"Zen on Art" Blog

2010 -- This blog has not been kept up for a year. Too busy painting! I must find time to write the journal. Notes below are a start but they are still on this website and not on the Blog...

written May 25, 2010Expressive Art: Thinking Outside the Box - May 2010
Instructor: Jeane Myers @ Southampton Art School

I'm glad Jean and I met at this time in my life. I had a taste of the "abstract" brush stroke and a huge desire but needed a push in the right direction and the confidence to "let go" of the old rules.

This class (3 days) was the longest aha moment I've ever had.

The class is called "Thinking Outside the Box". The first order of business was to create "anything" for one hour on a large piece of white paper. Hum, I'm thinking (keeping the class name in mind) that's what I came here to learn but I'll give it a whirl. Well, needless to say, it was a total disaster (looking back on it).

Without any evaluation, explanation or exploration of what just happened, we [get this!] traded our work with another student and we're given 1 ½ hours of instructor silence to 'continue paining' on top of the other person's work. What!?

Just when I thought nothing else could happen that would take my breath away, we had to pick a 2" square area of this latest painting that we could not live without! And paint over the entire rest of the paper! What the...?!

Now, turn it over so you can't see it and rip it up into 10 pieces. OMG. Then pick 3 ripped up pieces without looking and glue them on a 24" square hardboard to, guess what, paint anything!

Well, my "thinking" apparatus at this time was certainly in no box but was totally exhausted!

Wow, learning to release, create, release, create etc., etc. as well as "letting go" figuratively as well as physically this class did it!

The next two days of the study were solely about 'doing without thinking too much" (as well as that "unknown element" about what might happen to our work as each hour progressed) helped a lot too.

I enjoyed myself immensely and learned to "Think Outside the Box" from within my own soul : What a fantastic start to some fresh styles and material.

Thank you Jean. This was a class, a teaching method and a learning experience I will NEVER forget!

written May 17, 2010 Turn yourself inside out and spill your soul out...not as easy as you may think but an artistic path I'm going down...showing up (my new phrase - stolen from Jean, yes)

written May 16, 2010 Thinking outside the box: May 2010 with Jeane Myers This class has given my imagination some much needed sunlight passing through an open window, one without glass. Ideas are falling out of this window at the same rate water is flowing over Niagara Falls. I have a starting point & you can't hold me back now...letting Jean's energy turn my comatose brain in a rapid swirl, exploding from inside my body cutting through all cells shining out of me. I'm showing up!

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Cedar Oaks Studio
specializing in oil paintings

www.cedar-oaks-studio.com