Jane Moynihan | Sacred Art | Spiritual Writing | Psychology | Psychotherapy | Shamanism | Shamanic art | Healing Jane Moynihan | Writing | Psychotherapy | Psychotherapist | London
There is a painting that hangs in my art space. It’s a flower with a child-like face painted on it. I’ve been reflecting today on when I started the Sacred Art Practitioner Training, and this is one of two paintings I’ve returned to. It’s not a piece of work I necessarily intended to show at all, to anyone. I think I was still a little self-conscious about technical ability and feared that people might think it was ‘no better than a child could do’. But the reason I hang it in a special place and return to it again and again is because it’s a reminder of a big breakthrough I had with my creativity. It’s a daily reminder to find the courage to return to the beginning, return to the openness of a child’s mind. As zen master, Shunryu Suzuki, ‘the beginner’s mind is full of possibilities; the expert’s mind has few’. Even so, it is a courageous step because we are indoctrinated into seeing 'starting again' as part of a very bad crowd to get in with, a crowd made up of other 'nothing-but-trouble' words like ‘backwards’, ‘regressive’, ‘primitive’. There were two major things I discovered when I sat painting this, and particularly as I abandoned ‘technique’ completely and painted with my fingers. The first thing was I caught my own inner critic in the act of trying to stop me from being childish. She came across as cruel, saying things like ‘that’s rubbish!’, ‘what will people say?’; but actually what I detected underneath that was fear. I promptly asked my inner critic to sit in the corner of the room and just watch. That was when I really felt that the inner creative child could come out to play. It was the start of a two-year process of reconciling two aspects of myself, the first stage of which was to catch them in the act and separate them. I'll talk about how I started to develop the relationship between the two and reconcile them into a working partnership in some other blogs. Secondly, I realised that it is entirely possible to come across a flower bursting with a smile that looks like smarties. Well, it is, isn't it?! OK - perhaps this does sound very primitive, but I wonder if you've ever thought about the fact that the real meaning of ‘primitive’ is ‘closest to source’. I felt such joy when I was painting those smarties with my fingers and that’s what I remember most every time I look at that painting over my work space. That joy seemed entirely connected to this sense of natural, unadulterated, expression. And that joy is infectious - it moves from the inside out and wants to be shown and shared. I think that's why very small children naturally love to draw pictures for people. It never occurs to them to wonder 'if it looks like that flower', or whether it's technically brilliant. But that changes at some point. Picasso indicated many times that having reached a great level of artistic skill, he would spend the rest of his life learning to paint like a child. That’s why I’m ok with showing this painting. I’m ok with having travelled backwards, having had to start again. I’m proud to show you something I painted with joy. And it’s fine - if you want to tell me that ‘a child could have done that’, then I think I'll take it that I might be getting somewhere. Try it. In Starting Again - Part 2 I'll be sharing the second painting I keep returning to. Gratitudes to: Imelda Almqvist, http://www.shaman-healer-painter.co.uk Shunryu Suzuki, Zen Mind Beginner's Mind
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