My Journey -Chronicle 2 - My First Painting
My Journey – My First Painting
In the summer of 2013 I visited the South of France for 2 wonderful weeks. I immediately fell in love. The sky, the sea, the wind, the sun, the road, the stones, the flowers, the shadows, the streetlights, the hot sidewalk, the carefree lifestyle of the French, the sounds, children laughing, shutters closing, cars honking, the laughter, everything seemed all connected, beauty was endless. When I look back, I find it interesting that I stayed in a house in St Paul de Vence, that was directly facing the church. I was fascinated with the architecture and history and did spend some time in the church. Not being a religious person, I did not attend any services. But I still remember the peaceful energy of the church itself. The small cemetery within the fortified walls of the village also happened to be the resting place of Marc Chagall. Not sure if this had anything to do with my journey or not !
When I came home, I spontaneously picked up a paintbrush for the very first time, the tools were available as my daughter is an artist, and I had spent many joyful hours in artist supply stores over many years, buying everything that I thought was cool !
My first painting was a blob of paint really, though 2 years down the road I realized that is was in fact a self portrait. I continued to paint, with a degree of trepidation as I had no art education and did not know if it was doing it right, in terms of technique etc. I never knew what I was going to paint, all I knew is that an urge came over me and I went into a trance like state and created. When the painting was done, I was always in awe that I had created it. The name of the painting always comes very quickly, it’s just a knowing feeling. I didn’t always like my paintings (being the worst self critic), but I realized that these works were self healing. I also realized that I could not take credit for the works. I truly felt that someone or something was guiding my hands and I had no control over it. That in itself was fascinating and mysterious to me. My friends were also fascinated that all of these appeared to have come out of nowhere, but they supported me entirely. For the first 2 years I painted every weekend, every day off and during my vacation time. I could not get enough of it. I stopped baking goodies for the office, I became a lot less concerned with how tidy my apartment was, I just wanted to paint. I sold some paintings to my friends, gifted a few to special people in my life, but my collection was growing rapidly. The comments about my work were that they evoked feelings in them. They would tell me that they wanted to buy it because it made them feel happy or energized or peaceful etc. I was selling what I thought of as a pretty picture, having no idea of the effect it had. Often they would see things in the paintings that I had not noticed. When they asked me where the inspiration had come from, I could not answer them other than to say I had not painted consciously. I did not look at works from other artists, as I was afraid that I would compare myself to them, and I would stop painting. I think that I suspected that I was channeling something, but I could not understand it or define it. The inspirations kept coming to me and I kept painting, and I now realize that I had been surrendering to a force that was much greater than my conscious mind. On my gallery page you can view how my paintings evolved from 2013 to the present.
In 2014, I went public with my work on Saatchi Art, and shortly after I made my first online sale to a collector from NYC, who did not know me from Adam . This was my validation to the conscious ego, that I should follow my heart.
~Namaste~
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