Intuitive Painting: SOMA Mark Making
Karen Wagaman
Date: Thursday, June 18, 2026
Time: 1:00 – 3:00 pm
ANA Studio
300 N. 2nd Street
Rogers, AR 72756
Join ANA for this free interactive art making session. Bring your watercolor or acrylic painting supplies or use those provided.
Instead of asking:
“What should I paint?”
Somatic Art making asks:
“What am I sensing, feeling, breathing, holding, releasing, or moving through?”
The artwork becomes a record of your full body experience — breath, tension, emotion, rhythm, memory, mood, and movement.
I don’t use this every time I make art, but I hope to use it to discover recurring personal art going forward.
Objective:
Somatic art practices can profoundly influence an artist’s work because they shift the creative process from intellectual decision-making toward embodied experience. Instead of beginning with analysis, planning, or representation, the artist starts with sensation, movement, breath, emotion, rhythm, and physical awareness. This often changes both the process and the final visual language of the work.
Artists who engage in somatic practices frequently notice: more intuitive mark-making, increased emotional honesty, freer use of gesture and movement, greater sensitivity to color and texture, less fear of “mistakes”, deeper connection to personal symbolism, and more dynamic compositions and layering.
Because the body becomes part of the creative process, paintings often feel more alive, energetic, and emotionally resonant. Repeated gestures, pressure changes, scraping, layering, and movement patterns can become a kind of visual record of emotional and physical experience.
Somatic practices can also help artists move beyond perfectionism or overthinking. By focusing on sensation rather than outcome, artists may discover unexpected imagery, recurring forms, or personal visual languages that emerge naturally over time.
For abstract and semi-abstract artists especially, somatic approaches can deepen expression by allowing intuition, memory, and bodily awareness to guide decisions about color, space, rhythm, and composition. Representational artists may find this a great way to loosen up before working on realistic pieces.
Supplies:
Bring your own or use what we provide. Materials used will include mixed media paper, paint brushes, paint palette, pencils, markers, watercolor or acrylic paints, pencil, pastels, markers, alcohol Ink and water.
FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC
Karen Wagaman
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Karen Wagaman is an artist whose vibrant watercolor, acrylic, and mixed media works embody a lifelong commitment to creativity and community. Her practice reflects both artistic exploration and civic impact, shaped by co-founding the Downtown Art on the Bricks Art Walk, where she connected artists, businesses, and patrons while elevating the regional creative economy.
Her art has earned purchase awards and Best of Show at the Brookwood Art Fair, has been exhibited across in galleries in Missouri, Kansas, and Arkansas. As a founding board member of the Rogers Experimental House, she helped create a vital cultural space in downtown Rogers.
She merges entrepreneurship and creativity with degrees in business administration and studio art. Now retired, she devotes herself to painting, celebrating the energy, color, and connection that define the communities she has long supported.
“For me, art is not only a personal practice but also a catalyst for building vibrant communities.”