Exploring within my comfort zone

As mentioned in last week's blogpost, my current treat is Louise Fletcher's taster course "Find your joy". It is all about enjoying the process of painting and learning through playing, which is very much in my comfort zone.

However, this has brought its own challenges: Many exercises are a natural part of my process, which has made it harder to approach the task with an open mind and to find fresh angles.

In the first exercise we were asked to divide a large piece of paper with masking tape, and then to paint over the whole page using a limited range of colours and black and white.

I decided to grab some eco household paint leftovers, a piece of indigo chalk that had been languishing in my cupboard and some household items that could serve as mark-making tools.

Interestingly, it took a while until I was able to paint over the lines and stopped treating each section as a separate image...

When all the paint had dried and the tape had peeled off, no masterpiece was revealed. And still: Some of the sections had an energy and dynamic I could have never consciously come up with.