Dive into the art with me while I work and explore all things art in my creative area!
The best time for me to paint is when I want to find a new technique of working. In August 2020, I had one of the biggest inspiration bursts. It began with a gallery show lined up but no idea of what to make and ended with a full small body of artwork completed in 3 weeks time!
Painting is for the soul
October had a scheduled gallery exhibit at the Siouxland Libraries Downtown Branch. For more than a year, I had not a clue of what I was going to create. The most I could muster together was committing to painting something abstract - super specific, yeah, I know. I couldn't understand why there was an inability to figure out what to make. That kind of issue had never effected me on such a large scale and for so long like it did this time. Eventually, I found myself being drawn to first healing my the wounds in my heart before I could find excitement in creating physical things.
After constant prayer and granting myself some grace, I took to heart the advice of Matt Tommey in his mentoring program.
"As Christian artists, we have to intentionally invite the Holy Spirit into our spaces that we create in to then work in and move through our artwork." - Matt Tommey
Wow. Before hearing this, I had never connected the sides of my business, art, and spiritual life together; I thought of them as all separate things. From here was a miraculous amount of inspiration!
Taking the time . . . now create
I had to take the precious time to sit back and give God a "yes" from my heart. I said "yes" to creating art with him and not being separate from Him. Almost immediately, my mind started wondering all of a sudden trying to figure out a series idea for these paintings. Giving myself grace to paint something that I just genuinely enjoy was big for me. Clouds! I love to paint clouds. They are so calm looking and peaceful to create too.
Every painting was started with this simple idea: paint with joy and create a little cloud kingdom. From there I began to look more critically at the pieces I was making, being intentional to not take myself out of the fun and free art making head space that I was in.
Not Just Clouds, But Landscapes
The end product was pieces created with the full inspiration God gave me of the landscapes in the prairie and ocean! Not only that, but I combined my love of painting and my love of gesture drawing into this new technique, plus metallic gold on the top!
- Hannah V.
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