Finding my voice.

Thoughts on the journey and process of a painting I completed earlier this year. Reflections on the way that art and life intersect.

This project was a long time in the making. It started when I was participating in an online coaching course where a part of our homework was to create something each week and then tear it into four peices. The idea behind that was to find freedom in creativity without being too attached to the end product. I really enjoyed this, leaning in to the freedom that can be found by playing with things creatively, sometimes finding a very abstract expression and other times adding in more layers which were all topped by a plant or animal.

It was also a great way to experiment with incorporating written word into my art peices, playing more with connecting words, colour, images and more all in the same peice. Having the opportunity to play with things and to remove myself from the end product allowed me to push fruther into different expressing my self in a way that felt true to my own voice and not something that was me saying or doing what I felt people expected of me.

I painted on a peice of paper every week for 10 whole weeks, tore each finished piece into four and collected them. This was several months after I had stepped away from a job where a collection of expectations, experiences and pressures had left me feeling as if I had no voice. I remember writing the words:

Somehow, somewhere, I lost my voice.
Little by little it was taken away.

I keep moving my mouth to find the words
But there is nothing, nothing to say.

I'm shaky, 
Confused,
Uncertain,
Scared.

What do I have if I don't have my words?
Who am I when my voice is gone? 

I never felt that this section of prose was finished. I came back to it a few times wanting to add some element of hope, something to hold on to or reflect the journey that comes by practicing and using your voice so that can find it again, but whatever words I wrote never seemed to fit.

I think the painting is the rest of the poem. Ten weeks of ten paintings, each painting torn into four parts, each part growing a little bit and reconnecting to my voice. The forty torn pieces were then spead and collaged onto a wooden board, a collection of all the small moments representing something that has been said. A collection that said, there is more of this story to come.

I painted more, adding layers on top of the collage that was already there, almost erasing the collection of colours, lines and shapes that formed the foundation of this painting. Yet it wasn’t an erasing or a painting over, it was a building on and a building up. I found myself standing strong on that foundation and stretching my voice in new and exciting ways.

Breathing deep, each stroke of the brush helped me to grow in trusting the person that I was and to hold on and trust in my God as he carried me on this journey. You will always be able to see the edges of each piece of paper in the collage and looking closer there are definitely colours and shapes that poke through the layers above, they are there as an important part of the story this painting tells.

Most of my paintings have a detailed foreground of an Australian plant or animal. This one remains abstract, most probably the first abstract piece that I have done. There is a suggestion of shape and movement that remains open to interpretation, almost saying that our story of growth has a lot further to go and that can look like many different things for each of us.