Biography

Anne Marie Bennett is a freelance writer and self-taught artist who enjoys playing with mixed-media collage, and all forms of color and words. She has a BS degree in Education from Southern Connecticut State University and has taught children, teens and adults throughout the East Coast. She is a breast cancer survivor and feels closest to her own soul when she is writing, creating art, teaching, and sharing the gift of SoulCollage® with others. She lives in Beverly with her husband Jeff, along with two feline (and very spoiled!) companions named Sasha and Scooter.

Description of SoulCollage® work

I experienced my first SoulCollage® workshop in Oregon at an Art and Soul Retreat and it was love at first card! My first thought on returning home to New England was, “I have to find some people to do this with!” I invited several friends to my house and did a half-day Introduction to SoulCollage® workshop. The next month I did the same thing with another group of friends. We have been spending an afternoon a month together ever since, making cards, sharing our insights, affirming each other’s uniqueness, and doing readings. In sharing SoulCollage® with my friends, I re-discovered the teacher within me who had been silenced for many years. I am now doing workshops at retreat centers, holistic learning centers, community colleges, and local art associations. I am both thrilled and honored to be able to share the gift and magic of SoulCollage® with others.

Trainer Statement

Being a SoulCollage Facilitator is one of the most fulfilling things I have ever done in my life!  (to be continued)....

Personal work with own SoulCollage® cards

I have been creating cards for my deck since February of 2005, and I don’t believe I will ever stop! Sometimes I create a card intentionally if there is some inner voice inside of me that is longing for expression, or if I am wanting to honor someone in my community or an animal guide. But most often, the cards create themselves, almost entirely on their own! These are the cards that have the most power for me. There is something very therapeutic (and healing) in paging through magazines, looking for images that are calling out to me, then putting them together with different backgrounds, and finally, listening to what the images are saying to me about my life. For me, the power of SoulCollage comes from recognizing that there are many voices inside of me. Some of them are bright, and some are dark and shadowy, but they are all parts of me that deserve honor and respect. And there is great comfort in knowing that the darker parts of me are not the only parts of me. The simple act of gluing magazine images onto mat board has fed me with grace, grounded me with the roots of inner awareness, and given me wings to fly joyfully into a future of endless possibility.