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The art process
I want to share a simplified explanation of my art process emerging from a deep reflective process I had in the last few weeks. Often my process evolves and emerges over time. Many thoughts and experiences contribute to my final process. It is a process that cannot be forced or hastened.

I was considering my spirit or what I like to call my essence. Here I used marker pens or highlighters to express my spirit as precious, limitless, sacred and many other qualities that are personal to me – this is just some of what I was thinking about when I made this image. I have blurred out all but one section to bring your attention to just one part of my thought process.

As the process continued…

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I explored other art mediums: oil pastels and chalk pastels, to name a few. I was searching for the perfect image. The image that was inside my mind. Nothing was working. Phrases that swam through my mind were: “too dark”; “too indistinct”; “too central”; and on so it went. Often in my artistic process I become angry and disappointed with myself and I give up. I am sure many of you who are also creative can relate to this response. I am learning to invite the editor-voice of kindness and encouragement to offer her input.

I was thinking about the 25th of May 1969 being when my father died last Monday. It was a type of honouring of his life and feeling grateful as he was the one who passed on his creative DNA to me. I remembered his connection to his love of the sea as he was a ships captain; following that I thought how ships have portholes and then it jumped into my mind that I wanted to combine my essence image with the porthole image which is symbolic of my father. So I superimposed the symbolic image of porthole and a barrel wave in the center portraying continuous energy.

It is not exactly what I had in mind as I started out but I am pleasantly content with the image because it says more now than what I planned initially. As you can see there is more to the image; with other symbols too but I won’t be getting into that now.

I found the whole process: the deep reflection and artistic process very meaningful. I appreciate being able to share this process with you and thank you for reading this post. I hope that in some way it might be thought provoking to you. Maybe you might be inspired to try some art as well.

Take care, till next time.