Women, Painting and Power

I'm standing in my studio, watching 10 women picture in silence with keen focusing and concentration, and the energy is just humming. All of a sudden Iodine hear a moan from one of the women and the words "Oh no, I detest it. It's so ugly". I smile, feeling a sense of great alleviation and dread.

Relief because another adult female have just blindly stumbled into her gateway to originative freedom. Apprehension because I cognize the opposition and statements I am going to be coming up against as I seek to speak her out of destroying what she holds ugly and to even to get to take the extremist measure of accepting what she have created with wonder and compassion. I have got to be speedy here because women are nil if not furtive and cunning and will blow small clip in eradicating the grounds of what they see unattractive art.

This is a social class in what's known as intuitive picture or procedure painting. The intent of this sort of picture is to larn to listen deeply to yourself and to then courageously show what you find,without censoring anything,in a spirit of spontaneity, surrendering to the originative process.It's very different from typical fine art social classes where the primary focusing is on developing technique and ending up with a pleasing product. This type of social class utilizes fine art and picture as a manner to acquire more than in touching with the interior human race of mind and psyche. The focusing is exclusively on exploring and expressing that internal process.

This route is hard for most women, because even though many of us have got done some sort of ego probe and acknowledge the value built-in in that search, we are still fighting an acclivitous conflict against a very strong cultural prejudice that learns us to put the top value on what is outside of us. We are taught that feelings and an interior life are good as far as they go, but what is truly worthwhile is how we look, what we own, who we know, and where we happen ourselves on the economical and position hierarchy.

The cryptic stirrings of our soul, the demands of our hearts, the messages from our bodies,and the mastermind of our intuition, are STILL, even after all of the conflicts for release that we have got fought, denigrated and considered fiddling and unimportant, unrealistic and immature. But in the human race of the procedure humanistic discipline the kingdom of mind and dreams, imaginativeness and feelings are staunchly defended as sacrosanct and even given centre stage.

The women in my picture social class cognize the regulations of intuitive painting, one of which is that they are not to destruct anything or cover up what they have got got done just because they don't like it or have a negative reaction to it. They cognize what they are attempting here is an exercising in extremist ego credence which intends embracing everything that come ups out of them especially if it do them uncomfortable because there's "gold in them thar hills" of the mind that they can mine to great advantage if they are just willing to remain with the discomfort. But the impulse to disavow the abomination of a perceived ugly picture by making it vanish can be overwhelming.

There are four words in the English linguistic communication that you should never utilize in mention to a western 21st century adult female if you don't desire to acquire your dentition knocked out. Those four small words are ugly, fat, bitch and selfish.

Each of these four words computer addresses an issue of great importance for a woman, and what they all have got in common is that they are keys to unlocking the door to our forbidden feminine power. And one thing you can number on is that each of these four issues will demo up eventually if a adult female seriously gives herself over to making her ain art. Which is one ground that women often diffident away from the originative process.

These words have got got extremely negative intensions for a adult female and have been used to denigrate and control us for a very long time.The complaint around them is so intense that as soon as we hear them we throw up our hands, kick into a topographic point of shame, stopping point our eyes and back away from them as if they were Kryptonite and we were Superintendent Girl. Since we are unwilling to be funny and research them, we never acquire to see that in actuality these four words depict very positive qualities and archetypal energies that we desperately necessitate if we are going to be complete, whole, actualized and effectual feminine Godheads of our ain lives.

One of the greatest internal obstructions to reclaiming our powerfulness is a cogent original at work in most women's psyches that tin be called the Inner Good Girl. The Good Girl lives for blessing and she granaries that blessing by keeping women little and safe and non-threatening. She is not interested in growing up and is contented to stay eternally young. Ultimately, she is the 1 that maintains a adult female from being able to develop and boom as person who is strong and potent,gutsy and capable of taking authorization over her ain life. And the Good Girl never desires to put on the line being fat, selfish, ugly or bitchy.

If a adult female takes her originative life seriously, if she do a committedness to herself and gives herself to her originative work, she will eventually attain a hamlet where she have to face the Inner Good Girl and the listing of Good Girl regulations if she desires to go on creating with passionateness and authenticity.

We all cognize what those regulations are.Smile, smile, smile, be sweet and nice, never acquire huffy (or even annoyed),look pretty (which of course of study includes being thin), odor good, be clean and neat and always be pleasing and accommodating. Don't be loud and remain in the background. What you believe or experience is not really all that important. Don't disquieted anyone. And never, ever do another individual uncomfortable. In the Good Girl human race flawlessness is an come-at-able end and you necessitate to work relentlessly, tirelessly, exhaustively, to be the absolute best mother, daughter, married adult female and friend you can be, all the piece berating yourself because you inexplicably and continuously fall short of the mark.

When a woman starts her originative life she conveys these same mental attitudes and outlooks to her art. She only lets herself to paint pretty pictures that are perfect in every way. Paintings that are nice and do people smile. She is unwilling to put on the line distressing or intense colour or imagery; nil that is too strong or stands out too much. But picture in this manner eventually go forths her feeling bored and stifled. Pretty can be fantastic as portion of a bigger repertoire, but if it's all you are allowed to make it eventually goes both a snare and a cage.

At a certain point in her originative procedure a adult female necessitates to be willing to ditch the Good Girl by breakage the Good Girl rules. But breakage those regulations takes a adult female into the district of the shadow side of the Good Girl, the awful yet absorbing bad GIRL!

The Bad Girl is alive and well in most women's psyches and is the portion of us who is ill and tired of the long listing of limitations that hem in her wild and juicy self. She is plucky and bold, full of audaciousness and unafraid to travel for what she wants. She is adventurous and courageous, and basks the exhilaration that come ups with taking positive life-affirming risks.

But our human relationship to her have a strong shame and shadow component so she often acquires expressed in way's that end up hurting us. She is the 1 who eats the whole container of the batch cocoa bit water ice pick in one sitting, who doesn't go back necessary telephone phone calls to bothersome household members, who passes money that she doesn't have got on clothing or shoes, and who have inappropriate human relationships with work force or women that aren't good for her.What Iodine am presenting here is a manner to repossess the Bad Girl energy, through painting, that is affirming and positive. To acknowledge that what we have got got got been calling bad are disowned parts of ourselves that demand to be brought back home.

THE SELFISH GIRL: Unafraid of putting herself first, of being destitute and proud of it, of nurturing herself, of conserving her ain energy, of filling her ain well, willing to have limits, making her ain ego attention her first priority, willing to be her ain good mother, willing to take clip just for herself, willing to face and defeat her guiltiness about taking attention of herself.

This is the first Bad Girl to demo up when a adult female efforts to have a feasible originative life, and the first 1 I see when a adult female walks in the door of my studio to go to a picture class. I hear over and over again from these women how much they have got lost themselves in taking attention of everyone else. How tired they are of putting everyone else's necessitates first and that they have got come up to this social class because they desire to make something that have no seeable benefit to anyone else.

For a adult female to be originative she necessitates to be willing to take clip just for herself. She necessitates uninterrupted time periods when she is able to come up in her studio, sit down down at her computing machine or her easel, and see what desires to come. She necessitates to allow herself acquire dreamy, make nothing, gaze out the window, and be seemingly unproductive. During these interludes in which she drops into a originative enchantment she is inviting the Muse to come in her and inviting the often secret and cryptic motion of her psyche to show itself.

In these moments, she gets to confront herself through her art. She is able to acquire quiet adequate so that she can listen deeply and start to inquire some indispensable inquiries such as as "What make I think? What make I like? What make I really want? What travels me, conveys me pleasure, do me experience alive.?" It is a me, myself and I time, a clip that demands to be treated as sacred and inviolable in order to let those originative juices to flux unimpeded and to eventually turn into a raging, rushing river.

However, it's usually not long before the telephone set rings or person lights-out (or sometimes lbs ) on the studio door with the outcry of "I necessitate you! And I necessitate you right NOW!" It could be a friend, a child, a female parent a husband, a work obligation, or a tobacco pipe that have just sprung a leak. All of a sudden, person else's necessitates go more than of import than her demand to be creative, and the adult female is faced with the ageless female question." Bash Iodine once again fold the door to my studio and bend my dorsum on the demands of my ain soul? Bash Iodine once again turn out how reliable, dutiful, compassionate , caring, ego sacrificing, available, loving, responsible Iodine am, at the awful terms of my ain originative self? Knowing that I have got the small, and getting littler solace of being able to state "Well at least no 1 is going to be able to name me selfish!"

THE UGLY GIRL: Willing to buck the tide, to be her ain alone self, to not always conform , to step away from the demand for approval, to be willing to put on the line censure, to step outside of the box of what is acceptable as a adult female in this culture, willing to be weird, different, unique, outrageous, bold.

The most common lamentation or desire that I hear from my women picture student's is "But I just desire my picture to be beautiful."

For most women, beauty is a need, a deep irrational hunger, and an unconscious compulsion. Our designation with the demand to be beautiful is so great and so deep-rooted that we rarely, if ever, inquiry it. Beauty is the cardinal to the magic land of well- being, felicity and success. It is the beginning of our value, the warrant of love, our lone legitimate entree to power, and on a very deep degree have meant endurance itself. Because so much is at stake, the pressure level a adult female experiences to be beautiful and to make something beautiful is enormous.

Our whole human relationship to beauty shows up painfully and clearly in the picture process. While she is painting, there is always some beauty standard- whether she is aware of it or not- that a adult female is trying to dwell up to. Maybe the ideal is of a picture that is neat and flawless where no errors or messiness, no trickles or uneven lines are allowed. Or the idealised vision may be one of a picture that is balanced and symmetrical, a idol of elegance, grace, and faultless good taste. In this version of perfection, all the colours must match, and can only be in the scope of hushed pastels with the overall consequence being soothing and pleasant, like a well set together plan in a place and garden magazine.

Whatever the ideal, the energy set into achieving it is relentless. When I watch a adult female paint I am always astonied by the passionateness she have for endlessly fussing over and fixing her paintings. Spontaneity is out of the question. She just takes it for given that her picture must be well thought out, planned, and organized , and under as much of her control as is humanly possible. She is used to not trusting in her ain innate beauty, and anticipates that the pursuit for beauty will imply nonstop work. She never inquiries the ceaseless dieting and exercising, the hours spent shopping for just the right outfit and the distressing over her skin, her hair, her nails. She always have and always will fall short of the beauty grade and just presumes that beauty is something she will continually fight for and rarely, if ever, achieve.

The really sad thing is that she sees nil incorrect with this fretful and apprehensive attack to her ego and to her artwork.This ceaseless and ultimately hopeless striving for the unachievable ideal is just the norm. It's really the lone thing she have ever known.

These narrow restraints of beauty that a adult female happens herself tangled in are always some fluctuation on the Good Girl creed. These socially accepted criteria are based on a definition of beauty that is related to being nice and non threatening, to not standing out too much and conforming to an constituted norm that is pleasant but not powerful. Beauty is related to conformity and convention, to following the regulations and to fitting in. The Good Girl beauty ideal intends that it's not all right to just be herself, warts and all. She necessitates to do make clean herself up and make herself acceptable.

When a adult female is painting, the Ugly Girl often prowlers in as a error or imperfection, a vilification or a smudge, something messy or uncontrolled.When the adult female seeks to clean up the mess, she happens with increasing horror that the clutter only goes on to grow. She is constantly having technical calamities. The paint trickles or runs, she can't command her brush, pandemonium reigns, and it looks like there is nil she can do to make it stop.

She is despairing to acquire back to pretty. In risking spontaneity, she have found, to her horror, that she have created something that appears rough or loud or imperfect. Or,even worse, something monstrous or malformed. She frantically seeks picture more than safe images, more flowers, rainbows, peaceful landscapes . But the flowers develop crisp borders and dark colours and turn completely out of control , the rainbow colours go wildly fluorescent , and the landscapes goes populated with darkly cryptic forms and figs .

At this point she have stepped out of the confines of charming and attractive, and into an unfamiliar landscape of the wild, the untamed the unkempt and disheveled. This is often the beginning of a human relationship to the interior Wise Old Woman archetype, also known as the Witch. This is the human face of the deep feminine that doesn't care about visual aspects . After all, the Enchantress walks around with missing dentition and warts, and obviously doesn't care what other people think. This is an awakening of the facet of a woman's psyche who is no longer a slave to blessing and who have begun to walk down the long route away from grownup female as merchandise and commodity.

THE FAT GIRL: Willing to be big, be visible, to come up out of hiding, to be a adult female and not a small girl, to take up space, to be hungry, to state what she wants, to cognize what she wants, to be full of herself, to be too large for her britches, to be a full adult, unafraid to state yes! A fat miss isn't afraid to take up space and to take her topographic point in the world.

In my studio I offer high quality paper that is of ample size, but pupils can tape the sheets together to do even bigger paintings. It's a intoxicating clip when a adult female tin allow herself distribute out and take up some existent space,when she can do a HUGE painting, one that can sometimes cover an full wall.

Creating a giant picture is a dizzying and terrific prospect, and a adult female often necessitates tons of encouragement and permission to take this step. In fact I usually necessitate to poke at her somes little. She will begin with saying something about MAYBE needing to travel a small larger with her work. She experiences something pushing on her, wanting to come up through, and so she will inquire if it's OK to utilize two pieces of paper instead of one. I generously offer to acquire the paper for her but come up back with four pieces of paper, instead of the asked for two. No substance how "nice" she is, at this point she is more than than willing to do a fuss, to strenuously object about how it's too much, she could never fill up up that much paper, she doesn't have got adequate to express, she couldn't possibly take up that much room in the studio.

But as I go on to calmly pin down the four pieces to the easel, nodding supportively, yet ignoring her increasingly frenetic protestations, I see the gleaming in her eye. She desires this chance to take up space, to proclaim herself in life color, to be unmistakably seen, but is trained to not give voice to this desire. I watch her as she fights with the forbidden exhilaration of the challenge, the possibility, the sheer audacious of it. The door to a secret yearning is creaking unfastened on long fresh and rusted hinges, gap to her hungriness to be big, to be bold, to be outrageous, to be seeable as completely and utterly herself.

THE BITCHY GIRL: Willing to be ferocious and powerful; unafraid of her ain anger, unafraid to talk up, to take a stand, to have got bounds and boundaries, unafraid to state NO! Unafraid to battle abuse, declines to be treated badly, willing to interrupt connexions and walk away from toxic human relationships if it intends protecting your ain wild and cherished self.

Another major hamlet happens in the picture procedure when a adult female recognizes how angry and angered she experiences and she allows herself show it on paper for everyone to see. However, the feeling of choler is so forbidden and so baleful that it will usually mouse in the dorsum door as just a small color. Some reddish or achromatic appears on the page and then slowly or by "accident" turns bigger than the adult female had intended .

As this goes on , the creative person gets to experience a small uncomfortable. She will stand up back from her now boisterous picture with a puzzled scowl and bend to me , saying something like " That expressions awfully angry," followed quickly by, "You know, I'm not really angry. I don't acquire angry. A small defeated maybe, but never angry." This is a very unstable minute in the process. I have got had women actually walk out of the room to acquire away from this hint of anger, set on their coat and denote that they really must go forth now. I am generally able to wheedle her dorsum to the picture for the remainder of the class, but once she go forths I will often never see her again. The world of her ain angry feelings is just too scary, the prohibitions too strong, and all Iodine tin make at this point is hope for her that someday she will be able to experience safe adequate to take that deep dip into her ain passionate and ferocious bosom .

For the adult female who is ready to take that terrific yet thrilling dive, admitting that she is indeed angry can let an astonishing strength of feeling to come up implosion therapy out. All the old age of saying yes, yes, yes when she wanted to state no, no, NO to unreasonable demands, to abuse, to putting her ain demands on a ageless dorsum burner, come up out on the paper in a craze of paint , of color, and of image.

For one adult female it come ups out as a bright redness background, with achromatic words painted simply and starkly to read "I AM sol PISSED OFF!'". For another , it is a big mental image of a adult female with wildly flying reddish hair, bellowing unfastened mouthed and brazen " What the $#%@ about me!!!"

A 60 twelvemonth old woman, who have been married to a Methodist preacher man for 40 years, surprises herself by picture a warrior goddess in hot pants, with a Colt 45 in one manus and a bar spatula (to be used as a whacking arm when necessary) in the other.

The pictures sometimes picture mental images that are recognizable out of myth, such as as a serpent haired Medusa, and sometimes are expressed as a commotion of colour and chaos, populated by weird, otherworldly animals sporting very large, VERY crisp teeth. But what they all have got in common is that they leap off the page with the fierceness of emotion portrayed. There is no mistaking the purpose behind these pictures which is some version of " I'm mad as hell, and I'm not going to take it anymore!"

I RECENTLY read an article in a selling diary that was warning advertizers away from using the words powerfulness or powerful in advertisements directed towards women. The author of this article was not questioning the issue of women's fearfulness around power, just stating an obvious ( to him) fact that women won't purchase things that are associated with the linguistic communication of power.

We have got got a long history as women around being disempowered and victimized, and we have internalized this fearfulness of power, of our ain power, for manner too long. We are living in modern times of great alteration and uncertainness and it is critical that we repossess our birthright of strength, authorization and originative vision to take advantage of the chance that we have got to animate the human race as a topographic point where our most cherished values can survive.

There are many ways to confront and to mend this powerfulness wound, and approaching it through our creativeness is just one of them. But it's a good topographic point to start. As my women student's and I have got learned over many years, it's quite possible to undergo courage, transmutation and ego love by wielding the concern end of a paintbrush. And breakage our long commitment to the Good Girl and allowing the Bad Girl an honored topographic point in our lives is not only healing, but do life a batch more interesting and fun!

Copyright © Chris Zydel 2007