Watercolours

When I started having chronic dry eyes, I realised everything I loved to do was either cerebral or it involved intense screen time — reading, writing, watching tv, making digital things, hanging out online. I wanted to do something that would allow more unconscious expression.

Painting was one of the ideas I had. Except there was too much inertia — somehow the act of going to the store seemed too daunting to me. Perhaps there is a deeper underlying fear of trying to do something I haven’t really done before, discounting compulsory art lessons in school that bored or scarred me.

When FiftyThree’s Pencil was released, I ordered one immediately. I had these grand fantasies of doing all sorts of cool digital art with it. The demo videos were cool, right? It arrived, I tested it for a bit, and left it to gather dust for the next couple of years or so.

Then somehow I picked it up again. Since I can’t get over the inertia to use real paint, I did it in a world I was already familiar with:

I posted them on Facebook, despite thinking they were terrible. But they were solely mine, an expression of some hidden self I never thought I had. I wanted to develop the capacity to do stuff that I simply wanted to do, without reasons, purpose, utility or approval. Publishing is an act of defiance for me, that I even dared to defy my self — judgment, shame and all. I wanted to be unafraid of my own embarrassment.

Shortly after I met someone. On one of our very first outings she suggested we sketch clouds. I am terrible at sketching, or anything related to the visual arts, and I liked her enough to not want to embarrass myself in front of her. Yet the fear of disappointing her outweighed the fear of embarrassment. Having done those previous Paper paintings before, I had a little more courage and awareness to try it again. So I did this:

This time I did like what I have done, though I didn’t know what I was doing. It was mostly intuitive and spontaneous, which gave me an insight into how it feels to truly be connected to some unconscious part of myself.

In-between since I found the thought of buying paints too daunting, I bought a sketch pad, colour pencils and a sharpener instead. They remained untouched for almost a year.

But the girl bought us real watercolours. I threw in my colour pencils and sharpener.

We started painting. Here are my very first attempts at painting:

What did I learn?

I learned that sometimes we just need other people who care enough to nudge us into action. That no amount of grandiose fantasising matters if we can’t bring ourselves to take the very first step. I have also learned that watercolours are a strange metaphor of life — they are sort of forgiving when it comes to mistakes but not really. It allows some level of rescue, but when you try to hard it turns into this muddy mess and the entire canvas has to be discarded. Sometimes the only way out is to embrace the flaw and complete the painting anyway instead of being unable to let go of the desire to fix it.

Painting or perhaps art, requires a profound form of presence. It requires us to be fully there and yet engage at a level that doesn’t belong to reality. Time sort of stops, then fast forwards.

That maybe it really doesn’t matter that I did not know how to art. Let art dictate itself through me. That all it matters is that they are all wholly me, crudeness, flaws and all. That I am learning to see myself through the process of making them.

I don’t intend to get better at painting. I wish to embrace the mindset of the beginner — the wonder, marvel, curiousity and abandonment of the conscious self — to be better at freeing myself through play, to be in a state where there is no measurement or judgment. How much more of my self can I express on the canvas?

Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up. — Picasso