Wednesday night, I was talking with my friend Jan over dinner, explaining my paintings and when I came home, I used the liquid paint with a spoon, to drop larger splats, mixing colour with the wet white or black, and used paper to cover areas I liked and didn't want to lose. Thursday night, I looked at them again and just increased the white in the light areas, black in the darker areas and added more green over white areas to bring a hint of leaves.
I described my challenge with my painting as “I’m using the phrase the “Night Garden” but it’s not really about a garden, or flowers, at night.” I realize that’s where I got stuck wanting to paint flowers, but it’s not about flowers at all. Tues night I set up in the basement with 4 paintings on the floor dripping paint onto the canvas from standing. I took photos of them and that really helps me clarify what I like – I enlarge the image and scan for the part I really like. I saw what I was searching for: the flowers can look like clouds or galaxies, and that is the point: flowers can look like galaxies – there is that continuity in nature, that connection which we can rely on. We are the universe, we are connected to our good, we are perfection – we just have to see it, and release attachment to our limiting story: defining this as “good” and the other as “bad”.
Wednesday night, I was talking with my friend Jan over dinner, explaining my paintings and when I came home, I used the liquid paint with a spoon, to drop larger splats, mixing colour with the wet white or black, and used paper to cover areas I liked and didn't want to lose. Thursday night, I looked at them again and just increased the white in the light areas, black in the darker areas and added more green over white areas to bring a hint of leaves.
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I talked to Sarah, our instructor, about the theme of painting on a black canvas, how the phrase “The Night Garden” felt like a hundred paintings within me. I explained that the black is like part of my life which could be called “tragic” and how I have changed so much that I feel I am in a different galaxy and how I want to share this because other people also have the “dark night of the soul” and it can be a place of transformation. To me the “Night Garden” is ripe with opportunity, filled with the colour and perfume of the garden yet dark like the inside of a cocoon in which the moment of transformation from caterpillar to butterfly is just happening. It’s like the whole string of the milky way is glittering in the moonlit dew on the flowers. There is so much hope here, in the darkness. There is so much optimism and opportunity to blossom. Where I am today couldn’t have happened without my episodes of darkness. It’s like the rich earth nourishing the unfolding, fragrant rose. I spent most of the day feeling anxious about painting, about what to do next, about how can I stay loose and bring in some semblance of a recognizable image. The question is what is the garden all about? Is it about individual flowers? No. Is it about texture and colour? No…. What is it – it’s not really about the garden at all, so why try to paint flowers in a garden. What about ambiguity? Isn’t it more interesting to see a sparkling brook, a shining galaxy in a garden of flowers? Isn’t it about seeing a countryside in a bunch of rocks, a forest in a spread of moss? What is it about the garden that I’m trying to paint? I’m trying to paint how I feel, but it’s not about the garden, it’s about God and about who I am. It’s about being the whole universe and seeing it in a “dewdrop”. It’s about the feeling of immensity within the borders of my own skin. How do I paint that? It’s about the agony of teetering on the edge of collapse, to suddenly discover that I am on top of the world and God is upholding me in His breath. It’s a sudden awareness that this feeling of upset happened before, just before the breakthrough. I need to sit in front of the painting and just allow it to be. I need to be with it, to Be and not to figure what to do next. It is an avenue for Me to talk to me, to “let go, let go, let go” and paint without expectation. I put 4 canvases together and I’d like to try to paint the big painting instead of getting spiraled down into something so confining.
In my diary at the time I wrote, after being moved by Mozart’s music: I’m worrying about my paintings. I wish that I could bring this musical communion feeling to my paintings, to bring the “beyond” into the images so the viewer can transcend the painting image into a personal experience of the meaning, carried by the image. The images hold such deep joy for me, I so love them and I so wish I could paint them “beyond the canvas”, like I feel when listening to Mozart. It seems that the music has really given me an experience of Being and I can apply that to all I behold.” In late 2014 I began to paint these flowing images into gardens of flowers. The background is still dark, and I felt that I was painting the “Night Garden”. I wanted to show the “garden at night” with its mystery, fragrance and surprises. I still layers blots, splats and drips of paint, continuing to build the image. I started “Art Club” at the VISA school and was given the support to lighten the image up, and to create areas of light and dark, to consolidate areas rather than have overall light against dark. This January I felt that I had finished the one flower painting. I still wondered about the left hand bottom corner – should I lighten it up a bit or would that distract from the rest of the painting, especially the top right corner where I loved the contrasting colours of the rosy geranium against the light blue/green of the “moonlight”? Our instructor Sarah encouraged me to “push it” more – make it lighter and see what effect that had. I did, and did again about 3 times. I expressed that I was afraid of losing the delightful doodles of colour that were there, and she said that was the problem: I was afraid. I was holding back. She challenged me to make the light parts almost white and the dark parts darker. She showed me a magazine which had paintings, and I realized in our conversation that I keep making it too detailed, I love the detail – the little bips and blobs of colour and how the mix and sparkle. The problem is when I stand back 5 feet – where did it all go? It disappears unless you are a foot away. Sarah showed me how in a large painting the closer you get the more vague it is, the more abstract. She suggested I work bigger or put four of these sized canvases together and make one big painting, and then divide it into four. I see how I get lost in the delightful detail. I see how it gets lost when you stand back from it. I see how that can be backward to how “successful” paintings work : they grab you from across the room because from 10 feet they give you a powerful image that is lost when you get 1 foot away! So I took photos and then squinted my eyes and painted swaths of white and swaths of dark on areas of the painting so that there were larger movements of light and dark. When we hung it, the paint flowed down and created “stems” which were much more vague and ambiguous. Sarah said it might be a stream sparkling with light, it might be the constellations – its more up to the viewer to interpret, which includes the viewer and doesn’t spell it out. Defining it more ends up making it less alive and interactive by making it more concrete and limited. When an image is ambiguous there are more layers, or meaning that can be discovered by the viewer, because I am not saying “these are flowers.”
While working full-time in home support, I have taken a weekend painting course at VISA (on Quadra St., Victoria BC) which introduced me to a more innovative way of painting. I often work on a painting without an original idea and just start painting with colours that eventually begin to take form, which I then develop further into an image. This course started with a blank canvas and watered down acrylic paint, dribbling and splatting colour and letting it dry like an ink blot. This was the first time I was supported to use acrylic with water, as I had previously been told that this compromises the medium - obviously the acrylic paint has improved since I was told this! This was repeated 5 -6 times, building up layers of flowing organic forms. My instructor encouraged me to not rush, which is something I didn't think I did!! He encouraged me to take more time to allow the paint to do the work, and I just controlled a very small aspect of the painting! It was a very enjoyable experience, expanding on my already loose technique.
I also wanted to experiment with beginning on a black canvas, so when I started to work on my paintings at home, this is how I started using the new technique. My first impulse is to say "I know what that is!" and start defining it, but my course gave me the confidence to hold back and continue to allow the painting to develop itself to a greater degree before I added my "two cents worth". I have a tendency to see flowers and gardens in many undeveloped images, so that is the direction many of the paintings have taken. I found that starting on a dark background created shadows and element of depth that other paintings didn't have. It is a really new direction and exciting to feel that my technique is serving my natural tendencies, and creating something very satisfying on a new level! |
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Some random musings about creativity and life - philosophy, practicality, creativity, balance, and joy! Archives
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