craft paint on watercolor paper (c) Cat Charissage, 2017
New moon greetings to you, dear friend!
Intentional Creativity isn’t focused on creating artistic masterpieces (good to know, as my piece here is anything but!), but rather on identifying and transforming an idea or story within us so that it is held differently in us. We are then more free to move in our everyday lives without being controlled by the stories we have unconsciously taken in about who we are and what we can do. Or what we’re allowed to do.
On Friday my painting teacher Shiloh Sophia (www.powercreatives.com) offered a livestream on Herstory, and this is what I playfully created. I share it with you to emphasize that the kind of art I do, that is, Intentional Creativity, is not reserved only for the gifted and talented. Just as all of us can write an email or journal passage that expresses our thoughts, without needing the skills and gifts of those who are exquisite artists of the written word, well, all of us can use simple art processes to express and work through our thoughts and questions, without needing the skills and gifts of those who are exquisite visual artists. Using simple art supplies such as craft paint or watercolor, colored pencils or markers can be just as much in our expressive repertoire as typing marks into a computer or printing black letters onto a white page.
Shiloh led us in first writing an aspect of our life story, how we are in the world, and then painting an image that expressed how that sits in our body. I made a grid form, as what I wrote about felt limiting while at the same time allowing me to see out, to see through things, to see how I wanted to be.
I then painted little spirals in each of the openings showing how I wanted those openings to simultaneously both deepen and expand my vision. Then when we were invited to make a mark symbolizing our freedom to modify or create a new story, I painted my bird of freedom, along with moving, expanding spirals OUTSIDE of the grid.
I wrote a statement of the shifted story onto the bird of freedom, and added the signs of growth and expansion. While painting the greenery (I first wrote “greenergy”, green energy, which is certainly how I experienced it!), I was thinking of chickweed, that weed that grows almost anywhere — especially in the cracks of our driveway. It’s so common, yet cheerily beautiful. Most house-proud owners diligently poison this “weed”, yet it makes a wonderful, nutritious salad.
There are many plants, ideas, and people who have so much to offer us in our life’s journey of love and meaning, yet the overculture sees these as of no value, or even worse, as polluting the landscape. There are forces, enacted in real live ordinary people with names, who mindlessly, and mindfully, destroy that which could otherwise nourish us.
Well, I stand for something different. I stand for the weeds that nourish, the spacious carved-out times that tease out meaning, the simple art that shifts vision.
What’s your bird’s eye view today?
With much love,
Cat
