Whatever the current shape of your life, there's a place for your art in it

What if your art was a natural, integrated part of your day to day life, and not a thing you desperately wanted to squeeze in or felt guilty or resentful for not doing? 

What if you knew your own processes so well you could confidently trust yourself to make the right choices for yourself and your art? 

What if those mean voices in your head when you sit down to create were not the loudest thing you could hear? 

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Touchstone is a course dedicated to helping you do two things:
1. answer these questions for yourself and
2. use what you learn to begin to build the artist's life you've been longing for.

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Your art needs both devotion and practical knowledge. It needs heart and action. Action without a firm foundation and awareness of who you are leads to art without the essence that makes it yours. Passion and heart without action lead to no art.

Touchstone teaches you how to create your foundation and take action to make the art you came here to make, whether that’s purely for your own pleasure or to share with a wider audience.

​​​​​​​It teaches you to find clarity in all the parts of your process, so that you can make your best, most unique-to-you art with confidence and a greater level of ease. 

If you struggle with any aspect of making your art, Touchstone will show you another way. A way that is clarifying, action-oriented, and most of all fits you and your life.

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Whatever your stage on the journey... 

  • if you're finding yourself coming up against the same struggles over and over 

  • if you can't seem decipher your unique way of making art amongst all the inspiration

  • if you can't seem to get a rhythm going with your creative work

  • if you're finding progress slow going or non existent

  • if the mean voices are making it painful or impossible to move forward

  • if you're longing for a stable foundation and the confidence to make your creative work and share it with the world

...then Touchstone was created for you.


“I struggle with what Tara calls "the demons" when it comes to creating and sharing work for my business. I found so many topics covered in this course that helped reframe struggles, offering new approaches and pushing me to take action - the key change I needed with my work. I highly recommend this course for anyone struggling to take action or needing to shake things up with new perspective and experiments."

Deb Dane, innercompassdesigns.com

This course is for you if:

  • You're ready to start addressing the things that have been plaguing you and holding you back from making your best, truest, most satisfying creative work.
  • You’re open to making changes in your life to allow your creative work the space it needs {or at least a bit more of it!}
  • You’re curious, motivated and willing to take action, even though it’s hard sometimes
  • You know you’d benefit from some guidance and support - doing it by yourself has been difficult and slow progress
  • You’re in it for the long haul. Which really means for life. This isn’t a quick fix, but the effects can last forever.
  • You want to feel more confident in your creativity, and claim it as who you are.
  • You know that being actively and regularly creative is essential for your wellness and wellbeing, you’re just not sure how to make that happen.
  • You'd like to reap the benefits of knowing your own processes and ways of expressing through your art that go beyond personal fulfilment to actually sharing and selling your work.
  • You're a thinker. You like to dig into your own thought processes and beliefs and gain insights from knowing yourself better.

“This course is so content rich that I know I will be going back to review many sections. Tara is a kind and encouraging teacher who gently pushes you to create as only you can create. This sounds simple, but it is actually a huge challenge when there is so much “out there” to compare yourself to. Touchstone helps you plan strategies to tackle the obstacles (real and imagined!) that get in your way of doing your own unique creative work.”

Alison Kaczmarek
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Course Format


AUDIOS

A series of daily downloadable audio ‘touchstones’ {with transcripts}, each one offers an encouraging, reassuring, 'reminder-ing' and rebalancing balm that you can download and listen to whenever you reach a specific sticky point in your process, or at times that will suit you as you go about your day. 

We’ll cover topics such as procrastination, self doubt, mean voices, process, your creative space, finding what will work for you with your specific desires, needs and quirks, meaning, permission, inspiration, overwhelm, sharing what you make with the world, and much more.


MANUAL OF SELF

This will be your personal Book of You - the place where everything you're learning about yourself, the way you work, what you need, how you need it, and all the other things we'll uncover will go. You'll start with a basic set of pages, and the worksheets throughout the course can be added to it to create the completed manual.


PERSONAL PROJECT

Alongside that you'll have the option to create your own art adventure! You'll devise a personal project for the duration of the course, which I can help you with if necessary. This will give you the opportunity not just to explore something that interests you that could lead to a solid body of work, but also to use the lessons to deal with that anything that comes up in real time, as you work through the course.


VIDEOS

And! There are bitesize videos to give you jumping off points when you get stuck, and be inspired to try new things.
 

EXTRAS

Plus plenty of extra resources that support your learning process.



You’ll learn how to recognise and work with your own process.

You’ll cultivate new perspectives and a mindset that supports you as an artist and creative, whatever that means for you. 


Touchstone is designed to help you unleash your freedom of self expression, and experience the joy of being who you are and fully inhabiting your own life. When you learn how to fully express yourself in your art, it gives you the ability to fully be who you are and express that in other areas of your life too. It changes everything - relationships, ability to say no, healthy choices, boundaries, access to joy.

"Tara has brought me out of a place of creative denial. Once again I feel a creative life which is rich and full. Inspirations flow, ideas come easily. This is the best ecourse I've taken and Tara is a wonderful teacher, and gives such wonderful direction and clarity. Thank you for sharing your wisdom with us."


Lowri Drakley

About me and why I created this course

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Just over a decade ago, I was coming out of one of the biggest depressive breakdowns of my life. I’d moved to a new city, found a little flat I could hide in while I recuperated, and started to remember who I was before the decades of illness. I did this in two ways; I started pursuing an energetic path back to wellness, and I brought back my art.

I believe as humans we need creatively active lives, because creativity is a path to freedom. It frees us from old patterns, from limiting beliefs, from the things that make it hard to relate to others with real authenticity. 

Touchstone is packed with lessons I've learned over the past ten years about living creatively in the way that suits the uniqueness of you, because I know from walking the path myself that it’s possible

You can live a life so richly and deeply creative that there is no distinction; it’s what you do, who you are, how you think and behave, how you express yourself. And it's easy. {Not without challenges, but intrinsically easy, because you are just being yourself.}

There are no quick solutions or step by step blueprints here; I’ve found they tend not to lead to anything that truly fits and lasts. But I can guide you towards a place in yourself where clarity, ease and confidence are always available to you. And once you set up home there, you’ll be able to do the creative work you came here to do, and reap the rewards of joy, purpose, and fulfilment, while offering that back out to the world in ways that feel easy and natural to you. If I can do it, you can definitely do it. :) 

Embracing an inherently creative life can but doesn’t necessarily mean making a living from it. You can absolutely lead a rich, fulfilling life in which you delight in your own creativity every day in all sorts of ways for the sheer joy of it. For the way it connects you with children, with other active creatives, with yourself, with the world around you.

Touchstone is about starting to build a real and solid foundation for your creative life so you can stop trying and start thriving, in whatever way that means for you.



It’s about shifting from ‘trying to fit it in’ to making it a natural and integrated part of your life. It’s also about getting to know yourself really really well and so understanding, recognising and developing your own process and your own unique art. 

It’s the course I would have liked to have taken when I was just starting to bring back my art and floundering in a sea of inspiration, not knowing what was mine, and being buffeted about by the winds of fear, doubt, procrastination, and all the other delightful challenges that come with being an actively creative person. 

This course is about being more connected with life as a rich and joyful creative experience. 

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Note: If I’ve painted a picture that feels impossible to you right now, know that I still hear the mean voices, I still procrastinate, and I still have fears and doubts! It’s not that I’ve found some secret that eliminates all struggle; it’s simply that there is a big difference in how I respond to it now. It’s a mindset shift ultimately, not about eliminating the things we think are causing us to ‘fail’ or that ‘shouldn’t’ be happening.


"The Touchstone course was probably THE most important move toward self-improvement I made this entire year. I used to shy away from calling myself an artist, let alone calling myself creative, but Tara's kind insight and guidance (which is very intuitive), has allowed me to express myself in ways I didn't really realize were possible."

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Christa Clark, buttonlove.ca


What's Included in the Course

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Week 1: Laying Foundation Stones

We'll start exactly where you are and lay down some sturdy foundation stones to start building your house of creativity 
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Week 2: Establishing Your House of creativity

This week is all about clarity. We'll look at your creative process, your creative space, and clarify and redefine a few important words

Week 3: Demons + Superpowers

Time to recast those demons in new roles. We'll uncover some very useful tools to deal with them so you can get on with your art.
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Week 4: An Artist in the World


Now that you're on a roll, we'll look at inspiration, flow, allies, and getting your art out into the world in the best way for you 

This course (plus lots more)
​​​​​​​is available inside the
Happy Artist Studio!
​​​​​​​Click here to learn more.


Valued at £297


  • 20 rich and action oriented lessons
  • Audio 'touchstones' with printable transcripts
  • Comprehensive worksheets to build your Manual of Self
  • An invitation to create a personal project, with support and guidance
  • Video minis to give you ideas
  • Heaps of resources, links, and recommendations
  • An inside view as I take a project from idea to completion

Visit the Happy Artist Studio