renewal as returning and remembering

                          mixed media collage 8x8 inches on watercolor paper

   

 It has been two years since I wrote on this blog that is painting inspired. 

What surprised me in a serendipitous way was that the first post I had made in this blog format, (sistermotherbeloved in 2009) was also at a beginning, when I moved to Bavaria. 

This is interesting to reflect on ....how many beginnings we are given throughout our lives. So many experiences to come to know ourselves, to know what really matters.....

Two years ago I had stepped into a process of painting that would lead me deeper in touch with myself than I could have imagined. 

I'm kind of excited to see myself sitting at this desk, with my new computer from last year that I've hardly touched...maybe it was waiting for this moment, to write again.

It feels that way.

So that process did bring me more in touch with myself and now - yeah, it's just me in the house. Just me in the garden. Just me in the studio. Just me in the kitchen, on the porch, mending the fences where the persistent groundhogs still enter the field garden. Just me, landing more gently. I thought I knew what landing was all about.

There is a returning to myself. To realize I am fun to be with. Maybe this is too personal. 

Well, that's where I'll start. I'm tucked away on Blogger while everyone else is on Substack. That's ok.

 I will find an image to share of the renewal, of the remembering, of the returning. 

Abstraction has called my intuition awake to a new way of expressing myself in paint and collage....I follow where it leads. I ride the bumpy parts of the road. 

I enjoy the flow when I notice that, too.

i'm very grateful to be here, that's for sure.

If my words reach anyone who is a reader, even though it might sound like I am talking to myself....may they feel the gentle whisper of remembering that calls us all back to ourselves, back to what we have aways known matters most in life.

That knowing, that remembering matters now more than ever.

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.