Embrace your utter sadness

An Emotional and Artistic Journey with Full Surrender

With full surrender I imagine how I can relate to intense sad emotions. It’s an assignment I’ve set myself. With the intention of embracing profound and sometimes painful emotions. Where is that sadness in relation to me? Where am I in all this?
When I answer these questions, I immediately see that I want to carry this sadness close to my heart. It asks for love and security. A form of care and carefulness, held with a gentleness and without judgment. That’s what I’m going to aim for in this artwork. Now it has become a form of play, almost a dance, this quest to find the right proportion and movement in the digital playing field.

The Creative Journey: From Sketch to Breath of Life

I start with a simple sketch, in which I mainly address the shapes, movements and postures. Then I will add colors. It’s going to be great fun when I start adding shadows to give the two-dimensional shape a feeling of depth. Emphasizing the shadow with dark blue tones and accentuating the light areas with soft yellow tones brings the portrait to life.
I apply these colors with very light translucency. So I can paint over the same spot several times and still see a small shift of color. This makes it a subtle process and an almost meditative activity.

I find this a helpful way of approaching my painting because I am not in a state of doing or thinking. I can fully surrender to the feeling I aim to express and I only have to be aware when the look and feel is just right.
Then it’s time to mix in another color. Add some soft red and purple.  This technique is about accentuation, colors come to the front and other shades disappear into the background.

Emotion and Melody: About full surrender and getting stuck

Music helps me surrender to this artistic process. A process that is also or perhaps mainly an emotional journey. The sound flows through me and puts me in touch with the deep emotions I want to convey. In those moments of surrender, the work arises almost by itself.

During the process at times I put the work away for a while. I can get stuck in the process.
I can’t get any further and need some distance. Now I am waiting for some insight of clarity.  Then, as soon as I recognize the right emotion in myself again, I start working on the painting again. Because of these struggles during the way, the process of creating Embrace your utter sadness took me a year and a half.

Finishing an artwork: Art as grateful Healing Process

Finishing an artwork is exciting. Graphically it feels ready, emotionally not quite yet. It makes me like to extend the creation process. It has to be completely correct before I’m ready to do the post-processing. Then the artwork is freed and can be sent into the world.

“Utter sadness” is the second work I create in this new style. For me, this artwork is a representation of the inner healing process. I feel satisfied and grateful  with the final result of this inner journey and the artistic reflection it produced.