What color do you feel like today?

That is the question posed by process art teacher and artist Brady Nickerson to her students.

Process art students pick up a paint brush (or marker, colored pencil, pen, crayon) and select a color based on how they're feeling, or which they are drawn to. When contact is made with the paper or canvas, it is without a specific image in mind. The student simply begins drawing, sketching freely, with subsequent colors selected as intuitively as the first, the colors and the artist's subconscious breathing life into whatever takes shape on the canvas.

This is process art.

Nickerson has been passionate about process art since 1996 when she attended a 10-day intensive workshop in San Francisco. It was led by Michelle Cassou and Stewart Cubley, authors of “Life, Paint, Passion,” who described how painting could be used as a means of self-discovery, self-expression and healing.

Transformed by the experience and eager to teach it to others, she began teaching it to children in the mid-1990s. For a number of years, Nickerson was the art teacher at the Center For Teaching and Learning in Edgecomb — and she “absolutely loved it.”

Eventually she left CTL and opened her first art studio in Newcastle. Kids from CTL attended her classes there, and through word of mouth, more kids made their way to her door.

“I ask the students to relate a color to how they were feeling that day. Once kids start to do this process, they become more open, more free to express themselves,” Nickerson said. “It gives them a voice. Kids get more self-confidence and self-esteem through this self-expression.”

Nickerson is an enthusiastic, outgoing, funny, creative woman, whose “absolute passion” is teaching process art to children, although she has been teaching it to adults since her years in Newcastle.

She has had the opportunities to teach process art to kids from all walks of life; including those whose lives were fraught with pain and hardship, and who had found themselves in trouble. And in some cases, big trouble.

It started with Youth Promise, which works with juveniles and kids at risk, upon request by the organization.

The Maine Youth Center, now Long Creek, contacted Nickerson to see if she'd be interested in working with the youth there. She was at the center two days a week for 10 years.

“There was nothing there for those kids,” Nickerson recalled. “When it came to their art — they did stuff that absolutely blew my mind.”

Nickerson convinced a rather shocked superintendent to let her hold an art show at the center, and to give her some funds for matting, frames and publicity. She also made sure it was held in the lobby, not the lunch room. The superintendent just didn't believe anyone would go there.

“I said of course they're going to come. When I get a bee in my bonnet — look out,” Nickerson said with a chuckle. “I called the local TV stations and they came and interviewed the one kid who was permitted to be in the lobby … $5,500 later …”

Nickerson got the kids together after the show and asked them what they wanted to do with their money.

“They decided to donate it to the Center for Grieving Children in Portland — and it made me tear up. They said that if more kids could go there, they would never end up at the center.”

To this day she recalls her years at The Maine Youth Center as being one of her happiest jobs.

“I think all art is therapy and all art can be healing,” Nickerson said. “It unites body, mind and spirit. There is no criticism or judgment. It’s a process of relating emotions and feelings to color and design.”

Nickerson teaches teachers about process art, sometimes during in-service days, particularly in the Damariscotta region. She has been teaching special education students at Great Salt Bay for 11 years and has been GSB's artist in residence for the last six or seven years.

The Maine Arts Commission commissioned Nickerson to do a mural, 11' x 13', for the Maine Arts Festival; she did the mural with a group of 10 teens. It's displayed in the Boothbay Region YMCA's indoor track area.

The University of New England (UNE) hired her to “work” in the community center there. Nickerson put five 40” x 40” canvases on the wall for anyone and everyone interested in experiencing process art. Acrylic paints and brushes were used by students, construction workers and parents.

Nickerson is really into group paint events from workshops at Kieve-Wavus in Nobleboro for women veterans to private group gatherings and celebrations.

“It's more fulfilling to teach,” Nickerson said. “I like seeing the transformation in people. To see them heal themselves through art, to discover something new about themselves, discover their gifts. Everyone should ‘do process!’”

Learn more about process art opportunities with Nickerson at her Edgecomb studio, Painting With Spirit, by calling 207-633-2588.