Obstacles

My student who wanted to learn abstract to further her journey to another level in her art was not prepared for my mentoring comment that she has to "embrace the obstacles along the way to produce an inspiring painting product." After a few minutes of perplexing body language, we started on tackling the job at hand. I on one easel, she beside me on another, we started the same kind of painting to produce marks. She mimicked me as she went. I came over every so often to take her hand and guide her movements with the palette knife. Soon, her body began to relax, her hand lightened the grasp of the palette knife and we were having fun. It is about having fun, using your mind to make decisions, opening your eyes to really see interior spaces, to wisely make uneven quadrants, to make contrasts in color, marks that make repeating patterns, shapes that are exciting, patterns than calm down and produce quiet then lively areas. Questions start. How do I get more texture in my paint? Are my colors harmonizing? Have I used the simplest of color palettes? Is my family of color choices making lively colors? The decisions are endless and vastly engaging. OK, that being said, and I probably lost you along the way, it is all about trusting the process and knowing you have the brain power to work your way out of a dilemma that the paint provides. It is all about the paint. The paint has the power. The paint leads. The paint tells you what color works next to another.

The same week I had another student to mentor. He wanted to COPY another artists he admires and wanted me to show him how to do it. I explained that my hand and his would or could never make those marks the same. Any genre of painting is about connecting things intuitively and trusting your own marks, making your own decisions. Maybe we could copy the idea or color palette, but never the intent. So, he was disappointed but tackled a version of his own. I remarked I never could totally copy any of my own works again and again. Sometimes the essence and colors, but never the marks. Maybe that day, I was especially engaged and confident and finished it in one "alla prima" time session. Maybe another day, it was not to be my day to make the same marks as I once did on a piece I wished to do again. It would be another version of it. So on we went to produce marks and colors and shapes and patterns, stopping and starting to assess the situation, continuing until we were satisfied. Then more questions started from the student as he knew what to ask. It is about working out to obtain the answers along the way.  

"When one color is next to a contrasting color, or complimentary color, you watch it sing or watch it mellow," I stated. "So the questions are always flying in your brain? It it right enough to make you happy?  Is it contrasting enough? Is it supposed to mellow with the other colors? Is it textural enough? That rapid fire engagement energizes you and keeps you on your toes." In fact after two hours, we all feel like a meditation needs to happen to calm down, but no, you have to keep going to keep the freshness alive until the paint tells you it is exhausted. So, what about the obstacles being the big factor in this process? "The obstacle is the path," is the Zen Proverb that resonates with this intuitive trust with painting. There is nothing like the satisfaction of solving a problem in a process that engages self trust and decision making. Prepare to dare. Prepare to walk a path toward self confidence. It takes a while. It took me a decade or more. The power is all ours. We have the power all along, but do not know it! And we have the power to empower any day of the week, any moment in time. It is best to be patient, the best things happen unexpectedly.