How do you deal with anger?

I'm angry. There needs to be contrast and darkness. Something inside me craves the play of opposites. I want to destroy my stupid mistakes, and enforce the vibrating texture of the main character and the background. Who cares what remains in focus: what's in the front and what recedes to the shadows? That is absolutely secondary.

I can't stand rejection. We all know we should not take it personally but every single time it's a knife that pierces straight to my heart and soul. I start hating everything I do.  I minimize all my accomplishments. This gnawing feeling that I'm worthless and utterly ungifted makes me want to slash it all, cut it up, and trash all these degenerate half-baked creations.Where is the darkness? I want it to be visible, to conquer the light, to penetrate my hopes and dreams. I need it to co-exist with the light and enclose it, and shape it.

Then, suddenly, this hatred passes and now there's too much contrast. My little inner child awakens and tells me that it's time to move on. It's time to balance it out and add some dimension. I'm that person that plows through. I don't dwell on the negative. I push myself to find new solutions. In these dark moments lies my strength. I find them disturbingly invigorating. They push me to new boundaries.

These nuances in mood and color bring depth and uncover the many dimensions of my life. I could be reveling in these contrasting color combinations forever. I love that it takes me four or five sessions to bring my paintings to completion. There is a span of all kinds of emotions, priorities, struggles captured with each piece. These feelings might not translate to the viewer, but they're apparent to me because I lived them all. These are little pieces of me, my true inner life away from the hustle and bustle of daily pressures.

Each canvas is a battered creation, attacked from all kinds of angles, yet made stronger because of its multiple mini-victories. I wonder what would happen if I could devote my sole attention to painting. Would these get somewhere faster, like they did while I was in college? Could my quest be solidified if I had all the time in the world - no work, no kids, no monetary concerns? Or are these paintings so incredibly deep because they reflect all of me: all my perturbations and the hundreds of existential questions I ask myself while I paint. One never knows. A fairy does not flicker her magic wand granting me a new life - so I make due with what's given me - n'est-ce pas?

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Everything needs its individual attention

The question of giving every student different treatment and a varied set of tasks based on his/her personality has been haunting me for a while. Time and time again I see that inevitably one or two students in each class need a lot more time on each project than others. I feel awful hurrying them along, as typically these are the students who truly pay attention to details, are quite the perfectionists and want every one of their pieces to truly become a work of art. But then what do I do with the rest of the group? I can't constantly split up, on occasion into three separate corners - where each student is doing something different based on his/her skill set and interests. It makes me crazy, I'm feeling like my head is about to explode in all these different directions.

This painting has been attempting to give me answers to that question. I went into it with my typical expressive approach, covering the canvas at once with slashes of my favorite palette knife. It all somewhat worked, but all the elements seemed to lack their own personality. And it occurred to me that I can't treat the surface of the water in a completely identical way in which I'm handling the tree growth, or the clouds floating along. They each move in their separate way: trees reaching up, clouds circling along, water drifting in horizontal lines. I need to copy their movement with my lines, being mindful of each and every personality, so that it could be a valid form in the composition, so that all these actors can have a dialogue with each other.

And yet, these are all parts of one whole painting, and all these personalities have to coexist in it. Trees and sky reflect in the water, merging and balancing out colors, shapes and lines of the final piece. It's just like all people ultimately coexist in one society, somehow learning along the way their ways to cope with that society's demands. So then even though a conversation with each student can be slightly different - should my final goal be to teach them integration into their group? That would ultimately give them an important life lesson, correct?

Traps

This painting has been a torture. It was attempting to come to life amidst declines from juried shows and galleries. I was in a particularly foul mood for weeks. Yet, it has been moving along despite it all and in a very strange way. I've been noticing that the drips don't just come down, (laws of physics and all), - they follow certain ridges and roads that I had left previously. Every time I would come back to paint, I'd be afraid that things would progress too fast. Yet, my barriers created intriguing little turns and twists for paint to follow.

At first, those closed gates seemed to play along with my depressive tune - 'you can't jump over your head', 'you can't go beyond your pre-set limitations' - little mean voice inside my head kept saying...

And then I returned one last time and suddenly thought - 'But wait, I am the one who creates these closed gates. It's completely up to me to open some and close others. It's my choice to direct the flow slightly. I set my own traps.

Just like in life, I can always walk into those pre-designed lived-in scenarios. Or, I can make a conscious decision to behave differently - not sacrifice myself, my time, my energy, but create more meaningful satisfying relationships.

It was truly brought home when I would stand as usual with one arm melting the paint, and the other holding a palette knife, ready to place another automatic mark in another section of the painting. But something inside of me kept saying time and again - 'no, put down the knife, use this arm to consciously turn the canvas and create new paths'...and I did.

Layers

I was part of a unique and very insightful workshop a few weeks ago, led by my art teacher and life coach Andrey Tamarchenko, and Judith Schafman, a psychologist who specialized in dream work.

It introduced me to a very counter-intuitive, yet very liberating approach to painting, which utilizes layers of meditation. The work therefore also consists of layers, often invisible. It bothered me at first that they're unseen - there I am putting all this energy in, and you can't see half of my work. But now that I've tried it a few times, I can tell that underlying sketches still remain - in the feel of the piece, in its energy. And when you keep reworking the painting, and are so afraid of taking sections away - they never do go away completely. Key elements will always be felt. It's such a stress relief to know that.

It's like when you start a new job and you feel that you're starting from scratch. Yet you always bring what you had already learned with you. When HR departments hire recent college graduates - I hope they know that those periods of intense research, sleepless nights, deadlines - were all there, they shaped a person's ability to concentrate. When one relationship ends and another starts - you're a person layered with knowledge of past mistakes and accomplishments...

I've begun to truly enjoy watercolors, after almost 20 years of utilizing them for sketches. I finally understand their layers and how nothing quite goes away, but can only be made better with time.

Time

Amazing how a process of creating a work of art is also a time to draw insights into life's general issues. It never fails. I inevitably come out of every session with an 'aha' moment.

We were on a tropical vacation on a beach (yes, I wish we did this in February as opposed to December, ...alas, the memory of it lingers). I, of course, brought my watercolors, but with two kids and the myriad of scheduled activities, it was impossible to let myself relax and paint. I did force myself, just once.
I set up on a beach, obsessed with the colors and shapes of a stormy sky and unnaturally calm green water, and I really wanted to quickly get these warring emotions onto my painting. It had to be super quick before the 2 year old had another tantrum and the 6 year old got bored with the beach. And nothing was coming out. It was a flat surface that simply wouldn't breathe.

And all of a sudden this little inner voice said to me: 'You just need time. Sometimes you simply need time to let it come into its own'. And I did. I decided that I don't care if there's a tantrum. That once during this vacation I'm allowed to think of just me.I let the watercolor develop, with time and layers. It then dawned on me that everything in this life needs time. There's no need to constantly rush in to solve a problem. Time will tell, will heal, will let things play out and reveal their true meaning. I've gotten so much calmer since that little epiphany. I don't force anyone into a specific plan. I don't force myself to accomplish things in accordance with a strict deadline. Time will show the proper way.

The relationships between

The more I delve into abstraction, the more I realize that objects themselves matter so much less than their relationships with other elements adjacent to them. What's truly beautiful is an object that is able to extend beyond itself, to influence others with its luminosity, to reflect and uncover their hidden beauty.

When you are around someone for a long time and you truly make an effort to relish the relationship - you melt into that someone. Yes, you compromise something of yours, but that makes you that much richer.

And then, just like you never know how exactly paint will behave in a given moment, you don't ever know when a relationship will take another turn. You might attempt to comprehend someone for years, and after all this trial and error realize you don't complement each other. With people this shifting of gears only causes tremendous stress and fear, and most times a certain end, good in the grand scheme of a life that constantly moves...but terrible in the day to day emotional well-being. It'd be so wonderful to approach these turns philosophically, even enjoy them like I do with paint's uncertainty, its wonderful element of surprise. You never know what new wonderful encounters will materialize tomorrow.

A Life of Contrast

It's been a few months that this post has been brooding in my head. I've finally realized that the quest for contrast is what I constantly look for in life - things lacking hard edges simply don't interest me.

I recently came back from an Antique art fair, where tons of soft 18th-19th century paintings graced red felt walls of many booths. I was so incredibly bored with them. They didn't have the punch of hard lines or complimentary colors juxtaposed next to each other, no delineated lights and darks. I couldn't sink into these paintings, couldn't dissolve.



I also incidentally spent a few days with an atmospheric abstract painter, and what I thought was always lacking in her work - a grounding of sorts - she noticed was overly prevalent in mine. She hated my rendering of trees for instance - saying they create a grid which interrupts the flow of the painting....After that critique I attempted to do without my typical hard branches and all I see is mud and chaos.

I guess we each seek and value key features of our personalities in our works and the works of others. It's never the opposites attract phenomenon. OCD'd like myself find order amidst chaos. A Buddhist finds a calm meditative space.

But then...I used to love radical people - those with a strong personality and unwavering opinions. Maybe it's because I'm too mainstream and blah? But now I see that these people are simply not tuned in to the world around them, they don't see shades of grey, don't see any nuances in human relationships. And I get to thinking that perhaps that is what's supposed to happen to my art - more nuances and less expression? That is what growing into your own means?

Brushstrokes - it's not what we say, it's how we say it...

I've spent some time with a friend art therapist this past week analyzing my work. I doubt I'd take up art therapy as even she stopped painting once she got deeply into the analyzing part. You begin overthinking your every move, every compositional element and color that goes onto your canvas.

However, what she said to me as part of her insights was truly simple and dumbfounding - "How about you play with your brushstrokes?"

When I thought of the perfect formula for a successful painting, I forgot this crucial ingredient. Yes, there's composition and line, and color, but it's this element that adds movement, forms depth and instills a personal style into the piece. Without paying attention to it, a painting is too polished, too void of emotion.

It's like a conversation that leads nowhere, or offends, or discloses too much. Perhaps certain intentions were there but the execution was lacking. So my goal for the next 'green' painting is to focus not so much on the content, but on the way of delivering it.