what is process painting?

  

process painting is 

an unplanned, unpredictable and surprising experience in paint. 

It is zen-like in its flow

dream-like in the way forms arise and change

life-like as we interpret a form and give it meaning, as we watch the color and water carry us along, toward new forms, new meanings and beyond meaning.

It is a fun, challenging, exciting to witness, fascinating practice.

It is meditation in action.

It is a conscious listening and letting go, in paint.

smooth white paper   

smooth color

smooth brushes

there is no right or wrong way to paint spontaneously.

this playful experience has a way of spilling us deeper into life.

What can it be for you?

how thrilling

to allow yourself such freedom,

such courage to stand before the unknown!

creativity awakens and stretches,

thrilled to be called forth in such an open way, 

into such a safe space as you.

spontaneous painting is a conversation with yourself
in paint.
you are creativity itself.

process class letter

Let's go deep this winter
through the dark
to the source of light.

“I sometimes think of the critic as a character left over from caveman times, times concerned with sheer survival. The critic hunches at the edge of the clearing and watches for dangerous intruders. If we send in an original thought, that thought is often shooed away. To the critic, an original thought may appear disturbing, even dangerous. It wants to see what it has seen before. To the critic, ease feels foreign -- and suspicious. Work should be work, shouldn’t it? The critic believes in product, not process. It does not like us to have the joy of creation, It is interested in fixing things, not in creating things. It insists there must always be something to fix.”

Those words of Julia Cameron have been keeping me company in the past weeks.



How do we create something new?
How do we meet that critic while we are in process?
I don’t know what do do about it other than feeling its effect on my heart. Feeling the shutting down of free play, of following a color or shape in trust.
How do we develop trust in the process, to really allow ourselves to paint freely without trying to develop our skill in painting?
Trying to undo the effort to be free creates more effort.

Can we stop long enough to feel what it is like to stand at the edge of the unknown, paint brush in hand, and carefully make one mark?
Can we allow that mark to be free to show us the way further into this pulsing moment of our lives?



We need those original thoughts more than ever before.

Let’s practice allowing them to take form in paint.

Let’s look at life together and paint it.

The joy of creation can dispel what is untrue and powerless.



The world needs creative human beings who trust in what has never been seen before.


That’s what I think, sitting here on my knoll in the wintering woods of Rappahannock County.



We will meet again to paint in January at Mullany Art Studios.

Saturday and Sunday January 28/29

9:30 am - noon

$90.



Due to the extra effort to make the room warm and inviting in the winter, we are setting the minimum participation at four painters.



I hope you’ll join us.
We inspire and support one another to let process rather than product lead the way - in our own unique way.

Barbara

a picture is worth a thousand words

a work in process, in progress

"I'm alive,"

they are saying

"I'm alive!"

that's how i have been feeling my process paintings, 

so supportive of just letting myself live in touch with what i feel

the color supports a flow that is natural

the brushes support a flow that is natural

and the water,

oh, the water.

I'm alive they are saying,

I'm alive, I respond, yes, I feel it, I see it.

 I'm alive.

a thousand eyes open

the way always opens to a completion if given enough attention.

slow listening

process moves slowly 

sometimes.

I return to the paper as I hear the call to return.

There is no rush.

I am listening.

the surprise of self

The surprises that wait for the painter around a corner - something they may not have even seen or imagined when they began the painting - may be waiting for you to discover also!

  We begin fresh every time. 

Keeping an open, curious mind and following the lead of our intuition, the paint will flow where and how it needs to go. 

We will naturally judge it as good or bad, until we don’t believe those thoughts. 

We will follow a story line for a brief time, feeling some sense of certainty of the path we are taking, until we notice, “oh, I’m telling a story about this!” 

Then we find ourselves once again, open to another layer of the unknown that is unveiling itself before our very eyes.

During the process, we keep seeing our need to know. Actually it isn’t “ours” - it is a natural function of the mind to know, to interpret and in the process we practice letting go of this need to know. The mind wants to keep us safe by, it wants us to know where the painting is going, where in fact “we” are going.

 But imagine being aware of how we feel with this or that color, this or that shape, and simply staying with ourselves through it all, being held by this flow of the color soaked brush. The brush knows how to move if we will let it move!

So we return again to the paint table and let another color speak to us.

My teacher used to say “sometimes all we know is what color it is.”

I have watched many people begin process painting using pure and non-representational forms. Painting this way frees the mind from its need to know what is happening and is so often a deeply satisfying experience of letting intuition lead through pure color. Unexpectedly, our inner world is touched by these seeming meaningless marks.

  

   I have also discovered that what deepens my process is letting more literal shapes take form in the painting, from my life. Houses, Trees, Animals, People are such a vital part of our lives, why not let them join the painting? This invites, for some painters, the process to touch us in ways that we may choose to avoid, but which when met, will open us to a great freedom from fear. We are invited out of the mind’s meaning making once again, through the process itself. 

To let ourselves be touched by our very own lives in the presence of our own awareness is a powerful and loving creative act.

  I began the new process painting sessions with the senior citizens at the Scrabble Senior Center last week and they took my breath away with their paintings! I don’t know of any group activity that I enjoy more than this; entering and reentering this mystery of life and watching it appear on paper, in color.

   We all have much to learn here. We aren’t here to be like someone else, but to be ourselves. Being ourselves is what we’ve been given to do. It does take courage to step out of our old clothes when we know they don’t fit us any longer!

 I invite you to bring forth the images within you and enjoy the surprises that wait for you, through the painting process.

deep sea musing in paint

process ~

always the surprise waits 

in a color

beneath the ideas that surfaced along the way

blue 

revealed the field

of water

of feeling

of life.

a mystery

from the dark of what i couldn't see or know

hand came to embrace everything 

that feels true and real

it's a process to allow the truth to take form

i always want to know right away what this is.........

and it is a mystery

it will always be a mystery.

in all ways.

always more than i could know

process painting has lead me beyond my ideas of anything.
i thought it was not to be shown.
it was a rule i kept and became one that kept me.

but the point is to paint, letting go of the need to show it.
this allowed me to go deeper, to let my self express.

what is painted, is often universal, bigger than my small me.
i'm glad for that.
i'm glad to show it.

She's got my whole world in her hands

I brought this painting home from my studio last week. 

This is how the process continued. 

I had been entering entering entering, making smaller and smaller marks, and then yesterday the feeling of purple rose up, and this purple one embraced and seemed to carry the whole. I needed to paint larger and larger areas of color. The judgements were loud, "this is not process painting" -"I'm missing the connection." 

Gladly, I just let myself paint the large purple figure and the green landscape she stood on. 

She holds everything and everyone. 

The process continues now, I am in it. 

Trusting that the process works when I allow it, I notice that I like to paint. 

I like to allow myself to be on the path I've found myself on.

Thankfully, there is room for humor on this path!

what is form?

what is form?
what takes form?

the word form is laden with meaning from the hallways of the art school i attended.
i used it thinking it was meaning shape, the shape of anything.
something takes form.
form was laden with meaning.

but when this painting began to "take form," there seemed not to be any particular edge to this or that "form."

once again, process painting takes me to new places and toward new understandings.

passing through

the expression continues
comes closer to home

in the world 
my mother's voice is strained
in my inner world my heart is straining 
to express

in relation to her
the care
the helplessness.

words don't quite hold
all the feeling
the open door lets the conditioning pass through.

grateful for paint today.

the door is open

I don’t know where this is going.

I don’t know what this is about.

I want to put it - my experience - on hold, 

to see it,

to know it,

to judge it,

once and for all.

is it good?

is it beautiful?

is it wrong?

is it of value?

And it keeps moving.

Life brings gifts 

And there is fear.

There is mistrust. 

There is anger.

There is such a need to control.

So I paint.

I let the feelings have a form

Snakes

Little openings 

Blood

Knives

Dark beings coming out from under the bed.

Like that.

Letting it be like that.

Letting it (what is it?)

Letting all of this life I am living have a form.

I keep painting,

Feeling the energy move,

Feeling the mind want to know,

the door remains open,

Endlessly open

to life itself.

to my life.

And 

There is a knowing of something true.

From a true place

Awareness knows

Here is kindness

Here is care

and 

Here is wonder.

Here is wonder not to know

And wonder to know that I don’t know

And that I feel much

And I paint

And sometimes I call it courage.

Nothing 

good or bad 

really wants to stay

Because of this open door.

It welcomes everything to be felt

And to pass through. 

I like this word AND

It is an endless invitation of welcome.

I paint and I write, today.

I am encouraged by someone who loves me,

sometimes more than I can love myself,

to do so.

dear reader, 

sister or brother,

may you too, engage fully in and with your life today,

may it pass smoothly, through and through, your open heart!