The Negative Emotion Project

I'm laughing as I type this because I remember a time in my life when I was told tat I was too emotional a person. While other artists swear by the ruling of their emotions, over the last few years I have come to realize that it's okay to be emotional but I still needed better control over how things effected me.

Always looking for a creative angle, my partner inspired me to undertake a new artistic project with a painting. I marvel at his patience and depth of character so undertaking this was as much a tribute to him as it was to myself.

The goal was to take a canvas and apply a layer of paint or strokes to it every time I had to deal with something emotional that seemed to be having a negative effect on me. I tried the project for two weeks and the conclusion is that I have a lot more peace and calmness in myself. I am of course, grateful for his suggestion because it was a constructive method of feedback that worked in harmony with who I am. While merely pointing out a character flaw is easy, it takes a good deal of trust and strength on my part to accept the idea and run with it.

As you can see here, the piece is not like my more typical structured paintings. Maybe one day I'll examine the correlation between my stuctured work and the almost desperate way I cling to that structure versus my current emotional state. I would venture to say somewhere in there my own control issues are prevalent. But with this piece I can say first and foremost it's been fun.



Several times during those two weeks, 14 times to be exact, I applied a layer of black paint to the canvas in an effort to expunge some negative emotion I was feeling. Anger, sadness, exhaustion, frustration... they all came out in layers of varying thickness and depth, with any number of brush strokes.

By the end of it, I think the work has a definite underlying structure and still appeals to my aesthetic side. All my thanks to N. for believing in me.