... And this is because I have been working on some dream interpretations. My intention was to post these on my blog and I was so keen to get them absolutely right in order to get across the essence of what the dreams were telling me and how powerful they are and what wisdom they hold that I got caught up with this for weeks, tweaking here and there, introducing links, explanations and variations until I was myself completely exhausted with it all. So I'll leave posting it for now and concentrate on what I've been doing in the studio.
This has been a interesting period. For a few weeks I felt utterly lost and just hated what I was doing. Walt Disney eat your heart out. I'm going to find a embroidered Bambi badge and sew it onto the forest scene I painted! I suppose most, if not all of us have been there with our art work. Sometimes I'm on a role and all is right with the world and other times I hate what I'm doing and the world is a dark place.
What is it that is said? 'Not until we are lost do we find ourselves'. Well I heard this quote at exactly the right time and decided to just give in to being lost. There's a part of me that wants to leave behind everything I've done before and find something new so I suppose it's inevitable that I get lost for a while and the only thing to do is to surrender to it.
Henry David Thoreau says you'll never 'discover new oceans unless you have the courage to lose sight of the shore'.
So... with this in mind I got lost... And I'm not entirely 'found' but there is something new beginning to emerge.
So to begin with, while I've been working on other paintings, instead of cleaning my brushes in turps I've been wiping the colours onto a fresh canvas and layering them so that colours are showing through other colours. I've then added fabrics, and scratched images from my sketch book into the paint. (Ok so this isn't entirely new for me but I'm approaching this in a different way). I've then started painting and in order to not 'try and control' what's going on I've been doing this upside down. I'm going to be painting multiple images on top of each other leaving some of the images and textures from the previous layers showing through. ( I'm very inspired by Britta's double exposure photographs). Might end up ruining a good few but nothing ventured nothing gained and I'm sure even though some pieces as a whole might not necessarily work there will be elements that will offer a possible new way forward for future paintings.
These two paintings are in progress. I've resurrected the cornucopia image as one I will use in my ceramics and paintings. I was obsessed with making them for about a year. They fascinated me and still do. And I was really interested to read in the Transpersonal Psychology book I am working with at the moment that the Cornucopia is one symbol for 'The Great Mother Archetype'...
And I am pleased...
