​It is not easy to keep your art front and center.

Our western culture does not value creativity as an essential part of daily life. And there are always folks who will let you know that it is not real work, that you are lucky to have the time for it, that it must be nice to have that luxury. I have come to see that it is not a luxury.

Art is essential in my own life, and yours too! And it is essential culturally. 

The arts are where we get to touch those parts of ourselves that do not have words. The parts of ourselves that are below the surface. The parts of ourselves that are changing and growing and pushing up against the standard assumptions. It is how we know ourselves on a deep level.

If we do not have the arts, as a culture, we stay stuck in what we think we know, what we have been telling ourselves in order to be ok with the way things are. We need to let go of the knowing and allow ourselves to feel into a deeper place in order to draw up the healing necessary to move into, or create a better world.
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HI- I'm Val Gilman

Honestly, I have struggled to make time for my art, to believe in the value of it in the world  in the face of all the other needs that are out there.

I have wondered if it is selfish. 
I have doubted that I am a real artist
I have been overwhelmed with all the things that need to be done
I have let myself get so busy that I forget the importance of art in my life
I have had times without making art where I lost my sense of self

And I always came back because it's in my blood. It is essential to my well being and it is where I find meaning.

My first taste of effective support as an artist

When I was in my early 20's, living in western MA, and yearning toward grad school, I lucked into a support group for women artists. I am not sure I would have gotten anywhere with my creative work had I not found that group. It was the first time that I was supported in finding my own truth. That group was not about advice, it was about a kind of open, compassionate witnessing that allowed my own inner wisdom and drive to come forward.

It was profound, and shockingly different from all the support I had known up until then. 

Years later, while I was an academic, teaching ceramics and sculpture in college settings, I began to study authentic movement, or what my teachers call Contemplative Dance. Again, it was an experience of being witnessed with compassion, openness and non- judgement. It offered a way to make space for the vulnerable act of accessing the deeper truths of the creative unconscious.

It was so different from the stressful, competitive, and often dogmatic academic model that I was living in.

When the academic career ended, I knew I wanted to support people in creating the lives that make most sense for them, and in bringing their creative work and  insights to the world. 

I was happy to leave what had been for me a toxic environment of academia. I am not interested in grading or  critiquing as if I am the authority. Nor am I interested in fostering competition. These things take the artist away from their own inner knowing and set the stage for artists to lose themselves in trying to prove their worth. 

My goal is to help artists trust themselves, their intuitive sense of what is their own best, most compelling and honest work.

My goal is to help artists create lives around making art that are rich and supportive and truly nourishing so they have the time, energy and resources to make their best work. 

My goal is to help artists bring their work to their right audience so that the work can do what it is meant to do in the world because art is a communication and at it's best it is healing and transformative.

I trained to be a  Psychosynthesis coach at the Synthesis Center. In a nut shell, psychosynthesis, originated by Roberto Asiagoli in the early 1900's, is a field of psychology that integrates western psychology and eastern spiritual practice. We work both with the subconscious and creative unconscious and also the transpersonal Self and the understanding that we are all part of something much larger than ourselves,


I have complete faith that if I can support you with that same kind of openness, compassion and non-judgement, with the faith that you have everything that you need to get to your own best place, and my job is to help you trust yourself, you will discover and bring out into the world exactly what you need and what we need. 

Taproot Arts and Insight is built out of elements that have been weaving through my many previous life chapters and continues to grow as I push into the newest chapters. 

As a life coach, I not only have training from an extraordinary coaching program, Synthesis Center, but also decades as an artist and a college professor, as well as a deep training and ongoing practice in authentic movement and a previous chapter as a massage therapist. 

I have been a professional artist since graduating from Earlham College in 1988 exhibiting in solo and group shows around the country. As an artist I have always jumped back and forth between the worlds of craft- specifically pottery, and high art- including sculpture, installation, drawing and painting. My art work is my grounding and my teacher- it takes me to the places I need to grow and provides the tools for transformation and healing. I welcome the unknown as I delight in the forms that develop in my hands.  In so many ways I experience my creative work as my spiritual practice, a way to connect to the essential truths of my life and the collective life of the culture and the planet. 

I became an art professor in 1999 after earning my MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. With roughly 14 years of full time college experience plus numerous non- academic classes, I have worked with well over a thousand individual students. My greatest joy in teaching is seeing my students discover their own voices through their play with materials and design, and in so doing become more clear in their goals and passions.  For professional details of my academic and art career see the full CV.

Prior to graduate school in art, I completed a year long program at National Holistic Institute in massage therapy in 1995 where I studied shiatsu, Swedish massage, deep tissue and health and nutrition. I became fascinated with alternative healing processes as I experienced the way that emotions and our stories are held in our bodies and can be released through body work. This became the core of my artistic investigations for many years.

In 2005 I began to study authentic movement, with Alton Wasson and Daphne Lowel, a form I continue to practice and find very rich. It is based in Carl Jung's work with the creative unconscious and related to dance therapy, and it brings a sense of the spiritual into the mix as well as a deep understanding of the relationship between the witness and the "mover",  or core self and the one who is playing out the stories of our life.  It teaches how to access our deeper truths through movement and visualization as additional forms of creative process.  

In studying Psychosynthesis life coaching, based in the work of Roberto Assagioli, who was a contemporary of Carl Jung and innovator in psychology who brought an awareness of the spiritual element and transpersonal qualities to the field, I added maps and tools for coaching to the background, and found myself in a very good place to work both individually and with groups to tap into this rich material.
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Art, in all its forms, is a great teacher, spiritual guide, therapist and healer.

The creative process is really all about play.  Whether music, writing, dance, theater, visual art or any other, it provides access to the creative unconscious- which is the key to growth, healing and deep learning. Dreaming and visualizations are in the same realm, and while I have a deep love of the process of making, and I value tremendously the creative work that others have put out for us to enjoy and relate to, I have found that it is possible to use the imagination directly to dig into the deep and emerge with profound healing. 

My current work, both in coaching and in teaching, is to bring the lightness of play to the profound work of the  creative unconscious and the incredibly rich awareness and healing potential it can unlock. I also continue to create my own art work and find it is ever helpful and revealing as I dance the dance of life.

Val's Art

Check out the interview with me that was published in the Daily Hampshire Gazette!