I. A painting story

As my last post was about my first actual pieces of art, I thought it was only fair to tell you about my “painting journey”. This is a long and deep post so I suggest you should make yourself comfortable, grab a cup of tea and enjoy the read. As always, don’t be afraid to let me know of what you thought about this post!

 

To me, every moment of inspiration, every artistic block had had a deep significance. It was either the beginning of an epiphany or some sort of disconnection. I just feel so connected to my art that it has kind of shaped itself around my life if that makes sense. I’ve never been sad when I was inspired.

This is my artistic journey.
 

I threw it all away...

Let’s go back to 2010. Now if you have read my last post, you’ll think “wait...wasn’t it 2015?” but let me explain! So from 2010 to 2015, I was in secondary school and I used to draw every night. I used to draw my thoughts on paper. I drew on paper because I knew I would throw it all away. And I was right. I was terrified of my work. I refused to see it. I couldn't bear the thought of it. It may sound crazy to some people because look at me now, I’m sharing my art everywhere!

I kept right on painting, I was terrified...

From 2015 to 2017, I painted portraits using photography references. I enjoyed it a lot. I was scared to draw and to take risks but I did it anyway. I still painted on paper and I stopped throwing my work away. I thought I would keep it anyway. I guess this was the beginning of my evolution as an artist, I slowly (really slowly) began to embrace my work even though I was terrified. I’ve been trying to paint on canvas. I found it extremely hard to create anything because I was so stressed and there was a lot of anxiety around me. However, I was so much more confident about my art, I learnt how to embrace this part of me. I let go of references, I started to set aside “rules”, conventions, proportions, symmetry, colours, framing and everything else because I needed to let go of my emotions first. And I slowly managed to allow this true nature to appear onto my work. I needed to be as close as I could to my inner self because I was so anxious. (I’m not saying that art rules aren’t important, I mean that I needed to concentrate more on the feelings, the content I was creating rather than its appearance.)

No raft paper. No thoughts. Just emotions.

Last summer holidays, my heart let go. Everywhere, pouring emotions on canvases after canvases. I was burning red during the most liberating and therapeutic process there is to me : ART. I let go of rules to liberate my soul onto the canvas freely instead of trying to fit my feelings in. No raft paper. No thoughts. Just emotions. I couldn’t wrap my head around the amount of artworks I had had done. Summer 2017 was the period of time I created the most and I was so utterly happy because I learnt how to paint a paintbrush. I suddenly knew. Click here to understand what I mean by holding a paintbrush. That’s when I started to say “I don’t think when I paint. I just feel.”.

I am painting myself.

Then from September until now, I found it hard to paint because I am painting my true emotions, I am painting my inner self. Yet, I continued to paint because I just cannot stop : I love it so much! I’ve made about 4 canvases since September. This is the closest I got myself, my emotions and my art than I’ve ever been which is why I thought of writing this post. I wanted to write about the process, the journey and the evolution of my art. I will post about my last paintings on the blog later on because I need to figure them out. Whenever I make a painting, I need some time before showing them to others, I need some time alone to “contemplate” my work, even though I put the paintbrush down a while ago they aren’t finished to me until I feel like it’s the time. I don’t know why…

Whenever  I look back at my work, I get so many memories. It's weird for me to think how we can be so scared of our own work.

I hope this post was nice to read, I hope it inspired you to continue creating, to embrace your work, create without fear or start something new. Tell me all about your creative story if you have one!

Love,

Cadmium Red (M) xx