‘Mandalas take me into the unknown, are non verbal and help me express my inner landscape.’
April McMurtry
April McMurtry joins us to talk about New Moon Mandalas.
April talks us through;
- How she got started making The Moon Is My Calendar Journal
- What A Moon Mandala is
- Her creative process and how she had to let go of perfectionism to get it printed
- How creating and working with the journal continues to be a source of guidance and teaching
- Why not being an artist doesn’t mean you can’t draw a mandala!
- Mandala’s can serve as a record for our process and we may gain insight when we look back. Themes may emerge, and with hindsight, we may also get an understanding of what the Mandalas meant.
April recommends
Create a Moon Mandala on the New Moon or when you’ve just finished bleeding.
Take a piece of paper, draw a circle, and start to draw and write and see what comes!
18 minutes in, you can join us to where we start to create a New Moon Mandala live on The Podcast.
- Draw a circle on a piece of paper
- Tune into yourself, engage your senses and put pen to paper
- You can start by following the line of the circle around
- Shapes, colours, sounds, words may emerge
- It’s ok to leave to Mandala unfinished
- The vision you get in your inner landscape – you may not be able to recreate this on paper. That’s ok! Whatever comes is a representation of the vision and carries it’s energy
- You may find yourself coming back to the Mandala later and finish it, or not!
ABOUT APRIL
April is the founder of THE MOON IS MY CALENDAR and creatress of the New Moon Calendar Journal. She is also a visual artist, mama, teacher, and creative lunar coach.
Her work reflects her passion for nature-based cycles, personal mythologies, and symbolism. April has more than fifteen years experience working in education as a classroom teacher, workshop facilitator and program coordinator at home and abroad.
She loves to support people on the path to growth and transformation. April’s formal education includes a B.A. in Art History from UC Santa Cruz and an M.A. in Teaching from SIT Graduate Institute in Brattleboro, VT.
She resides in the San Francisco Bay Area and is a mother of two daughters and a new kitten.