click here to see SLIDE SHOWS Gathering 2007 Gathering 2006 Gathering 2005 Gathering 2004 Gathering 2003 Gathering 2002

• Immerse yourself in the sacredness of the creative process. • Meet kindred spirits and be inspired by each other’s wisdom and creativity. • Reflect on your images through poetic writing and storytelling. • Attune to subtle energies through simple movement exercises. • Trust your intuition while creating drawings for a partner. • Settle into a day of silence in an old growth forest. • Bring your images to greater fruition with color. • Envision how you can integrate Touch Drawing into your life and work. • Celebrate the blessings of our time together. Costs: Tuition & Plentiful Art Materials $595 Early registration until May 15 $625 After May 15 $300 deposit secures your place. Refundable minus $35 registration fee until June 15. Room & Board Three home-cooked meals & snacks with local organic produce. Rooms are simple. All bathrooms are shared. Campers & cabins use Bath House. Private room or cabin & all meals $635 Double room or cabin & all meals $485 Camping & all meals $295 Meals only $225 Travel: Details will be sent by email with confirmation of your registration. Fly to SEATAC International Airport in Washington State. We will help you arrange a shuttle from the airport directly to the Center. Whidbey Island is 30 miles north of Seattle with a twenty-minute ferry to the island. Arrive: Sunday, July 13 Afternoon registration, dinner at 6:00 pm. Opening session at 7:30 pm. Depart: Friday, July 18 Please do not depart before 12:00 noon. We hope you can stay for a celebratory lunch after our noon closure. If you need to catch a plane please make reservations for 4:30pm or later. You are invited to stay for a late afternoon beach walk or to enjoy the seaside village of Langley, and pizza on Deborah's front porch Friday evening. This extra time allows for integratio, reflection and FUN. If you want to stay on the island Friday night or for the weekend, there are many B & B's. REGISTER Online We are happy to talk to you about your interest in attending or take your registration over the phone. Call us at 360-221-5745. The Center for Touch Drawing PO Box 1089 Langley, WA 98260 center@touchdrawing.com

This year's Touch Drawing Gathering continued to deepen and grow in joyousness. Twenty nine beautiful souls made their way to Whidbey Island from as far away as Chile. The weather was so beautiful that some chose to draw outside the whole time. On the night of the full moon, the large drawing board was in use out the moonlight all night long. When we walked the labyrinth, we had a few drawing boards in the center was generated in our time together. I hope these photos presented in slide shows convey some of what cannot be described in words.
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Each year, the Touch Drawing Gathering attracts an inspiring collection of people from all over the continent. This summer, I had a sense that each individual was taking such responsibility for their own inner process. As a collective we opened to a new level of trust, which allowed for powerful transformational work to happen with gentle grace. A new element introduced this year was a strong focus on writing from our drawings. This was
facilitated by Vicky Edmonds, who is a passionate poet of the soul. She created writing practices specifically designed to help draw out the essence of our images. She has helped Touch Drawing to find its voice! Chef Tom French added a great loving presence to our mealtimes as he served his delicious regional cuisine. On the last night together, we had an ecstatic dance with the live world-beat music of Sister Monk Harem. Our closing morning brought great energy and commitment to staying connected to one another, and to bringing Touch Drawing out into the world.

I find myself at a loss for words to describe the deeper underlying qualities of our time together. The feeling-tone of this year's Gathering is best expressed through the portraits of participants holding their mounted drawings. Take some time to gaze into their faces. Their depth and beauty speak more directly than any verbal description. If you feel called to attend next year's Gathering, please write to me at center@touchdrawing.com.

Click here to see the entire Photo Gallery from The Gathering 2001

The Annual Touch Drawing Gathering is for those of you who feel a deep call to Touch Drawing, as well as an interest in sharing it with others in your own unique way. During the Gathering you will immerse yourself in the substance of your soul through Touch Drawing. Within a circle of strong spiritually mature peers, you will explore this powerful transformative process along with complimentary expressive arts. Held at Chinook, a beautiful 100 acre forested retreat center on Whidbey Island, Washington, the Gathering is the seminal event of the year for the community of Touch Drawing practitioners.

The Gathering includes an introduction to Touch Drawing, for those who have never done it. From there, the expanse of time allows for deep interior explorations. Live musicians will play inspirational music while you draw, and you will also experience drawing in the silence and stillness of the morning before social contact.

You will experience the creating of Inner Portraits. A process that Deborah has been developing as a personal art form over the past 18 years, it is enormously accessible to others. It can be very empowering to discover that you can receive insight for another through creating images on their behalf, as well as to receive the images that another has done for you. Inner Portraits make very concrete the experience of tapping the intuitive realms.

Another joyful experience is the mounting and coloring of Touch Drawings; bring your spontaneous images out through color and solidifying them through mounting. It can bring a sense of completion.

There is always an element of unknown upon entering The Gathering. Powerful creative forces are evoked in a sacred context. Through this experience of engaging both the primal spiritual forces in oneself, and a community of highly creative souls, a transformative process is catalyzed for many participants. With the over lighting intention of experiencing the depths of Touch Drawing in order to help with the transmission of this process into the world, attendees at The Gathering are empowered to explore their own unique path.

Here are some images and reflections from people who have attended in past years:

Carol Fairbanks
I woke up early this morning and was missing the wonderful group of creative souls I met at this year's Gathering. Touch Drawing at the Gathering has facilitated significant healing in me, even when I was not aware of it at the first Gathering. At the second Gathering I was so amazed at the benevolent, nurturing male faces and figures I created in my drawings. (I have never drawn males before.) For someone who has experienced abuse with significant males in my life (starting with my father) I was deeply touched upon creating these loving male faces and figures. At one point at the Gathering, I felt deep feelings that were witnessed by other women at the table where I was drawing. My drawings mirrored back to me the incredible healing and self acceptance that has and will continue to take place within me as I continue my creative process. I have all these drawings displayed in my studio where I continue to dialog with them. When a group of women came to my studio Friday, I was able to share my touch drawing experience with them. We all love the touch drawing process so! Who knows how many souls have been allowed to heal because of touch drawing?!

Ann McSwiggin
This year's Touch Drawing Gathering was deeper, richer and fuller than the first. I was enriched in many ways. I very much liked the coming together of some of us from last year, seeing the changes and the growth, knowing what we shared the year before. I love meeting the new people, so dynamic and loving. The greatest realization I had was that it's the PROCESS of TD. as much or more than the actual drawings that do "it" for me. The process of Touch Drawing over an extended number of days had the effect of putting me in an altered state. I had unusual clarity come to me most of the time. There were frequent awareness' about my life. It was like "connect the dots," and light bulbs kept going on. I also could clearly see some of my own behavior patterns with greater honesty and that was freeing. I tapped into more primal, ancestral places and at times, other worldly places and felt a great sense of satisfaction and pleasure from that. I love the story that unfolds for me, the images that come forth. I get to learn later the foretelling that they are. I am grateful for the process.

Marsha Lash
As a person who had a belief that there are only certain people who can create art, this process has been life and belief system transformative... As I was frustrated - near tears praying to create something with heart and meaning - a warmth and a golden light came over me. Even though the next drawing wasn't "a work of beauty" my spirit lifted and eventually beauty came. I learned to love the process and be able to have dirty hands and draw with closed eyes and have questions answered by doing the practice. Delight warmed every cell in my body.

Tatjana Zemcuznikov We are the eyes That reflect who I am The voices that echo The sound of my soul The ears that stay tuned To the mystery In the silence of our thoughts And the music of our words We are called to remember We invited pain and fear to dance with us And to release their loyal hold on our remembrances They spilled out on paper In broad strokes And tiny details And then, with grace and gratitude We let them go...

We are the guardians of the memories And carriers of the code With love we reach to those who suffer Or still sleep We are their eyes, their voices and their ears We remember And We reach out