FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT: Roderick MacIver, (802)234-3120
rod@herondance.org
The Inner Work That Underlies
Creative Work and the Creation of a Unique Life
GEORGIA, VT – May 9, 2024 – A new book by working artist Roderick MacIver explores the inner work out of which creative work and a unique human life evolves.
In Nurturing The Song Within, (two book set, $134, individually $95 hardcover Art Journal – softcover Amazon edition $49, $49 Diary Planner, Heron Dance Press, May 2024) artist Roderick MacIver draws on hundreds of interviews of artists, adventurers, activists, as well as those who devote their lives to serving others, to understand the hidden wellsprings that guide and provide the clarity and courage required to pursue a dream and make it real. It explores the murky waters of deep imagination, the friendship with one’s inner world, and how those inspire the creation of a unique life. Over ninety of the author’s full color paintings accompany the reflections and interview excerpts in each volume of this two-book set.
As human beings, we are inspired by each other’s stories. The author sets off on a journey to collect the stories of those who choose their own path, the path that only they can follow. Those paths are based on values different from those widely held by the dominant culture. The objective: create work of beauty, and a life of beauty. The interview excerpts selected for Nurturing The Song Within explore the roles of imagination, journaling, meditation, spirituality, time in nature, solitude, downtime and sleep in accessing the subterranean realms out of which a unique life is created and evolves. It evolves out of a relationship, a friendship, with your dream world, with the underlying hidden currents of your life that you may not even be aware of but that are themselves the products of the dreams and drama of childhood.
In hundreds of interviews conducted over the last thirty years, the author asks those who imagine and create their own unique paths what most occupies their imagination, what fascinates and perplexes them about life. He explores their sources of inspiration and discipline, and asks them about rejection and persistence. He wants to know about their dream world, their spirituality or meditation practice. He asks them what they do to relax, to find a core of peace out of which they create their lives. He asks them what they strive to accomplish and why. Most of all he wants to know about their spirit spark – the source of their courage and vision. And he explores their contradictions because it is within contradictions that the juice, the truth, of a human life exists.
A human life is an expression of ideas, of fear, of courage and of discipline. A life fully lived, a unique life, grows out of something deep – the essence of a human being. It evolves out of that which is sacred inside each of us, but that generally can’t be explained; it can however can be sensed and understood.
“Whatever you give your heart and soul to will transform your life, whether it be creating art, sailing alone around the world, working in a refugee camp, a famous Paris restaurant or working to protect wilderness. A big life comes from giving wholeheartedly. It isn’t the easy path. It involves risk. On it you will encounter failure. But it is where the really deep experience of life hangs out.”
- Roderick MacIver
Nurturing The Song Within is a two-book set, but each book can be ordered and used separately. There are hardcover and softcover editions of the Art Journal, and a softcover, wire-o bound, lay-flat Diary Planner. Both are 190 pages, and both contain over ninety Roderick MacIver paintings in full color. Both are also available as inexpensive PDFs.
Trim size: 11 x 8.5 inches oblong or landscape. Hardcover (Smyth sewn binding, a premium binding that lays flat and allows the paintings to be viewed without gutter loss) and diary planner (wire-o lay flat).
ISBNs:
Nurturing The Song Within Art Journal Hardcover($95) ISBN: 978-1-933937-84-7
Nurturing The Song Within Art Journal Softcover ($49) ISBN: 978-1-933937-87-8
Nurturing The Song Within Diary Planner ($49) ISBN: 978-1-933937-85-4
About The Author
Roderick MacIver published the periodical Heron Dance for twenty-five years, has been a full-time working artist for thirty years and has authored fourteen books on the creative process, the beauty and mystery of wild nature and of life, and books about the human search for meaning. His art has been featured in several books by others and is in a number of public and private collections.
For more information visit here.
PDFs of the Art Journal (Nurturing The Song Within) and the accompanying Diary Planner are available at the following links for reviewers.
To order the hardcover Art Journal and Diary Planner visit here.
To order the softcover version on Amazon (available sometime in the first half of May 2024):
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CONTACT: Roderick MacIver, (802)234-3120
rod@herondance.org
