Sunday, June 3, 2007

Exploring Elementals by Painting

In DC we have several of those "paint your own pottery" places. I'm sure they are all over the country now. Anyway, I am in the midst of a project to explore the nature of the elemental spirits through painting pottery. Now, I am not particularly artistic, but I am playing around using some techniques that I learned at Rudolf Steiner College.

The nice thing about the pottery places is that it's pretty close to wet on wet water colors...a VERY forgiving medium. If you do something you don't like, just paint over it. So, each week for the past three weeks I have been going and painting a plate and trying to experience the essence of the elementals through the colors.

The main guidance that I got from my painting class at RSC is to trust the colors. Perfect Love and Pefect Trust. Trust the colors. You just start laying them on and see what arises. Once you see it, all you do is to to work with it.

So far, I've done a Salamander...not the amphibian, but the man of fire. I painted some fire and then a man of flames kind of came out of it. He really kind of formed himself. And then I did Sylphs...white forms on blue background. Here's the wildest thing about those. There is one that as I just splashed the brush down carelessly, a very delicate fully formed face was there. I certainly didn't make it. I don't have that kind of skill. The one I made looks like I made it. But there on this plate is a little Sylph with a fully formed beautiful face made up from how the background blue happens to show through the white. I also did an Undine that I have yet to see how she came out. She will be fired this week. Next week, gnomes.

My recommendation is that others should try this. It's fun and in both the Salamander and the Sylph, things came out of the process that I certainly didn't consciously intend, they were just there. They arose. It was a cool form of meditation.

Trust the colors.

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