I love to invite people to play with paint at a process painting workshop. Why “play”?

Answer 1: Play suggests having fun. Most of us do not allot much time to simply doing what gives us pleasure. If you can allow your inner child to take over and simply do what she whatever she wants with the paint, you will feel better – lighter, happier, less oppressed by worry even though nothing objectively changed in your life.

Answer 2: Play suggests that we do things for enjoyment rather than a serious or practical purpose. Opening up your creative potential and learning to listen to your own intuition requires you to put your critical, logical, problem solving mind on hold.

Answer 3: Play operates in a world of imagination where even serious acts don’t have serious consequences. You can shoot the bad guy as many times you want and no one really dies. You can paint horrible, frightening, angry things and no one gets hurt. You are just playing.

Answer 4: Play suggests moving lightly, a flicker that appears and disappears. (As in “The smile played about her lips”) The voice of your subconscious yearnings is often soft, brief impulses that are hard to hear if you aren’t tuned in. If you allow yourself to play, to paint things that don’t make sense, to jump from one image to another “just because”, you create the opportunity for these tentative messages from yourself to show up.

Answer 5: Children learn without realizing when they play. I invite painters to focus on the play when they paint and allow the learning to happen naturally. Afterwards, you can deepen the learning by allowing the logical, goal-focused part the brain to engage in trying to make sense of the experience.

So, Paint! Play! Discover!

Last month, (here) I wrote about why you usually don’t want to covering things that have appeared in your painting. But paintings don’t like to follow rules. In the process of creation, the elements on the paper shift, change and transform as the painting comes to life.  A line becomes a face, a face becomes a cloud, a cloud becomes hidden behind a leafy tree. I’ve written before about this process of transformation before. During this transformation, some things get covered by others.

So how can you tell the difference between covering up and transforming? The best way to tell is check in with your own thoughts and feelings. If you notice judgment in your thoughts about how things should be, that might be covering up. Try allowing what is there to stay. If your thoughts and energy are focused on the new elements, go with the transformation. You can also check your energy level as you think about the options. 
If you feel scared, powerful and energetic, you are going in the right direction. If you feel tight and constricted, do something else. 

Still don’t know? Don’t decide, trust the brush instead. Put some paint on the brush, make a line and then see what happens.  Above all, remember this is process painting. Whatever you do is what you do -  you can’t do it wrong!

I've never found New Year's resolutions to be very helpful. Changing habits is hard and somehow turning of the new page on the calendar was never enough motivation to turn the good intentions into actual change. 

Since starting to do process painting, I've taken different approach to thinking about the new year. Before, I used my logical, judging mind to decide what I should be doing, then tried to make myself do it. Now, I use my paints to ask what my intuitive self is wishing for and look for opportunities to move in the direction of my heart. This January, the theme in my paintings seems to be explosions, messy volcanic type eruptions. 
My interpretation is that 2014 is going to be the year of creative self-expression (self-explosion?). I have no idea how all this energy is going to come out but I'm looking forward to finding out.

The Greek philosopher, Heraclitus, said that no man can ever step in the same river twice, for its not the same river and he's not the same man.  Each time you come to a process painting workshop, you are physically in the same place, confronting an identical sheet of white paper. Yet the "you" of this moment is never quite the same as the "you" of last month. If you stay in touch with what is alive for you in the moment, you will never be bored while painting.

At the same time, the "you" of today is not completely different from the "you" of before. As a result, you may find certain elements will show up again and again like fires or rainbows. (For me, it is trees keep showing up.)Or you may repeat a satisfying gesture - swoopy lines or handprints. Sometimes a painter will say, "I don't want to paint hearts any more." I ask if she doesn't want to paint hearts or she just thinks that she shouldn't. My rule: If you don't want to paint hearts, don't. If you do want to paint hearts, ignore the voice of judgement who says that it is repetitive or cliché and listen to your intuition. After all, Monet painted many, many paintings of water lilies - each one special record of its unique time and place. So, come back to the studio and step into your process, a unique experience every time.

Intuition is when you know something without being able to logically explain how you know it. One of the great things about process painting is that you get to practice listening to your intuition. When you go to paint a heart and you just know that it needs to be purple, or that frog belongs in the branches of the tree, not under it, that is listening to your intuitive, non-logical self. The choice may seem trivial but it is often connect to a deeper sense of what the painting means to you. (Imagine your resistance if I insisted that you make the heart orange instead. The resistance signals that the choice matters even if you have no idea why.) 

The more you listen to your intuition, the better you will be at hearing it. After spending a few hours listening for every whim of your subconscious as you paint, you may be surprised to notice your intuition speaking up at other times. In fact, with practice, you may be surprised to find out how smart your intuition can be.

This month's painting was about letting my intuition look for the subtle outline of something that wanted to emerge more fully in the painting.

Last week I decided to do some process painting, although I wasn’t particularly looking forward to what the painting might bring out. I didn’t know where to start but I could my teacher saying “Trust the brush.” So I picked a color (black) and made a squiggly line. And another one. I still didn’t know what I was painting but my muse, that creative, intuitive, nonverbal part of me, was enjoying the swirling lines.

After a while, my logical mind got bored and started to chatter. “Do I need to buy more blue paint?” “What can I make for dinner that will use up those green beans?” When I let my logical mind think about the actual painting, the inner critic immediately woke up: “That’s ugly. It’s trite. It’s boring. It doesn’t mean anything.” I had to use my firmest teacher voice to tell myself, “That doesn’t matter. This is about the process. Shut up and keep painting.” And so it went. The heart and hand painting instinctually. The logical mind chattering and criticizing, occasionally interrupted by muse asking me to get her some more paint.

In the end, my critic was  still grouchy, my logical self had an updated to-list and my muse was secretly smiling. Painting the picture wasn’t “fun” but it did make me feel better. A week later, my critic and I have finally reached a compromise. I would like to have an attitude of simple acceptance toward the painting. However, my critic still has strong opinions, mostly negative. So, for now, she has agreed not to hate the painting and I have conceded that she doesn’t have to like it. And my muse, who lives in the moment, is trying to tempt me back in the studio so she can paint, play and discover again.

When you look at a painting, you see a fixed, unchanging image. Hidden within the image is the story of transformation and revelation. Every painting starts with a blank canvas. The artist, even a process painting artist, may be begin with an inspiration. It may be an image (I'm want to paint a tree, with gold leaves, beneath a purple sun) or a concept (I want to paint the sorrow I am feeling about my mother's death last year).

 But the goal in process painting is pay attention to what is happening as the painting develops, to hold those initial inspirations lightly and allow them to change and evolve over time. The painting purple sun is surrounded by silver rain. The gray and black shadows become the setting for a shiny heart. The bird finds itself grasped by giant claws. But even this is just one part of the process. As the painting continues, even new elements appear and things shift once again. The silver rains pours into a green hole. the heart acquires wings, the claws belong to a mother bird. And on it goes until eventually the painting reaches a point of equilibrium. Its story feels complete and it is done, finally becoming the fixed image seen by others. Yet the artist knows that picture embodies the act of painting and holds within it the story of its unfolding.

“There is a monster coming out of that cloud so I added more white because I don’t want a monster in this painting.”

“I’m done.” 
“What do you notice as you look as your painting?” 
“I’m feeling sad but I don’t want to put sadness in this painting. I want it to stay happy.”


“I’m stuck.” 
“What color wouldn’t belong in this painting?” 
“Black! Black really doesn’t belong.”
 “I’m noticing a lot of energy around black. What would happen if you put it in anyway?” 
“But it’s supposed to be a happy painting. Black isn’t a happy color.”

Our inner judge knows how things “should” be. It will give you so many reasons to ignore the quiet of voice of intuition that is calling you to take a risk, appreciate the complexity of life and to allow things to continue to evolve and change. 

So, what might happen if you listen to that invitation, allow the monsters, the sadness, the color black to show up in your painting?

•  You might like the painting even better as it becomes deeper and more complex.
  
• You might be surprised by what comes after the sadness as the painting continues to evolve
  
• You might find that you didn’t “ruin” the happiness after all.
  
• You might hate it and have to live with knowledge that you wasted all that time and paint on a disappointing painting.

I encourage you to take up the challenge. Dip the brush in paint, put paint to paper and find out what happens next. (And, just in case, you can always ask me to take a photo of the painting before risking the big change.)

The best advice I heard recently for how to start doing intuitive painting was, "Paint like a four year old". After all, when four year old children draw, they don't worry about whether the dog looks like a dog or if their drawing is beautiful or means something. They just do it. They use line and color instinctively to express themselves. They may draw pretty flowers growing under a smiling sun or robots eating airplanes or flowers growing out of robots heads. And it is all OK. Since each of us was a four year old, once upon a time, we each have the capacity to draw in that natural intuitive fashion. This is my invitation to you - forget about all the parents, teachers and art experts that have taken residence in your brain and come and spend a morning painting like a four year old.