When I first started painting intuitively, I used music as a tool to quieten my mind. Trance drumming, and artists like Wadaruna and Deya Dova were my favourites to paint to. The rhythmic, hypnotic beats would help me to empty my mind and get into an almost meditative state while I painted.

Slowly, I moved to a playlist of upbeat songs, which helped me to connect to my body, responding to the music and to what was happening on the page. During this phase of my journey, I would often dance around the studio as I painted — especially when I felt myself tightening up, trying to control a painting, or getting stuck on what my next move should be.

This was a particularly important exercise for me, because I am often stuck in my head, tangled in my thoughts, letting them run the show. I tend to forget that I have a body, and that my body has its own wisdom, and that wisdom is often revealed one step, one move at a time.

These days, I often paint in silence. I’ve managed to quieten my mind, to be in my body. To be present with the tactile feeling of paper and paint and my favourite scratchy, mark making tools.

I cannot say that I find it easy to connect to my body’s wisdom, because I don’t. But I do find it a lot easier to be present to the conversation between my paint brush and my intuition. Responding to what I see on the page. To making the next right move. To stop forcing things, and to allowing them to slowly unfold.

This page, painted during the week, is an example of this dialogue with my intuition.

It started with a page marked up with paint. My hands reached for the paint tubes around me — aqua green, pale violet, white, Payne’s grey, gold, pale orange hue, raw umber.

As I moved the paint around the page, images appeared. I saw what looked like a chin and drew in a face. I saw a swirl of paint at the bottom of the page and knew it was an egg. I wanted that to be part of the figure, so I drew my free-flowing figurative shape around it.

The rest of the page developed in a similar way. I saw an eye and a mouth and the suggestion of a child-like face. I saw her holding on to an egg, and noticed another egg between the two figures.

I saw a bird on the woman’s shoulder, and I knew it for a messenger.

And just when I thought the page was done, I had an urge to “crack” the egg between the two figures, to have a tree grow out of it.

Through this process, I simply followed my body’s wisdom. My intuitive knowing. I kept the “editor” out of the picture.

When I sensed that the painting was done, I looked over the page and thought: “Maybe I should glaze the figure, maybe that would create a more pulled-together look.”

But my immediate, intuitive response to that thought was: “No.”

Paintings like these are almost oracular. They invite reflection and contemplation. A divining of the meaning encoded in the symbols and marks, in the decision to not glaze the areas that I would have wanted to glaze if I wasn’t listening to my intuition.

The words “key to the self” came to me as I was gazing at the painting. I was reminded of this passage from Minding The Self by Murray Stein that I had read earlier this month:

…in traditional Christian theology, the myth of incarnation is generally regarded as a unique event in which God became man in the person of Jesus Christ. This happened only once and it will not, and cannot, happen again. Jung recasts the notion of incarnation in a psychological mode as a developmental process in which the unconscious becomes assimilated into consciousness over the period of an individual’s lifetime. He calls this process individuation.

An invitation for you:

Put on some meditative music or shamanic drumming {here’s one that I often use while painting} while you create. Then reflect on your session. Was it easier for you to tap into your intuition? Did the outcome surprise you? Is this something you’d like to explore more in your creative practice?

I’d love to hear about your experiences if you give this a try!

A question before you go:

What do you see when you look at this painting? What draws your eye? Is there a word or a feeling that this image evokes?

Let me know in the comments or simply reply to this email.

Until next time,

Keep creating!