It is a blessing to know anything about painting at this point. I started painting in watercolor in 1993. I didn’t know anything, and painted in cloud forms on a tiny notepad with a tiny brush, from an even tinier palette a dear friend gave me.
Now I’m painting cloud form reflections in water and it is an emotional process. Things come and go, and I’m aware of how to keep a neat brush after I’ve gotten it messy due to angrily dabbing it around in the paint for a while. Of exactly how much paint I need for what I want to paint next, how much is on the brush, how much time I have with it on the canvas. How to mix paints, how much to mix for how much canvas. I guess now that it’s 2017 and I’m painting in acrylic and acrylic glazing liquid with a Masterson’s palette (actually, three of them), etc. that makes me an old timer. Still self taught, though.
Yesterday, I was self-deprecating and I regret it. It’s part of having multiple personalities. I was thinking from a different perspective, in a meeting, and had a different part of my ability set on at the time. That’s the way it is, but I said something rather down about the artist side of me. “I don’t always think from an artist’s perspective,” I said. But I am very much an artist. I was thinking more from a policy/education perspective at the time, but isn’t that also allowed to be creative? It’s confusing.
Today, I hear a familiar voice telling me, I don’t feel well. I know this, and respond. I know, I’m sorry you don’t feel well. And flashbacks come while I’m painting. Feelings of pain, sorrow, grief, sheer pain, emotionally and physically. I let it out with sighs, and sometimes I whisper to myself, both to the alters and to instruct the painting, to make sure it still goes forward.
Even this is hard. You can’t force creativity. Today I’m up enough to paint, and I am blessed, but even so.
I’m grateful that I have the ability to express myself in any way, am free to do so. That I have any experience at this point is a good thing, and I am practicing my craft, as it is healing me, art therapy.
Here is how the current painting of a Rainforest from a photograph I found on the internet, is looking at the moment, many more layers to come:
amyjacksoncc 