This week I came back from an Enlightenment Intensive organised in Wales by Spirit Horse. It’s an off-grid self enquiry retreat aiming to spark insights in to the nature of reality. Not your usual holiday trip.
I brought my art materials with me and when I travelled down the hill into the green valley I was happy I did; it was one of the most beautiful places I’ve seen. I thought I will just do these three days of self enquiry, and then will have plenty of time to draw all this stunning nature. Little did I know.
I lived 30, maybe even a 100 days in those 72 hours. Things happened that I’m not even going to try to describe. And when I sat down on the forth day, with my sketchbook and paints in front of me, the idea of painting just did not make sense. Turns out to make art you need a personality, you need something for the art to happen through, by making art you’re saying “this is how I see the world”. And in that moment I didn’t have a personality. There was being but there wasn’t any need for expressing.
I had a little walk, I spoke to some people then sat down again, and in the end I did end up with a very delicate sketch of a wooden tea station that was in front of me. That was it, I didn’t draw anything else.
I’m now back home, back in my personality for most of the time, and the idea of making art starts to be appealing again. I’m happy I got into the more intuitive watercolour painting recently as this is the only thing that I want to do now. Not creating a preconceived scene or character but letting the paint flow and moment by moment reacting to how it changes.
I made this piece especially for this post, in that way exactly: making the first blob that led me to the next and to the next. I can see now that it’s turned into a landscape of some kind so once it dries I will try to find out (and draw) what grows there and who’s travelling up the mountain. And take it from there.
As always, thanks for reading.
x
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