Creative Color with Creatively Fit – Making Change

Good morning!

It is technically still morning as I write this so if I hurry I can still get you your morning cup!

I didn’t know what to write about today so I didn’t create a post yesterday.  I resisted this morning, still not knowing what to say.  Then, when I least expected it, I got something to say. It’s another “authentic blog moment” (wow…these are getting more frequent…good sign?).

This morning I had an amazing phone call with Whitney Ferre of Creatively Fit.  I’m enrolled in her Creatively Fit Coach Certification program and I’m loving it….and resisting it. Something just wasn’t clicking for in the last few weeks. The pieces weren’t coming together.

Whitney uses painting and art journaling as the main platforms for her programs.  Whitney believes that by engaging in creative activities we can open ourselves up to change in our lives.  I believe this too.  But, something wasn’t working.  I started painting a few weeks ago but I was stuck on something.  Here is what my painting process has been like.

Mixing Colors and Putting Paint To Canvas

I LOVE mixing paint colors and watching new colors appear. Adding a little of this and a little of that until my heart begins to sing with the perfect blue, pink, orange, color of the moment emerging before me. Putting the paint on the canvas and watching it come together in an abstraction of shape and color:  WOWZA!  Thrilling, empowering, validating, pure FUN!

Lesson 3 – Outline Your “Shape”

BREAKDOWN

Huh?  Shape?  I have to add structure to this?  Really? “No!  I don’t want to!” My “inner child” was in full throttle rebellion.  I kept painting.  Over and over.  Color over color. No true shapes. No “structure”.  Not happening!!

I felt like I was “doing it wrong”.  Everyone else was outlining and painting “things”.  Me…color.  “Things” I could imagine I was seeing (much like my photography).

“This isn’t working.”  “There is something wrong with me.”  “Why can’t I do this?” bounced around subconsciously in my head.

Your Canvas Is Your Life

We had a group call this morning and Whitney talked about how your resistance and struggles with painting are a hint at something going on in your life.  BINGO!  Got me! INSIGHT!!

I’m completely, utterly, 100% NOT interested in structure. I did that.  Now, I want freedom.  I want fluid.  I want fun, color and play.  My paintings are telling me something about what I really want in my life.

The secret of happiness is freedom.  The secret of freedom is courage. ~Thucydides

Starting today, RIGHT NOW!  I’m embracing my “non-structured” paintings and the meaning behind them.  I’m going to look at structure in a new way.  Everything has some structure to it, even if it’s abstract structure.  I’m going to work on putting a little structure back in my life by seeing structure a little differently in my painting this week. Maybe I’ll even try some “real” structure and see how it feels.  Just a little…

I wonder what else I’ll embrace in my life in the process?

What would your canvas tell you?  You can find out at Creatively Fit!

Thank you Whitney for the “aha” moment and to my fellow creativity mates for the comfort and freedom to express my “true canvas” today.