Another Painting……

A couple of weeks ago in counselling we were talking about the incident that occurred in my childhood which lead to me stopping painting, I have written about this before, so am not going to repeat the whole story again now as you can read it here.

Anyhow, as you will be aware if you read that blog post I broke my years of refusing to paint with a painting I did as part of a journal I had to do on a course, this was a very difficult thing for me to do, following that I did actually sit with my daughter and we painted together, just messing about, which was a first and delighted my daughter, anyhow last summer I managed to paint our daughters room, something I could not have envisioned doing before that but that is as far as the painting went.

Although I knew I ought to pick the paints up again, I couldn’t bring myself to face it, I have a real mental block when it comes to painting, I think I can cope with decorating painting now but art painting still fills me with dread.

OK so how does this relate to the counselling session? Well, as I said, we were talking about this incident that triggered the paint phobia and as you will know basically I was in the middle of painting when my step father came in and wrecked my artwork, in a temper, and then verbally rubbished my skills.

During recounting this incident the counsellor was asking some detail, like what type of paint was I using? Well I knew it was Oil Paints, we had a bit of a discussion about different sorts of paints but then she asked what it was I had been painting, well I was stuck there, I just couldn’t remember what I had been painting it is like the actual subject had been completely erased from my mind, no matter how much I tried to recall the incident and picture what was on the canvas before it was ripped to pieces I just couldn’t it was just a splodge of colours.

Anyhow, the counsellor challenged me to try painting again, but I kind of brushed that off, then a couple of nights ago I had this most vivid dream of me painting and I can recall now so clearly what I was painting that afternoon as my step father came in, it was a beach scene of a couple of boats pulled up on the beach, I had this memory so clear, including the detail I had forgotten, that I was painting from a postcard I had got from somewhere.

The image was so clear, colours of the boats and all sorts of detail, that I thought I was just recalling a photo I had taken but after searching my photos I reconciled myself to the fact that I had not got a photo like that.

So this afternoon, as followers of my Twitter and Facebook account will already know, I had a couple of hours free time, both kids and my wife were out various places, so I considered going out for a walk in the sunshine but in the end I decided to get the paints out an paint away, it is far from complete but I have done a lot of work on the painting which is something like the painting that I had done all those years back, not quite sure why I wanted to paint that but just feels as if something is breaking in me as I do the painting, anyhow I have got the painting past the stage where my step father had destroyed it last time and have put a lot of paint on the canvas but there is a lot of detail, which is the hardest (and probably most time consuming) bit, to add before it is finished.

I don’t think the painting is brilliant but I do think it is something I had to do, part of my healing journey and so for that it is an important step for me, still not sure how easily I can pick up a paint brush, it takes a huge amount of emotional energy just to get the paints out never mind actually do the painting.

Just in case you are wondering, I was using Acrylics rather than Oils, as I did with the last painting, simply because it has the same strong bold colours I like as Oils and it is forgiving like oils, if you make a mistake all you have to do is wait for it to dry then paint over it, yet it is water soluble like Water Colours which makes it a lot less messy, and mess is a big issue with the paint for me, still.

Anyhow, once the painting is done I will post it here but in the meantime I am afraid that you will just have to wait, not that it is likely to be much of a painting but I am not doing it for the skill of the painting as I said this is part of the healing journey for me.

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