In which she completes her first abstract



We got to use COLOUR this week!

Art & Soul is the highlight of my week. Four weeks into it and I already don't want it to end. Last night was the first time I felt totally relaxed whilst painting - although it possibly didn't look like it because I was the last person to finish the base colours and had to be told to hurry several times.

This piece doesn't have a name....and I've just realised I didn't initial it. I should have. We were encouraged to draw the profile of a face in charcoal on the left hand side of the canvas, saying the words. "forehead, nose, lips, chin, neck" as we did so. Then we were instructed to draw the same profile on the right hand side of the page without saying the words. It was to help in switching from our left brain to our right. I was ok until I got to the chin and then it was like I had a mental blank and my hand didn't know how to draw the curve of the chin. Interesting. We were then instructed to bisect the drawings with several lines with our eyes open and then with them closed. We then painted each shape with different dark and light shades of the one colour (mine was orange). After all the shapes were filled with colour and the paint was dry we taped five pieces of masking tape over the canvas and painted swirls and lines in a contrast colour. The tape was taken off, the paint dried and then we repeated this process in a different contrast. The results are seen above. I'm pleased with it, although sad I seem to have obliterated the left hand face. Still, I'm going to give this one another try at home. I enjoyed this process so much.

After the painting class we have some supper and then head into group for discussion on the week's theme. I am getting a lot from these discussions - namely the realisation of how far I have travelled over this past year since separating from my husband. I think it's a combination of things - time, medication - but the biggest factors that have helped me move forward is acceptance and being kind to myself.

Is this what I planned for my life? No, but this is my life. I have stopped fighting against it. I have stopped ranting and railing at the universe, saying how unfair life is and how things SHOULD be better. I've accepted things the way they are, doing my best to just take care of my little corner of the world. I can't change anything external, but I can change what is internal. I am responsible for my own responses, choices, behaviours and thoughts. I may not understand other people, but I can just accept that they are responding to life from their own perspective...and that may be totally foreign to me....and that's ok.

I've opened my mind to different ways of thinking, different schools of thought, different philosophies. It's been kind of freeing. Actually, not just kind of.....it HAS been freeing. I've embraced being a grey dweller. I used to want the world to be in black and white, right and wrong, good and evil, "This is what the rules are". It's not....and I'm finally ok with that. I accept that there are no answers sometimes and that sometimes things just don't make sense. I've always looked for someone or some place to have all the answers; especially in the area of faith. I used to think that there was only one place that had it right - the gospel in all it's fullness. I don't think that anymore...mainly because I realise that God in all His fullness is MUCH bigger than that and THAT place only had a miniscule idea of what He's really like. I think God accepts more stuff than they give him credit for.......

(sidetracked!)

So......this abstract was good for me....because the process of actually DOING this painting was a real reflection of what's happening in my life at the moment. A letting go of......stuff that I thought was "me" but wasn't really. For the first time in 40-something years I feel like I'm working out who I am.