Opening Up

I just spent the weekend painting at a large group workshop with Jesse Reno. I am not going to post a painting because I have not had my "breakthrough painting" yet. On the way home I stopped at the hardware store and bought several pieces of scrap plywood and am on the path to painting again. I find my freedom in my private journals and I have always had a challenge translating my drawings into paint.

Jesse's style challenges me to take my drawings into my painting. It is funny, perhaps because I was a gallery artist in an upper level gallery when I was younger, painting feels like the last expressive frontier for me. With clay sculpture, I am lost in creative passion. Drawing is my door to freedom. Collage is absolutely effortless and instant.

There is an element to art for me that is equally sexual as it is creative and I have been feeling the inexplicable urge to get back to painting after a long hiatus. For the past many years I have been writing and sharing my spiritual/creative discoveries but have kept much of my creativity private.

Something however is freeing up in me. I can feel it's movement under my regular life. What I once was only able to express during times of intensity and crisis seems to be emerging as a regular form of expression...or it wants to. Years ago when I underwent a period of intensity and trauma in my life, I opened up wide to life and it saved me. I feel this drawing speaks to this gesture...an opening of all centers of the body, creative, emotional, sexual. There is an aliveness in this drawing that I would like to bring into my paintings now.

Comments

[cheryl]

Hi Shelley,
Wow! I see and feel so much in this drawing: a birthing, a receiving, a surrendering, a connecting...it has a multi-dimensional sensuality to it. I'm still taking it in. It's awesome - and congrats for getting your mojo back for painting! Keep on, keepin' on ...

Blessings to you... Cheryl

[Robyn]

Powerful drawing! I do hope to see your paintings after the Jesse Reno workshop when you are ready to show them. Lucky girl. I have one of his books and absolutely love his style. Wish I could get on a plane and attend one of his workshops.