To paint without judgement, to connect to your inner being. To FEEL, experience, be free, no failure, just paint.

Every time I put my brush to paper or canvas a whole world of demands appears in my mind. Whatever I will put on paper it must be beautiful, inventive, original and generally likable to everyone. I start to judge with the first stroke.  Telling myself I’m doing alright and should keep going; better not screw it up! Or, I’ll rebuke what I did and will start telling myself off: nobody will like this; why did you start of like that? This is not what you meant to do, etc. etc.

It is an exhausting process!

Over time I started to think about painting without purpose or judgement. Painting as an extension of the yoga and meditation practice I’d been doing. I imagined myself sitting down in front of a blanc and manageable (not to big not to small) piece of paper everyday and painting not what was in my thinking mind, but that which was in my soul, in my minds eye, in my heart. An hour a day to focus on my intuition.

So I started this journey of intuitive art. To FEEL instead of think. To tune in to my heart and soul. No judgement, just paint.

 It has not been easy. My judgy self loves to peak around the corner and protrude to the centre stage if I let her. Yet there are times when I truly paint something that emerges out of feeling, out of some kind of inner truth. I do not always like what I paint, yet is so soothing to be able to turn everything off, to give the thinking mind a break and to just … BE.

No judgment – just paint.

I see these images in my mind’s eye, when I look onto the blanc paper or during meditation. But when I focus on them, my  mind activates and I lose the vibe. So I try not to focus on them, to just observe the images passing by. They are so close to my heart, my skin, my soul that it feels like I am touching the very essence of my being, or any being around me, the centre of the earth, the source of all life, the aura of the people passing by, my own chakra’s, and the energy around me. But…  I am never fully able to capture them on paper as I perceive them. They are spin offs, hampered by technique and materials. Never in its truest form. Yet sometimes they are truly beautiful.