Down the Rabbit Hole

Oh, hello there. I’m a bit late. Okay, I totally skipped February’s blog post. I’ve been really engrossed in some very interesting things as of late and couldn’t decide if I wanted to share it or not. I’ve always had a difficult time explaining what my art is about, or trying to pick a particular focus. Some people paint landscapes while some are known for portraits. Sometimes I feel like I’m jumping all over the place trying to pinpoint my subject matter. But one subject I find myself coming back to again and again is the mind body connection.

Mind Body Connection…Again

So here’s what’s been happening the last few months. Some of you know I’ve been dealing with chronic pain in my low back for over a decade. You name it, I’ve tried it. Chiropractic, yoga, physical therapy, massage, stretching, acupuncture, exercising, not exercising, myofascial therapy, vitamins, oh but have you tried…YASSS. Though I’ve always believed that our thoughts can influence our physical being, I never realized how INCREDIBLY POWERFUL our minds really are.

BodyTalk and More

Someone suggested that I try BodyTalk, a holistic therapy that uses tapping techniques to address emotional, physical or environmental aspects that can affect the psyche. Huh? I didn’t know what I was getting into, but at this point I’ll try anything so I gave it a shot. I left my appointment pain free for the first time in thirteen years. What? Wait, what?! WHAT?!!! Apparently I have some deep seated emotional issues that got “stuck” in my body and manifested themselves later as pain. Although the pain did come back a after a few weeks, it’s not near as bad as it used to be. There’s lots of work to be done I guess 🙂 So of course I’m super intrigued by all this!

Since then, I’ve been reading everything I can get my hands on about this subject. In my search for answers I’ve fallen down a rabbit hole learning about things like consciousness, meditation, spirituality, belief systems, chakras, entitities, vibrations and how our buried emotions can manifest when we don’t fully process them. Crazy stuff, maaaan. The result of all this research has produced this little painting above and what I hope will become its own body of work.

The Result

This painting has layers of gouache, ink and depicts the idea of the third eye. (Funny how all my doodles tend to be eyes, hmm.) Gouache is kind of like a cross between acrylic and watercolor which allows you to play with opacity and depth of color. I wanted to incorporate sacred geometry without being super calculated and use layers of color while keeping them vibrant. I started with lemon yellow and ended my layers with ultramarine blue. Then I used blue ink to outline my original sketch underneath and where each color of paint mixed. You can see more of this process on my Instagram feed.

Anyway, this is the first thing I could bust out onto paper and I’m sure more stuff will follow. I’m not out of the woods yet, but I’m becoming more aware of my thoughts and learning more every day. As they say, you didn’t get here overnight; you won’t get better overnight.