the painting-dream
                                                          
I remember it clearly, the joy I felt during art-classes back in school. Besides doing sports, the drawing was my favourite.
Somewhere around age 15-16, "something went wrong". There are no art-memories at all from those years, and why pencils and drawings were thrown away I really don´t know. I have some ideas though ;

Probably I did like many other teenage-kids with wild, wonderful dreams; buried them in order not having to confront, neither experience, anxiety or fears .... ....fears for never, never "being good enough".
"The inner judge" was, in my case, completely ruthless. For many years I very elegantly avoided expressing myself through drawing or painting. The longing was totally surpressed.

Finally it slowly started to surface. This was during a wonderful year in the Caribean in the mid 80-ies ...   I was 35, and in the rocking-chair under the huge, magnificent papayatree, I took up sketching. Very soon I noticed the wellbeing I received. My frequently aching back ceased to bother me. The mind calm down etc.

Coming back to Sweden it was time for watercolours, and some years later, my secret dream ; the oil !

It was new, exciting, and difficult. Voices inside seemed to grow stronger and stronger, telling me not to spend time on "anything that useless".

This inner dialogue did result in minor breaks, but mostly the curiosity won,   and with help from some courses, and also with loving support from friends and family I managed to stay on the road.
 
Inspiration came from nature, and the wild clouds in the sky. It came from my beloved mountains, and from Lappland.
And for sure from the light, the heat and the flamenco in Spain, where I lived for some years after the millenium-shift.

Right now it is the forest, the light in the darkness ... which inspires. But also light over water ... the horizon, and the wind playing with the clouds. In the studio the voyage of discovery continues.

The colours may often decide, or rather to say ; it feels like I am often "following the colour". The form will come. It becomes what it becomes, sometimes something, sometimes nothing. I like it like that.

"Resting" in the paintingprocess is increasingly becoming more important, and the link, which I have since long searched, is now done ; the link between life, the philosophy and the creative process.

The painting has become an obvious choice, an absolutely necessary choice.
The driving-force itself is growing ... expanding, and I clearly feel how the dream stubbornly refuses to once again be buried.

A fascinating, and for me, very empowering feeling !
                               
           that´s it for now ... I will come back to this subject .... meanwhile I will be painting,                         
                   AND do my best to stay present, whatever happens ... Mindfulness !   
                                                     
                                                                                                                     Peter
                                            
                                    
 
                                                   
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