An Eye on Intentional Creativity:: Life After Loss

Ilona Lantos recently completed fellow Color of Woman Teacher Catt Geller’s, Teach the Teacher Cosmic Smash Book training. Originally from Hungary, Ilona now resides in Virginia.

As a member of her local artist community Ilona held her first workshop at the Gallery Clarendon using this Smash booking process. Everyone really enjoyed this process and their creations. “I fell in love with the texture, the creative freedom and finding beauty in what might look ugly. I came up with the idea of the Petite Smash Book using a tiny notebook and innovative painting media and techniques to create a cute little companion to process topics and issues as a daily routine.”

I always held art and self-expression close to my heart but with a lock on it.

Ilona describes how the creative process sparked her own healing as a “warrior mamma” after her son Chris died of cancer in 2013 at the age of 12. At a painting workshop for bereaved parents, “colors became live in front of my eyes”. Ilona continued painting, and found Shiloh Sophia’s Intentional Creativity method along the way, becoming a Color of Woman Teacher in 2017. Ilona founded the Chris Lantos Foundation to help kids and their families on the pediatric cancer journey. The foundation has granted 185 iPads to kids and hospitals. Kids with this type of illness spend numerous hours, days, weeks, sometimes months in hospitals and clinics and at home in isolation and an iPad can help them to connect with the world.

Playing with paints unlocked my creativity

“Both the Color of Woman Training and Cosmic Smash book programs have contributed to my life tremendously. I am confident that for me this journey is the way to healing my grief. My journey has been similar to many of the brave women who dare to pick up the paint brush. I have always loved art and it has been part of my personal and professional life in the form of photography and digital art creation and teaching. Having taught and tutored kids and adults in English and Hungarian languages, art, computer graphics, and music for about 40 years, I am a teacher at heart.”