Ugly, as in Beautiful

This past week I have taken part in an internet freebie hosted by an artist I really like, Louise Fletcher, called Find Your Joy. It was challenging, refreshing, and stimulating.

I started my painting life ten years ago with watercolour, guided by Louise Reilly in Eswatini. She taught me well, how to mix colours, the various wet into wet, wet into dry, dry into wet techniques and these basic lessons have stood me in good stead. Like so many others, however, I was fascinated by oils and have worked solely in this medium since moving to White River.

There is a translucency with watercolour that I find impossible to replicate with oils, so have been thinking of going back to my roots as it were.

The year has passed with many distractions keeping me from both my art forms, writing and painting. Resolution after resolution to change the status quo has gone unfulfilled. I gave up one activity that took a lot of time, to find I still did not have enough free hours to focus on the two novels I am working on, the blogs I want to be busy with, and getting completed manuscripts submitted.

I have been acutely that it is time to rethink and make some tough decisions to do what I believe I am called to do, and that is to write and paint when I need some unwind pastime.

The Find Your Joy workshop could not have come at a better time to help me make the commitment I need to make. The week has been full, but I resolutely put aside that hour each day to complete the assignments. Part one of feeling good at sticking to the plan and achieving something. Yay!

In lesson 3 we had to paint something ugly, something that would never see the light of day. The rationale behind this was if no one was going to like your work, it didn’t matter what you put on the canvas, there is no failure.  Interesting. That day was hectic. I lead a weekly Bible Study at a nearby centre, and the week’s teaching ranged from a prophecy in Isaiah to the fall in Genesis and ended with the promise of Jesus in John of abundant life, and his death as the final re-establishment of our union with God, our Creator. The discussion was intense with the session overrunning by half an hour. From there I collected three friends and headed off to our garden club birthday lunch at Klugro Nursery outside Nelspruit. Got home after 4 pm, somewhat whacked, but determined to complete the day’s assignment.

I did the workshop in watercolour. So, Ugly. Shouldn’t be too difficult. I decided to use bold colours – one of the criticisms of my art is I never seem to go dark or vibrant enough. I swept the first coating of deep blue over the top of the page and was off. I wanted to paint dark green leaves – the experts do a cute twist of their brushes and a perfect leaf forms. Well, my stem of leaves looks like two dinosaurs. I allowed the colours to run this way and that, squeezed some more paint off my brush onto the page, added lighter colours, needed life so added birds, then two rabbits that look like fish.

I loved how my ugly turned out! It was amazing how liberating it was to paint without any consideration of how it might be received or judged. I was not alone – many of the participants liked what they ended up with.

It put me in mind of the promises found in a number of places in the Bible:

Isaiah 61:3 – “… to give them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness, that they may be called trees of righteousness …”

Or

Jeremiah 31:13 “… for I will turn their mourning to joy …”

John 16: 20 “… your sorrow will be turned to joy.”

And

Psalm 30: 11 “You have turned for me my mourning into dancing, You have put off my sackcloth and clothed me with gladness.”

The other interesting result from this exercise was how differently I viewed a painting I’ve been battling with for a year. Where I saw failure and going nowhere, I now see potential, so it seemed fitting the next challenge from Louse was to take a painting you are struggling with and start working it with the same freedom. Take the good bits and build from there. It is still a work in progress, and I am not sure it will ever turn out how I see it in my mind, but I have a more positive attitude towards it!

My dining table is covered with tubes of oil and watercolour paints – I jump from palette to palette, a song of joy running through my head, and it is fun to throw off constraint and lose myself in mark-making.

It has also been helpful in moving forward with my novels, taking a fresh look at them and how I need to proceed. Joy is so proactive and positive, but it can be elusive, which is why we need to regularly check in with ourselves to ensure we haven’t misplaced it!

All Biblical references are taken from The New King James Version, published by Nelson