Mockup of the cover of our upcoming book.
To read a first draft of the introduction visit here.
For the website of Rod’s new studio and gallery in Hilton Head, visit here:
Heron Dance publishes
Journal Meditations of a Working Artist:
The inner work underlying creative work,
and the creation of a unique life.
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This work is an expression of gratitude for the gift of life, for the beauty and mystery of wild nature and for the inner peace I’ve found there.
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Heron Dance art journals and books explore questions, including difficult questions, that affect the quality of a human life and the creation of art. They explore the use of journaling and meditation (relaxing the mind) as important tools in nurturing our relationship with our inner world, and the song within.
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Online journal
(free — twice a month)
Members (3-4 times a week)
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The quality of our lives depends on the quality of the questions we’re willing to explore.
More here.
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Journaling and your connection with your inner world.
Keeping a journal helps us self-balance. By writing about our lives, we clarify our vision of who we are and who we hope to become. By combining journaling with relaxation and meditation, we can pull answers from our subconscious and bring them to the surface where they can be used to shape our life and work.
Journaling is a search for your deepest truths – the truths that underly your life, truths that you may not be aware of. Journaling can help us understand the myths that guide us without our knowledge. Journaling offers an opportunity to explore questions that we would rather avoid. On the other side of those questions lies meaning and quality of life. The belief at the center of this work is that your journey is deeper and richer, and the ultimate destination more meaningful, if it grows out of an intimate connection with your inner world.
Nothing was ever so unfamiliar and startling to me as my own thoughts. . . My journal should be the record of my love. I would write in it only of the things I love, my affection for any aspect of the world, what I love to think of. . . I feel ripe for something. . . yet can’t discover what that thing is. I feel fertile merely. It is seed time with me. I have lain fallow long enough.
- Henry David Thoreau, in his journal
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As much as anything else, our journeys are an effort to understand and manifest our uniqueness as human beings. To read a first draft of the introduction of our next book (Journal Meditations of a Working Artist) visit here.
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Just as an acorn contains in its unconscious the dream of the oak tree and that dream expresses the coming into being of the oak tree, working with a person, we have to have a method of drawing forth what is in the seed of the person, the unlived potentials.
- Ira Progoff, At A Journal Workshop
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An acorn contains within it the dream of a mighty oak.
A life journey, a creative journey, grows out of the seed of one’s song.
Sing us the song only you can sing.
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Listen for the special music — the song that nobody else can sing but you.
Your own karma badly lived is better than someone else's karma lived well.
- Denise Shekerjian, Uncommon Genius
For more on Heron Dance books and online art journals (Substacks), visit here.
For more on the art gallery of Roderick MacIver, founder and publisher of Heron Dance,
on Hilton Head Island visit here.
Roderick MacIver, creator of Heron Dance, on one of many wilderness explorations thirty years ago.
My name is Roderick MacIver. I am the founder of Heron Dance. I have been a full-time artist and author for thirty years. Over those thirty years, and in prior endeavors, journaling has played an important role in my life and in my creative process.
Mediocre, middle-of-the-road work, work that is not offensive or irritating to someone or some group, is weak work. Milk toast. If you are not irritating someone, you are are doing weak work. Truly unique work will initially be rejected by the status quo. You are unique — give us what only you can create. That’s where journaling is particularly effective. It can help us understand our individual uniqueness. It can help us develop our ability to contribute to the lives of others – the unique contribution we can make as a result of our experiences, skills, interests and creative vision – and guide us in our dialogue with that uniqueness as if it was a person.
Our lives are a brief spark between two eternities. We live surrounded by incredible natural beauty and mystery. A central message in this work is living with gratitude, and the richness that adds to a life.
Creating a unique life, and creative work, is about shaping the uniqueness each of us possesses with patience, self-discipline and self-knowledge. Journaling nurtures the song within.
All that matters is what you love
and what you love is who you are . . .
- John Squadra, This Ecstasy
One’s art goes as far and as deep as one’s love goes,
and there is no reason for painting but that.
- Andrew Wyeth
There are many pathways in this life and it doesn't matter which one you take, for they all have a common destination, and that is the grave. But some paths give you energy and some take it away.
- Cervantes
Some paths, some work, some people give you energy, and some take it away.
The Online Journal:
Journal Meditations of a Working Artist is published three or four times a week.
Starting in 2025, free subscribers will receive these posts twice a month and Members
three or four times a week.
You can sign up for the free version here.
Memberships including PDFs of recent books here.
Journaling
A primary tool, both in my own creative process and in those of the creatives I’ve encountered in my travels and in the memoirs, journals and autobiographies of artists I’ve read, is the use of journaling. Heron Dance explores various journaling techniques that have proved to be particularly useful in the creative process. Those tools are explored in depth in the books and Substack blog posts Heron Dance publishes.
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In addition to artists, musicians, filmmakers, poets, novelists and other creatives, Heron Dance also draws on the wisdom of a variety of others who have created unique lives out of their imagination, persistence and hard work:
The backwoods wanderers — Thoreau, Emerson, Sigurd Olson, Whitman, Burroughs.
The ancient Taoist hermit poets of the mountains of South China.
The mystics Rumi, Rabindranath Tagore, Kahlil Gibran, Abraham Joshua Heschel.
Those who probe for the deeper mysteries of the universe underlying science – Einstein, Loren Eiseley, Carl Sagan.
People who devote their lives to some concept of a greater good — those who work in refugee camps, soup kitchens, with the addicted and homeless, people who work to protect wilderness.
We look for wisdom, for insight into this precious gift of life we’ve been given, it’s meaning and potential sources of strength wherever those insights might be found.
We are searchers and seekers.
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Heron Dance published books, journals and diaries in 2024.
The Nurturing the Song Within Art Journal and the related Diary
Meditations on Beauty and Mystery, A Gratitude Art Journal
The Pausing for Beauty Poetry Journal
Early in 2025, Heron Dance will publish:
Journal Meditations of a Working Artist
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Heron Dance Books published by Heron Dance Press and other publishers can be viewed here.
The Heron Dance Book Of Love And Gratitude
Meditations on Nature, Meditations On Silence
Art As A Way Of Life
Thoreau And The Art Of Life
The Man Who Planted Trees
Wild Waters And The Tao
Simplicity Is Profound
The Song I Came To Sing
Art Is About The Mystery
Earth My Likeness, The Nature Poetry Of Walt Whitman
Pausing For Beauty, The Heron Dance Poetry Diary
More here.
Reader Reviews
Three Heron Dance books about living a life of beauty, creating work of beauty.
Published In 2024
. . . the devotion required to construct such a work is inspirational in itself. A multifaceted and heartfelt exploration of creative life.
- Kirkus Review of Nurturing the Song Within
Nurturing The Song Within Art Journal And Diary / Planner
Nurturing The Song Within Art Journal: We have a few copies of the first edition left, and don’t plan to print more. 190 pages of paintings and reflections on the beauty and mystery of wild nature, of life. The book explores the inner work that underlies creative work and creating a life. This is a hardcover book printed by a high quality art book printer on premium paper with Smyth sewn layflat binding — the highest standard in art book printing. Less expensive PDF editions are also available.
Nurturing The Song Within Diary Planner: Designed to work with the Art Journal, it provides room for notes, objectives, plans, appointments and an exploration of the underlying current, individual to you, that is guiding you perhaps without your full awareness. It has dates for the second quarter of the year, but these can be ignored and used anytime during the year. Two pages per day including a painting.
More here.
A person’s life purpose is nothing more than to rediscover, through the detours of art, or love, or passionate work, those one or two images in the presence of which his heart first opened.
- Albert Camus
The Heron Dance Book Of Love And Gratitude
Meditations on Nature, Meditations On Silence
Art As A Way Of Life
Thoreau And The Art Of Life
The Man Who Planted Trees
Wild Waters And The Tao
Simplicity Is Profound
The Song I Came To Sing
Art Is About The Mystery
Earth My Likeness, The Nature Poetry Of Walt Whitman
Pausing For Beauty, The Heron Dance Poetry Diary
More here.
I didn't trust it for a moment
but I drank it anyway
The wine of my own poetry
It gave me the daring
to take hold of the darkness
and tear it into little pieces.
- Lalla Ded, poetess of 14th century India.
Our life is an apprenticeship to the truth that around every circle another can be drawn; that there is no end in nature,
but every end is a beginning, and under every deep a lower deep opens.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
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There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle.
The other is as though everything is a miracle.
- Albert Einstein
