I want to explore the idea of using high tension within the body – and transferring it onto a surface – as a source for a painting. Have you ever imagined what such a painting might look like? The following painting is the result of this process:
How did this come about? The trigger was an art therapy day called ‘Giving feelings a form’, held in my studio on 12 March 2011. The preliminary exploration that took place at this event led me to a feeling that’s been with me all of my life and helped me to become aware of the effect it has on my body.
The first challenge was to identify its form. I examined the feeling and recognised that it travels up and down my spine in a straight line. When the spine gets ‘filled up’, the ‘overflow’ gains momentum and fills up the spaces in the joints – the ankles, knees, elbows, wrists, fingers and, on rare occasions, the back of my neck.
The second challenge was to give this feeling a colour. On the art therapy day I had used black, green, red and some yellow on a large sheet of packing paper. However, since the feeling is so intense, my overwhelming thought was now to create the piercing colour that emanates from a halogen bulb. I began to experiment with blues, purples, white, etc, but these colours did not speak to me of high tension.
The next day I placed the art-therapy-day painting in a good viewing place. I spent the next few days just looking and allowing my ‘intuitive eye’ to flow over it, with the colour challenge in the forefront of my thoughts. This action to me represents the beginning of a dialogue between me and the painting. It is where the intuitive free-flow starts and will take me along the journey of a painting from beginning to end. It is also the moment when the personal ego prepares to withdraw to allow the creative ego to step forward and do its work.
I left the initial painting and the intuitive part of myself in this space for a couple of weeks – a form of ‘sitting and waiting’ for the right moment.
During this period I was waiting for the ‘frisson’ – an indication that ‘the time has come’. Frisson is a French word to describe a shiver that travels through the whole body. The experience, for me, arrives with a restlessness accompanied by a very high level of tension (my tutor in art school called this ‘a visit from the muses’). This means living, eating and sleeping with these feelings as I pour myself into my work.
Then one morning, I woke up with the feeling that the ‘moment’ had arrived. I was awakened by a ‘frisson’; now that the ‘muses’ had arrived, whatever was on the agenda was set aside and serious work began!
Check back next week to find out what happened next.
Until then,
Marie
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