Imagine if someone put a bottle of paint in your hands and told you: “Go and squirt. Release your inner child. There is no right or wrong, just mix, overlap, superimpose, juxtapose, express yourself with the colours...”
It happened to me: I am re-emerging from an Art Spa.
An “Art what?” I hear you say…
A friend who will be soon leaving Muscat for new shores recently organized a little get together with a difference at her apartment. She invited an artist friend who provided the materials and under her guidance we unleashed our creative geniuses.
The last time I attempted at producing some form of art was in my childhood when someone had given me oil paint and canvas as a present. I never quite got to produce anything worthy of an exhibition and I never took it any further than squeezing out the last drop of colour from the last tube of paint.
Somehow at that time my idea of art was very rigid and a bit bi-dimensional. Years have gone by and I haven’t come close to any more paint since then, not even to give a new lease of life to the walls in the house (paid someone for that too!). However my creative inner spirit has always secretly dreamed of giving it another go and maybe enrolling onto some art class. Another of those things for which I keep on waiting for “the right time” (?).
So when the Art Spa invite came along I thought it sounded like an interesting experience and a fun way to spend an afternoon with friends and I signed up.
I didn’t quite know what to expect but of course in my head, under the guidance of a seasoned artist, I was already producing some art worth of Raffaello or Michelangelo so you can imagine my puzzled expression when Jenny explained that we were there to squirt paint around without looking for any specific representation if not the expression of our mood and inner guidance.What the heck? Here we go again “modern art”: take some elephant dung, stick it onto a canvas, spray some glitter here and there, place it next to an undone bed and call it talent.
Only kidding. I did see the fun of it all and the potential: I was going to come home with a canvas full of mismatching colours and would just have to explain to everybody who asked what I actually tried and miserably failed to produce.
Whatever, I was there to have fun so I quickly dropped my preconceptions and just gave it a go.
After a timid start I actually begun to be transported by the colours, the texture and the smell of paint, inks and sprays. Images would come and go, colours would bleed into each other, lines, curves, drops and splashes would create shapes. Paint was leaking onto the canvas, hands, feet, it was everywhere. Luckily we had been warned to wear grubby old clothes we didn’t mind chucking away and the floor had been covered up although at some point a wild squirt made the wall participate into the experience and my old t-shirt has now a couple of arty hand prints…
We first practiced on some long paper sheet, just to see how colours play together, to get the feeling for different textures and types of paint, then we moved onto our very own canvas and started producing our masterpieces.
I always philosophise on the concept of a white canvas. To me it represents possibilities. It’s the beginning, it’s birth, it’s a vacuum and yet it can become anything.
Interfering with the vibration of that white space is empowering and letting the first drop of colour plummet onto it is daunting.
Yet, I let myself go. I had no image in my head at first. I let the colours and the random shapes guide me; inspired by the colours that I am always drawn to: yellows, oranges, reds… an explosion took place and ended up with my very own version of the mighty sun. Sunset, sunrise?
Whatever, it is energy, it is life. It is who I am. It is the child of an Art Spa.
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