MIDDLETOWN, Calif. – The Middletown Art Center, or MAC,  begins its third workshop series as part of the Resilience project – “Painting Resilience” – on Sunday, June 18.

Resilience is open to adults of all ages and teens ages 12 up. All levels of experience novice to professional are encouraged to attend.

The project consists of classes in four art disciplines: Photography, poetry/written word, painting and drawing/printmaking.

Classes are generally held on Saturdays but this week Painting Resilience will take place on Sunday because of Middletown days.

Next week, on Saturday, June 24, MAC will offer a drawing and printmaking class. Each class session costs just $5 or $60 for a full workshop series (12 sessions). Participants can come to as many or as few classes as desired.

Classes will cycle through the first through fourth Saturday of the month until May 2018. Check the MAC Web site for scheduling exceptions due to holidays.

All classes run from noon to 5 p.m. to correspond with Lake County Transit buses. MAC can help with bus passes and subsidize the cost of class if needed.

The public is invited to participate, collaborate and create in a year-long project that includes spoken word performances, guided nature walks and other community events that culminate in countywide exhibits, and a printed chapbook of writings and images.

“The first in a series of three summer classes called ‘Just Paint’ are based on the Intuitive Painting Process,” explained artist and instructor Sage Abella. “Here, we tap into our feelings and intuition through the act of painting. We explore our relationship with our own creativity and how it can support growth and blossoming in other parts of our lives. Nature’s resilience and regeneration after the fires teaches us that we too can spring back, grow new shoots, clear old things and make room for new ways to express ourselves in our individual and wild complexity. Over the next 3 months painters will play with 3 ways we interact with our experience of nature: through animals, the elements, and nature’s cycles.”

Abella’s classroom welcomes you with bright colored paints, jars of brushes and big pieces of white paper suggesting endless possibilities. Some participants have never picked up a brush in their life, some paint all the time.

“The beauty of the class is that it doesn’t matter if you’ve painted before because what we are all really doing is opening up a conversation with our intuition and everyone has an intuition. We are born creative!” Abella said.

Join Sage Abella at MAC this Sunday, June 18, from noon to 5 p.m. Bring a lunch or snacks. The next class will be Saturday, July 15. Bring painting clothes or a smock.

Resilience is funded through a Local Impact grant from the California Arts Council with additional local business and community support. Come take advantage of this exciting creative opportunity.