One of the great and liberating things about becoming older is becoming more confident. I’ve been such a perfectionist for so long, a bit of a control freak and so worried about ‘getting it wrong’. I wrote about this in relation to art and creativity eight years ago. As with many things, this particular lesson is one which spirals around again and again, giving me the chance to work on it some more!
With art making, these tendencies have allowed me to make some very finely crafted pieces of art; the art quilts and fibre art that I focused on for the first years of my voyage as an artist are very well thought out and meticulously crafted. But, it has always been difficult for me to let go, experiment and play with art materials.
Unexpectedly, the people who come to my creativity group for people living with dementia are my great teachers. In providing them with the opportunity for process oriented creativity, I am experiencing for myself the liberation of being in the moment, letting go of an ‘outcome’, going with the flow, experimenting and experiencing.
With my new found confidence and certainty about who I am, I am more and more able to shuck off my insecurities and do stuff I was previously too chicken to do.
This weekend, I made marbled paper which I have admired for a very long time. I found a ‘how to’ article in Country Living which I didn’t follow because it had a supply list requiring an initial outlay of dosh that I wasn’t prepared to spend on marbling specific materials. I ended up going with a very user friendly, simple tutorial using shaving cream and food colouring. It was really fun to do and the results are amazing! 🙂
This was the palette for my first pass.
Shaving foam marbled with colour
I kept adding colour and/or foam for subsequent pressings.
I simply pressed the paper onto the bed of foam and lifted it off.
Then scraped the foam off with a ruler. The colour on the paper didn’t budge and I could wipe off the excess foam with a paper towel.
The shaving cream dolloped ruler was a joy to behold.
Et voila!
A delicious, serendipitous and temporal piece of art
I had a lot of fun doing this and excitedly showed Steve each one as it became revealed. I did a couple of them twice.
My results from the day
These were printed onto 120gsm cartridge paper. I folded them in half and glued the backs together with PVA to make them double sided. I went back to the Country Living tutorial and made decorations for an Easter tree, which I will show in another post.
Inspiraculum 