier for me. Like I was searching for my own path. That's why these lessons helped me. Because they revealed my way of thinking, my feeling, my path, to me." (Anna)

"I go deeper. I touch it more. There is more focus. I go to a deeper level. I saw things in myself that I hadn't realized." (Markella)

"I learn, I learn about myself. In all that I learn I also learn about myself. About my sensitivities, my memories, my feelings." (Tina)

Annette Luycx, MEd, MSc, is an artist and freelance art educator from the Netherlands living and working in Greece. She has taught collage, mixed media, and ceramics in Athens to people of all ages and abilities for the past twenty years at schools and cultural centers. She is specialized in artistic coaching and artistic talent development. The purpose of her teaching practice is to support artists, art students and creatives in gaining increased self-awareness and understanding of their individual creative process, as well as to promote artistic growth and development of their artistic voice. She has been studying and exploring the link between artistic expression and self-awareness in the visual arts, dance, and theater her whole life. In 2014 she created the IRIS ART CENTRE, a center for adult art education specialized in the development of personal artistic voice. Here, she organizes summer art workshops and artist coaching residencies, in the Greek countryside about twenty miles north from the center of Athens. www.irisartcentre.com

Annette Luycx holds a master's degree in sociology and women's studies from the University of Amsterdam, a postdoctoral degree in cultural management from Paris Dauphine University, and a master's degree in art education from the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA). She has traveled extensively and studied fine arts, theater, and ceramics with international artists and art educators. She has participated with collages, photomontages, prints, and ceramics in group exhibitions in Amsterdam, Athens, Boston, Baltimore, Edinburgh, Salzburg, Prague, and Paris. www.annetteluycx.com