To me, creative thinking (whether for artistic or practical purposes) when encouraged, always brings with it great possibility to inform or transform. When I paint, it's more intuitive than technical. I'll usually have an intial thought, get an idea for colors and composition, and go from there. Water-soluble oils, watercolors, and to a lesser degree acrylic and pastel are the mediums I tend to gravitate towards. The tentative title/idea 'Sensing Some Treasure in Loss', is for a group of paintings showing different stages of recognition/discovery (after the initial loss, what's the journey, what is the gift from it). The idea is from a painting 'The Cocoon' I did that I'd like to
expand on. It's one of the pieces I'll be bringing to class.
2 comments:
Hey Anna!
Sounds like you and I are in similar situations... I'm also an older returning student, so I can empathize with some of the feelings that accompany the experience. Doesn't it feel strange and great all at the same time? I think you definitely are taking advantage of what many would see as a "bad" situation. Way to go!!!!
I also empathize with this statement in your blog: "One thing I wanted to explore is the upside of loss..."
I think this is a really great topic to explore, because it is such a broad subject and loss is something that is very much part of the human experience.
Recently I've written quite a bit about loss in a personal journal, as Amy is a second friend of mine that I lost this year. It has certainly affected me, though the full extent of that affect is still unknown to me. However, good bad or indifferent, there have been concurrent experiences of reflection, struggle and attempted resolution.
I wonder how Loss and Identity can be intertwined sometimes... for example- when one losses a job, that may have more than financial repercussions. In your scenario, you mentioned that it affected you because you had many friends at your work place.
Do you ever feel like losing your job made you question some aspect of your identity or self worth?
You could further investigate how our society also reinforces many people in our culture to draw their identity directly to their line of work.... you could question what the positive side of being divorced from this ideology might be.
Of course, you could go in many different directions :) I just thought I'd throw a few brain-droppings out there. Forgive a silly person's rambling!
-Kerrin
Hey Kerrin, thanks for the feedback. They're pretty sound ramblings to me! I have felt alot of those mixed emotions too. It's scary and exhilirating at the same time. One of the paintings I'm bringing in is really the start of that idea. It's kind of about the moment where you realize you're connected to something bigger than yourself, that you're being looked after in some way. It is weird because I went through different levels of losing things, this job, and some years ago, the sudden death of my dad,from small cell lung cancer (he went into the hospital and died in 10 days). When you wrote about your friend, it just kind of resonated with me. It's always different for everyone, but there's always common threads. I'll see you in class. I tried looking for the reading assignments-where are they hiding? I am like the anti-tech woman! -Anna
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