Painting with nature
It’s hard to believe it’s already March! I just finished teaching a brand new class called “Playing with the Color Wheel,” and I started teaching a class called “Art for the Winter Doldrums,” and it has been incredibly bright and fun. This class is a great example of how people are looking to do art in community and as a way to cope with the blues that can sometimes accompany this time of year. We have explored doing collaborative collage which was inspired by a poetry class I just finished teaching in which we wrote collaborative poetry. One of my students suggested doing collaborative art, so I took in that idea and created this collaborative collage project. I wasn’t sure how people would feel about releasing their art to others in this way, but it was a lot of fun and everyone enjoyed it. I was amazed at how doing art in this way helped people appreciate each other’s creations and experience joy from taking what others were doing into their hands and adding to it to make something larger than any one individual. It was wonderful to see how each art piece unfolded in beautiful and sometimes unexpected ways. In a way, releasing one’s work to others like this can help release the grip of the inner critic, because if everyone has had a hand in it, then it can be easier to see the beauty of the work. Also, everyone did a great job of letting go of attachment to their art…it was all quite amazing to watch!
We also did something that I have been wanting to do for a long time, which is painting using natural objects as brushes. This was so fun and really helped my students let go and lean into process and mark making. They created truly beautiful works. I love incorporating nature into art, and this is truly way to make art both with and from nature, channeling our spirit of play, creativity, and joyfulness.
In other news, I did a craft making cards inspired by Matisse’s cutouts. As I researched this project, I discovered that the cutout phase of Matisse’s career was some of his most free and inspired. He had become wheelchair bound and unable to paint, but he continued to pursue his art through the cutout, which he described as “painting with scissors”. He was able to discover the purity of simplicity and shape. Looking at the pieces from this stage in his life, I can feel the joy and beauty of the movement, the colors, and the arrival at the essence. Less is more certainly applies here.
My class on “Playing with the Color Wheel” just finished, and it was the first time I offered it. It was fun to explore the topic of color and the structure of the color wheel together with my students. The color wheel is a tool and not a rule! It is easy for us to get caught up in the “right” way of doing something, especially when a structure like this is introduced. The color wheel is one way of thinking about color, and while it is useful, we must be careful not to get trapped by it. The color wheel, likely invented by Isaac Newton in 1666, is a deeply Western way of thinking. We love to put things into categories, and the color wheel creates categories. So I encourage us all to be flexible with ourselves and to remember that things like the color wheel are created by humans as a way of making sense of the world, and they are just one way. To me, exploration and discovery are really the only way to get to know color and our relationship to it as artists. I will be doing some more crafts and introducing even more new classes this month, so come back to read about all of those new developments!
What I’m reading: A Sand County Almanac by Aldo Leopold
A classic of environmental/nature writing
What I’m listening to: Lebanon by Ondara
What a voice. This song is haunting.
What I’m watching:
Could this be the moment?
Ram Dass and Thich Nhat Hanh talk about planting seeds.
