Painting!

I've had fun painting and preparing to paint since the last time.  

I'm still using Flora Bowley's method of painting in layers - it makes sense to me - our lives are layers of emotions and experience - we are all multi-faceted.  I enjoy applying the paint in what seems like a random act and watching the painting take on a life of its own.

I decided to re-cycle some canvases I had started and not finished or was dis-satisfied with - this felt great to watch them come back to life!

Once they were on their way, I chose one and started the next layers.  This canvas is the one closest to you in the image above - it started life as a mandala - you can just see the purple and blue underneath.  The energy of the mandala is retained throughout the subsequent painting even through its toning down and calming colours 

This painting went through several different incarnations - the most difficult bits were the flower heads - the details in life are often the trickiest to sort out but here's the finished piece (and it is peace full)...

I'm still working on this next one, but I like the pics of the process.  This is painted over a symbol of the sacral chakra:

I love the colours that are retained from the original painting and the energy of the marks from my overpainting. Like the paintings we are all many layered, we can't (and don't want to!!) rub things out completely - what has gone before is what makes us how we are today.

I'm fascinated that this process has so many parallels in my life...

I love the energy that is in the early stages of these paintings - and I have this energy, but I can't live at that level; I have to have calm, so too my paintings become calmer...

What is your process - in life, in painting??

Comments

[Mandy Kopelke]

Flora's course was so much fun wasn't it !! I Love what you've done recycling some of your old canvases - I have a stack to do the same with :-) Also love the flower head imagery you have used - I really struggled with this side of it, but love building up all the random layers... look forward to see in the finished second canvas :-) Mandy

[rachel]

oh, I loved it Bloom True - this is what really got me painting again. It is a marvellous process! Actually, I've left this canvas as it is in the last pic, I decided I liked it enough in it's raw state. I'm working on a large painting at the moment that I started during the Bloom course - it's nearly finished so hoping my next blog post is about that!