Cultivating Your Creative Life: Exercises, Activities, and Inspiration for Finding Balance, Beauty, and Success as an Artist is a multi-faceted book where creativity and wonder intermingle to show how to live a creative and balanced life while moving toward your goals. Youll find ideas for keeping your creative well full, an illustrated guide to healing herbs and plants, basic yoga poses and breathing exercises, and tips for moving your artistic career forward. Alena Hennessy's illustration style combines nature, whimsey, delicacy, and a modern sensibility; vibrant pen and ink illustrations accompany relevant quotes ofinspiration, tips, and creative journal exercises. Cultivating Your Creative Life is not only an interactive creativity guide; it is a work of art, in itselfa beautiful, collectible volumeto save and to savor, or to give as a gift to the special creative person in your life.

Author Biography

Alena Hennessy is an artist who has long been fascinated with nature and the outdoors. After art school, Alena did an independent study in Florence, Italy, where she began to get down to what she loved in art and in life: simplicity, stillness and a sense of little things relating to one another, all peaceful and quiet. Since that time, Alena focuses on what she loves best, making art and thoughtfully designed products available to people everywhere, everyday. She has created custom art and designs for Target, Urban Outfitters, ABC Studios, Galison/Mudpuppy, Papyrus, Monique Lllulier, Lark & Loon, and the City of Chapel Hill, among others.Alena's work has been published in Dwell, Readymade, Redbook, Natural Health, The Washington Post, ME Home Companion, Victoria and numerous design blogs. Her paintings and wares can be found in numerous boutiques and galleries across the States and abroad. She has exhibited her paintings in such places as New York, Miami, Los Angeles, Portland, Chicago, Berkeley, Raleigh, Asheville, ChapelHill, Atlanta and Rochester, NH. Alena is a practitioner in plant spirit medicine, yoga and energy healing. She teaches workshops in museums and artcenters on the creative process, yoga, movement and manifestation. She currently resides in Asheville, NC. Visit her online at http://www.alenahennessy.com.