Archive for January, 2018

284. The yellow drawing

What?

In the moment I finish it I know I want to use some colored pencil on it. I know where and how. I wait for the drawing to dry. I listen to the radio. The music is beautiful. Then I look again and the drawing is dry. And it is beautiful as it is. It is poor in terms of colors. Only one. All that it does was accomplished with the yellow color alone.

But it has endless variations in the way the lines are made. Thin and fat, close to each other and far, straight and round. Sometimes they touch each other and become one line. The expressions of the lines are different. Each little part is different from all the others. The spaces in the drawing are very different too: Closed and open, narrow and wide, pouring into the next space or keeping to themselves.

The whole thing starts from a line that is like some ground. One side of the drawn shape goes up. The other starts going up and then turns around and goes down. The right side is listening to the left side, and when the left one makes a left turn, the right one also starts to turn left. Maybe the right side is more burdened and this is why it cannot go as high as the left one?

Are they one thing with varying sides? And what is that little something at the very right edge? Maybe the right side part stopped going up because it wanted to look at that little thing? So this side is independent, making its own decisions, even though it is obviously connected to the left side. The left one must be independent too. It is just like us, having the ability to make independent choices and at the same time being an inseparable part of the all.

That little shape at the right edge, is it coming or going?

Why did the left part turn back down?

Are they playing?

They have the spirit of playing, don’t they?

Do you need any more than one color?

Is the yellow gold, warm light or straw?

Where does the whole thing stand?

If you happen to walk near it, what will your relative size be?

 

And if we are left with questions only, is this a good thing or not?

284. Narrow and wide points of view

fear first

Fear.

This is the subject of this painting.

You can see that it is dark. The lines quiver and are afraid to move. Trying to come together and collaborate, they can’t. Fear is like a cloud that covers the open sky of possibilities and free choice. No, you can’t do this, fear says, and you get constricted. You don’t see farther than your immediate confrontation with the thing that frightens you. It seems there is no way to avoid or escape it. It is hard to see anything anyway. This is a very narrow point of view.

Naturally, the relief from fear happens when somehow you manage to open the sky of more possibilities again. How about infinite possibilities?

Within our system of who we are, there is the open sky viewpoint, already a part of us that never leaves. All we have to do is enter the state in which we can experiece this openness. Making art is one of the best ways. (Meditating, Dancing, singing, remembering what you are thankful for, these are some of the other ways.)

So imagine: Something triggered your fear. Perhaps you started to uproot a belief that you had held for a long time, and used to think that it was very important for your safety. Now you start to see how this belief stops you from flourishing and you want to change the situation. The subconscious refuses to change, and suddenly you are afraid. It is as if you think very quickly: What am I doing? I am taking away my protection! A dark cloud covers your open view. There is nobody there to help and it is you against your fear. What to do?

Draw or paint the fear, if you like drawing or painting. Where do you feel the fear? How does it feel? How can you describe in visual effects the way you feel? Ask your intuition to paint for you. Be the hands and eyes of intuition. Whatever ideas come, do them. After all it is just a drawing.

As you paint, you pay attention to how you feel. And you can detect where in the painting your description is true to your experience and where it is not exact enough. So you correct yourself to make a good description, as only you, looking from inside of yourself can know.

From being totally engaged in a confrontation and a fight for life, you change your state to being curious, playing with effects that you invent as you go, and trying out expressions. You pay attention to what feels true and not. Inevitably you start feeling good as there is joy in following your intuition. You start paying attention to the composition, which indeed is a wider view of everything, and without any effort, you are already in a deeper state, a calmer state, a wiser state, a loving state.

Fear cannot stay in such an environment. Fear is the vibration of being cornered by danger. It cannot keep its strength inside of a loving, playful, and curious environment.

And while you are still in this loving state, which is your true nature, ask yourself: What do I really want to do now? What does my true nature want to do?

283. There, not there

The surprising power of green

There are two paintings in this entry.

The first gives a good feeling. All the shapes feel good with each other. They are very close together and whatever happens in the picture, they all take part in it.  But when I was painting, I knew that the big brown roundish shape in the middle of the lower half was a wooden wheel of a mill at the river, and I knew that in the water there was blood. In the painting it is violet. These belong to a traumatic event, not in this life, but I know about it.

So we have a trauma hinted at, but the context is like a quiet, friendly village, where the houses hold each other as they watch the bridge crossing the water. There are trees and the sky is playful.

In the second painting the shapes seem to be in shock. There is a house. There is a line in the middle that could represent a little bridge. There are trees, grass and sky. But the sky seems to be torn. Maybe there is a scream in the sky. A dry, dead branch, is pointing at the scream. And there are these warm colored shapes, orange, red and brown, colors that do not really belong in this landscape. They are in the painting to describe something traumatic that is just happening.

The composition isn’t settled. Everything is moving from its place. Where will the pieces fall? We do not know yet.

An event from childhood

Then, for a lifetime, the trauma that we had will be expressed in everything that we think and do.

Sometimes it will be hard to find, like in the first painting. In other times it will be strong and inescapable. Until we decide one day to let it go and we find a way to work on it till it is not there any more.

 


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The healing process

Entries 1-58 show how I use the method of Intuition Through Art to heal myself from Peripheral Neuropathy.

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