Last night I had a group of friends over for a “play with paint” night. None of them consider themselves artists, and most have not held a paint brush in their hand their whole adult life. (See the luscious results above.) The point was to get free and play with child-like trust. Sounds fun and easy, right? Wrong, if you’re like 95% of most adults. Just try it. Really.
It takes courage (especially with other adults around) to allow yourself to dip a brush in some liquid color, put it on the paper, and see what happens. That white piece of paper can be quite intimidating for being such a wisp of a temporary material thing. It took some laughter and time; but soon we were “painting for process”.
There are 2 camps when it comes to creating Art:
1. Creating for the sake of Process, and
2. Creating for the sake of Product.
Most people feel it can only be one way or the other. Not me. I believe in and am strongly attached to both. Both have life-giving, life-enhancing value. However, they do come at art from completely different sides of the road….
(These thoughts apply to ART-OF-ANY-SORT, but for the sake of simplicity I will refer to only “painting” from here; interpret for yourself as needed.)
Painting as Process is the visual equivalent of journal writing, done not for the sake of being seen or published. Purely for the telling itself. It’s a call for Creativity and Complete Freedom to come together.
Why would you paint/create for process? It has transformative powers. It’s a means of connecting with what is inside. It taps into a source of inner wisdom that provides guidance, allows personal growth and transformation, reduces stress, relief from trauma or overwhelming emotions, soothes pain, bring hope and revitalizes our being.
It’s about recovering our freedom, our natural child-like instinct to play, to invent, to listen to our intuition.
There are no rules or expectations .
No judging or criticism.
No “shoulds” or expectations.
It’s opening up the space to arouse your desire to create, releasing the myths of talent, inspiration, or not being good enough. It’s vital to discovering ourselves, finding wholeness and health, it’s one of the most ancient forms of healing inner wounds.
Art is deep and essential play. It is therapy on a deep, inner level.
Tomorrow, I’ll tell you HOW to do it; then in later blogs we’ll talk about WHY we would paint for “Product”.
Posted via email from For the Love of Beauty and Adventure!
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