Escape From The Darkness

Along with being a writer, I am also an artist. I have only recently begun dabbling in art, but I have discovered I have a natural talent for that as well. Beginning with pencil drawings, then moving up to colored pencils, I finally began to experiment with paints.  I like to play with darkness and light, with color and intensity.

I am still an amateur. There’s not a question about that for sure. But some of my paintings are admittedly good especially for being a beginner. I have tried both acrylic and watercolor painting. Acrylic is great for when I am home and there is time to devote to it. I like to work with watercolor on the go.

I have even taken my watercolors to work with me. Although I work in a glass factory by night, during my lunch time I sit in the car under a bright headlamp inside and I touch up whatever painting I am currently working on. I actually like working in the darkness with just the light over my head.  It gives me a bit of a different perspective on things. Sometimes I have a photo I use as a guide. Other times I attempt just letting the water and the paint flow creatively.

This last week I did one freestyle. I let the paints flow where they will. As I look at it I wonder where it came from. It’s not something I could plan. And I ask myself, is this perhaps a key to something internal for me? Is this sending me a message?

For the last few months I have been attending a journaling workshop with a friend of mine. The purpose of these workshops is to try to heal our emotional wounds through writing. As an avid writer already it was the perfect answer to my emotional ills.

In these workshops lately I have been attempting to talk to my inner child. I close my eyes and I meet her in the place I found the most solace as a child … a tree stand that the hunters in the family used to hunt out of. It was a solid platform built into a tree and there were steps used to climb up to it.

In the summer I would spend many hours up there with my little portable radio, a notebook, and a pencil and pen. I wrote poetry. I wrote journal entries. Or I simply sat there and watched the squirrels play beneath it while I listened to the radio. Sometimes I would listen to music. Other times I felt compelled to listen to the Milwaukee Brewers baseball games. This was the place I knew I would be able to connect with that little child within.

I’m still working on her. She doesn’t want to talk to me. But maybe she is trying to get out in her own way. The painting that developed this week from my subconscious I have titled, “Escape From The Darkness”.

Her face is still rather obscure. As a novice painter I’m not sure how to fix that. Or maybe I’m not supposed to. Maybe that’s still part of the mystery. But the woman is coming out of a dark forest. She is naked and vulnerable.

I know art and creativity speak differently to each viewer and each person can take something different from a piece of art. As I peruse this painting, knowing all that I know about me, I feel that she is speaking from the perspective of that little girl locked up inside of me. She has been kept silent too long.  She needs to escape the darkness of her prison, her silence.

This woman feels to me about to be twenty years old. She is not running. She does seem to be a bit hurried, escaping the darkness of the forest behind her, just as my little self is trying to escape the darkness she has been imprisoned in for so long.

I can actually “feel” her within me. She is crying to be released and healed. She wants to grow up too.

I wonder what other means she will use to try to communicate. I look forward to finding out.