Piquant Press is delighted to have been instrumental in making available once more the wisdom in Peter Levitt’s outstanding book on Creativity as a Path to Freedom by launching this second edition.

Peter Levitt: Fingerpainting on the Moon

Writing and Creativity as a Path to Freedom

In Fingerpainting on the Moon, Peter Levitt shows us new ways to create and live from the spiritual source of our lives.

Creativity of any kind requires risk—the risk of being a be-ginner, letting go of control, or revealing intimate or even un-known parts of ourselves. It can also be a source of tremendous joy: the joy of giving voice to our deepest needs and imaginings. Taking a gentle and freeing approach to creativity, Levitt shows us the essentially spiritual nature of creative acts and helps us open our hearts and minds so we can express ourselves with courage, innate wisdom, and authenticity.

No special conditions are required to create. We need not wait for inspiration to strike, or worry that it has abandoned us. Developed over decades of work with writers and other artists, the exercises, stories, meditations, and other tools in this book will:

  • Connect us with our inherent and inexhaustible creative and spiritual source
  • Quiet the inhibitions and doubts that derail our intentions to create
  • Build and nurture trust, intuition, spontaneity, clarity, and confidence
  • Rekindle our spirit of play to energize our creative efforts.

Synthesizing centuries of global wisdom from traditions that in-clude Zen Buddhism, mystical Judaism, Sufism, Christianity, and Native American beliefs, and offering insights from such masters as Paul Klee, Itzhak Penman, Allen Ginsberg, and Pablo Neruda, this book will nurture and sustain the artist in each of us, freeing us to generate work that is genuine, vital, and compelling.

Author, poet and translator, Peter Levitt, lives with his family on Salt Spring Island in British Columbia, where he is the founder and guiding teacher of the Salt Spring Zen Circle.

In 1989 he received the Lannan Foundation Literary Award in Poetry. He has led workshops in writing, creativity and spirituality in Canada, the United States, and abroad for more than forty years.

 

Peter Levitt’s website:  https://www.peterlevitt.com/

Click here to order the book in Paperback or Kindle on Amazon. 

Kudos for Fingerpainting on the Moon:

“A warm, joyful book, full of insights and delights for all who seek to hear with their eyes, see with their ears.”
—Peter Matthiessen,
author of The Snow Leopard

“With this gentle and fearless guide, the way to creative self-expression becomes a path of liberation. The wisdom and practices offered here free me to walk out into the world as into my own heart—and
discover that they are one.” —Joanna Macy,
author of Widening Circles

“Fingerpainting on the Moon shows Peter Levitt’s generosity as an artist, and his great gifts as a teacher. Read it and write.”
—Susan Stamberg,
National Public Radio

“Fingerpainting on the Moon is a book of wisdom. It places in our hands the practices and visions of the true creative life. In writing this book, Peter Levitt passes his wisdom on to us, so that we, too, may become wise and live in beauty.”
—Deena Metzger, author of
Writing for Your Life and Entering the Ghost River