Trusting ourselves

Saturday was a painting day. No blog posts to write. Rain forecast. A good day for painting. So why was I feeling this mild panic?  It took the form of ‘not knowing what to paint’, which was almost funny considering that the way I paint is to start without knowing what’s going to happen. In my dynamic painting, the painting emerges from the doing of it, and a project emerges from one painting following the other. I’ve been working this way for over four years now, and it hasn’t yet failed.

I dealt with this momentary failure of trust by writing my way through it in my journal. I reminded myself that “What if it goes wrong?” is a non-question. A painting is not wrong, just unfinished. And I can keep going, responding to what’s there with what’s needed next.

That Sunday morning I needed to summon up more trust. Trust that painting projects would emerge by painting, by following the trail, by sitting and looking, by reflecting and noticing, by allowing suggestions, by bringing together and describing, by creating possibilities out of doing.

Trust in the emergent poetic.

To the threshold. Original painting on a postcard, completed Saturday 10 August 2019.