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.

Controlled Impulses

I'm very impulsive by nature. Something comes over me and I follow the urge, I trust it to lead me to a good place. Most often than not it does. Yet, sometimes, I lose momentum, things start falling apart, and I blame it on the initial impulsive decision. Should I? Or is it that loss of faith in my intuition that dooms the task at hand?

I've just read a great NY Times article about restoration being done on Jackson Pollock's 'Alchemy', one of my favorite paintings of all times. Everyone always talks about automatic techniques Pollock had used, the pure happy accidents that followed, his constant drunken state. I never thought his pieces to be accidental, and I'm happy the article shows scientific support of this belief. Every drip area, every color combination was premeditated, even in very large works. Surely, his intuitive senses played a huge part, but so did his formal education, his analysis of how an onlooker's eye should move in a piece to make it lively and compositionally sound.

I just finished a piece that I was told differs greatly from all my other work: it feels larger, it's light is coming from within, it breathes. I'm thrilled with it, and I believe it's my trust and follow through on intuition that brought it to this state. Sure, I used my traditional melted drips, but they were carefully controlled, adjusted in certain areas, intensified in others. Layers kept piling on, yet each uncovered nuances underneath. The palette was limited: colors with which I had never experimented before were carefully juxtaposed. Finally, I left a lot of empty room for it to breathe. It's simply marvelous: it feels like a breath of crisp air. Intuition is certainly a force to reckon with yet nurture...

Making the case for mindfulness therapy

It was certainly a call for action that I had caught this program not once but twice on NPR, an analysis of various mental therapy options out there today, which was absolutely fascinating. It described the old Freudian ways, the movement in the 80's stemming from Beck's automatic thought theory, and lastly went on to talk about a 'New Age' wave or 'Mindfulness therapy' movement that is becoming prevalent today around US.

Essentially, 'Mindfulness therapy' acts like a meditation away from your gnawing problems and thoughts. There was an excellent analogy there when someone stuck a book in front of their face, obstructing his vision. He obviously couldn't focus on the book because it was covering his eyes. When he put a book on his lap where he got some distance, it was in his peripheral vision, and only then he could get a clearer way to read it.

A process of painting (or dance, or making music, or yoga, meditation, etc.) is that form of mindfulness therapy. You force yourself to concentrate on your project at hand so hard that your everyday worries are at least resting for a bit.

I accidentally attempted this process in my own latest painting. I worked on melting a certain part of my canvas but then moved my eyes and started thinking about another section, completely losing myself in new ideas. Meanwhile, the old area now in my peripheral vision kept changing, without my stressing over its completion. No matter how hard I tried to bring myself to focus on one square at a time, my eyes and thoughts would wander around the whole surface. I then decided to just take that process as a given and was able to multitask. I mixed new colors while melting a certain area, allowing the canvas to essentially work itself out. It's a truly magical painting that came as a result, because it didn't require my constant attention.

Meanwhile, my adult classes inadvertently shaped two separate life changing situations. Yes, mindfulness therapy does wonders for your brain!

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.

How we all need a breather once in a while

Yet again an act of painting acting as life coach. I've been following my own mantra while painting - striving for balance of color and line throughout, the lights and darks, the thin and thick. It was all moving along just fine but it was somehow off.

Only six or seven hours into it, nearing the end of my energy reserve - it hit me. The painting was too cluttered. I piled up too many things into this one creation and each area was fighting for attention, unable to sit still.  I wasn't letting it breathe. I was pushing and pushing more elements into this poor thing and it wasn't letting my eyes rest. So I added emptiness, big neutral, peaceful puddles. All of a sudden, the painting came to life - it had its ying and yang. It was full of energy, captivating but not overwhelming.

And it immediately struck me that this is a direct mirror of my everyday life. I never let myself take a breather. I run at full speed, my task organizer bursting at the seams, like a hamster on its little wheel. And I set the same schedules for the kids, because I feel this pressure to keep up. And everyone is irritated, exhausted, struggling.

So as a result of this conversation with my painting, and in order to not burn out, I decided I'll take a nice long coffee break once in a while. I'll allow myself to have a relaxed lunch. I'll find time for yoga and sauna in my schedule, and I'll ease off the kids. I won't rush to sign them up for more activities so that I feel on par with other involved parents. I'll let them play and relax whenever possible. That's truly my wish for everyone this Holiday season - please take the time to breathe. Even a half hour a day helps. Invariably relaxing brings you to new solutions to old problems.

The need to RTFM

My husband is an engineer and his favorite saying when something isn't going right is: RTFM (read the .... manual).

I'm often asked to teach according to a step by step, or follow along manual, and I always refuse. It just seems to me that instructions of that sort kill any individual creativity, or ability to think outside the box and come to an unexpected, yet original solution. My motto has been to demonstrate the use of materials, give some background art history on the project, and see where imagination can take one as an artist.

Yet, with this latest painting I feel like I did what I preach against, and I can't say I'm happy with the outcome. I took an old watercolor from 1999 as inspiration, from the time when I loved the combination of nature and architecture. I thought that even if a rigid structure is there, I can let myself get to a point where I use it sufficiently, and then be able to let it go by melting it away.

But apparently this need for a manual has a strong hold even on me, not just on the engineer types. Every time I tried to lose a column or a window, or have the trees or grass spill over onto the existing planes- something within me rebelled. No matter how hard I tried, I proceeded as I'd been taught with as correct a perspective as possible, the shapes of the original building in the watercolor, and the forms of the initial trees.

So the question I guess is perhaps we as humans are programmed to follow instructions and I'm wrong to confuse myself and others with too much freedom? Perhaps creativity can succeed even within the confines of a manual?


 

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.