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.
