hungry barbara was thirsty, too

thirsty for the real
as odd as that tongue felt,
it was right.

keeping the connection when challenged by the new

Sometimes I really don’t know what is happening in a painting. 

And I watch myself. 

I see when I am caught by the characters and the story. I am hesitant to make something happen, so I return to a mark, and just let that carry my engagement. 
Often I notice that the disturbance is due to my feeling not connected. There is the thought, I don’t feel connected, I don’t know what I’m doing, I don’t know who these characters are. 
And I notice a resistance sometimes to naming the characters and letting them be “Her, the Great Mother” and “me, the hairy wild new creature”. 

A story is as much one thought as a train of thoughts.

 I moved too fast into the two figures in this next painting.

Then like I said, I fell into a story, I didn’t like the wild thing any more, and I made a big figure of blue, out of habit. 
I moved too fast.

At the first sight of the wild thing’s hairy arm, I knew I was on the threshold of something new appearing. 
And I got scared.

The wild thing got larger, they met one another face to face.
but I was stopped by my mind.
so, I turned to the dot and covered the figures in blue dots. I was comforting myself not to know how to ask the right question to open up the way.

What would I paint if I didn’t have to know who these two figures were?

What would I paint if I didn’t have to know who this one hairy arm was? 

Maybe that’s it, I was afraid just to be alone with this hairy armed creature.

I painted little evergreen trees on a hill behind them.

What would I paint if I didn’t have to like this wild thing?

What would I paint if I didn’t have to fix this predicament I put myself into?

Splashes of blue from the blue figure to the wild thing.

What would I paint if I didn’t have to connect the two figures in any way?

What would I paint if they didn’t have to be connected to one another?

When I was walking yesterday I heard myself say I wanted to kill the wild thing.

How to do that? I didn’t want to go there.

So now it is full of blue and I’m writing this analysis/commentary instead of painting....

Not a process. Yes, a process.
 I am not in control of or know the direction of this process.

 I want my part in the process to be as fully intuitive as possible. 
I am learning through the forms, how to let go.
My mind does want to take the direction, show me where it is going, help me stay comfortable in knowing, because I am meeting something new in myself.

This is not easy, no one said it was.

I want to learn how to ask the question that reaches below my mind.

I want to discover how to keep the connection during these transitions without relying on the safety of thought/planning/action.

The body senses danger in this opening, not knowing what resides in the darkness.
My awareness remains steady, knowing there is a great container for this alchemy.

painting through the story

i'd been painting lines, alive lines, for months and then in this painting they took a form.
the form they took appeared before my eyes,
i could see the form before the paint landed.

this creature took form.
a wild thing
a small wild thing,
i call it wild maybe it is not wild, just hairy and unknown!.


given some wiring i have about authority
those who know
those who lead
and my wiring for giving authority to others
i felt into painting a large figure to the right of the painting
in relation to this small hairy figure.

a story appeared immediately that she was going to control the wild thing
put it back into its box.

which was a story,
i could feel immediately how it locked me into what to paint next to fulfill this story line....
and i let myself paint it as it came

so i listened and i painted a box
then i noticed
i didn't know if it was coming out of the box or going into the box
so i painted more about the box,
feeling the wall and the roof and the protection/separation inherent in the box

painting through a story called on my self trust,
to keep painting as the story kept forming
to know that i don't know

then i noticed the possibility, the feeling, that this large figure was actually not controlling the wild thing but assisting it out of its box.

well, that could be as true as the story of control, and actually that felt, well,
 like, why not?

there was a benevolence to the sense of this possibility in comparison to the known story i've always held about the authorities in my life.
where does all the negative wiring live, is it as real as the benevolent truth behind all stories?

when i asked if anyone else could join the painting, i was first feeling this eye to belong to the other side of the woman's face, and it became a being in its own right.

perhaps that's what is happening,
i am becoming a being in my own right.
the gray figure
bodied by the house and open doorway
might be the ghost of my former self,
holding that wild thing inside for so long....
that's one way to analyze it.

the unconscious gives me images
when i dream in paint
i am more often able to name them.

the benevolence here is the key.
michelle cassou wrote that the creative process is benevolent and i have always felt how important that is for me to remember.
the stories I tell myself are so often harsh and limiting,
it is time to discover a new story line, based on a felt sense of what is true and good.
we need that kind of empathic story line to take on greater meaning...

in the end, beginning now, i don't know what any of this means,
it could mean this, too
 shame,
unworthiness
and it's out now.
seen.

tender
 it is tender and new
i don't know why it appears so hairy, but it is!

this is a mystery
and it is interesting to me not to know
but to trust this as a process,
revealing what lives
beneath the story lines.

I trust my intuition.

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.