Last year, I completed a qualification with the University of Metaphysical Sciences in many diverse aspects of metaphysics and divinity. Their teaching methodology is experiential, and quite unlike anything I had previously undergone in academia. The aims of one of the Masters electives was to paint some therapeutic art depicting a variety of emotions, for inner contemplation. As you can no doubt see, I am completely out of my depth as an artist, but instead of choosing a different elective I decided to embrace the challenge this module offered and ordered myself some acrylic paints and A5 paper. The great value of this exercise to me was to explore emotions in a different medium to usual, with a focus on the expressive process rather than the outcome. I learned a lot from this experience. I like painting! In future I might get a full size easel and learn a few techniques which allow me to generate some more expansive, expressive, abstract canvases, maybe with some Jungian themes. Underneath each painting below I have included the description so you can identify how I arrived at my technique, although it was tempting to leave you guessing as to what each painting subjectively suggests to you.
Poverty: Poverty is often oversimplified and reduced to clean, sharp lines (usually imbued with the heavy-handed piety of others). In reality poverty is multifactorial and complex. The image is violently broken by the centrifugal vortex of enervating grey and blood red, which merge into a crushing sense of oblivion.
Bliss: Complementary pink & green colours which resemble the icing of an Easter egg are shown. Chocolate provides comfort and releases serotonin. The egg is a symbol of completeness, the World, swollen contentment and dormancy. “The World egg, or cosmic egg, is a mythological motif found in the cosmogonies of many cultures. Eggs symbolize the unification of two complementary principles (represented by the egg white and the yolk) from which life or existence, in its most fundamental philosophical sense, emerges.” (Wikipedia). Bliss is the one thing which gives birth to the many.
Worry: The green background represents the fertile matrix of the unconscious from which worries emerge. The orange wavy lines are energised ripples of consciousness carrying warmer energy or fire. They are the evanescent disturbances of primal fears seeking to be reabsorbed into the matrix.
Excitement: The gold outer frame signifies the Halcyon/ rose tinted/ vintage/ secure quality of childhood. The concentric rainbow colours reinforce this and supply a motive quality which draws one to the centre of the picture, a magnetic fixation, an ideal or goal.
Balance: The image is equally divided into four sections with the colours orange, blue, green, brown. This indicates the seasons of the year and the dynamic ecologic balance which occurs without conscious effort or planning. The red trim helps to balance the image visually, and suggests solar energy, and the animal/human connection with nature, which is intimately connected to, and necessary to its functioning, like stitching or embroidery which hold the whole together.
Anger: The red background represents passion, blood, animal warmth. The black arrows are opposing concentrations of conscious effort, which can only be destructive in the power of their expression. The overall image produced is redolent of fascist symbology and necessity for control/ containment of violent impulses.
Softness: This rich and sensuous violet background is embellished with a gold circular horizontal line which resembles a gentle planetary transit, surrounded by the distant panoply of yellow stars. The softness implied is remote and cosmic, and has a timeless eternal quality.
Happiness: The colours of this card are the colours of nature, where I am most happy. The green at the bottom represents the landscape, and the blue is the sky. The red/orange/brown/ yellow circles represent the plant kingdom in its various stages and seasons.
Passivity: The neutrality of the brown background is punctured by the more energetic, but complementary colour yellow. Although the active principle cuts through the passive, there is no conflict and in fact a creative unity results.
Lucidity: Blue is the colour of clarity. White accentuates and focusses the mind in laser-like concentration in pursuit of a singular aim.
