What a great comment, there’s so much here! First, combining your art with your son’s would be a wonderful tribute where art will be in the process, not only in the result.

Letting go is a gradual process and for me. Just making a mess hadn’t fully freed up the mind, many times vice versa. Instead, it has helped that a carefully created detailed piece of art can have mysterious elements that can be interpreted in several ways.

Happy New Year!

Imagination is the key, I believe, when creating art. And yes, sometimes one gets impatient and wants the image to appear quickly and, as you say, slowing down can bring in the “shadow” that we would rather not invite. I have had some difficulties regarding my son’s death recently and would rather stay away from some of those thoughts than face them… But like it or not, this was a part of my life that I still need to come to terms with. I plan on using some of his childhood art and combining it with my own.

I have difficulty in “letting go” even though I’ve taken a couple of courses that emphasize just that aspect. Slow and meticulous seems too often to be my ‘style’ even when I don’t want it. I like your thoughts on this Päivi, and admire your branching out into new territory. And actually, I believe that spirituality embraces it completely. The spirit does not want us to be bogged down in old, tired ways. It says: go out, have adventures, explore new aspects of yourself–grow!

As for my favourite artist–when I was in my 20’s and ‘really’ discovered Van Gogh and some of his contemporaries like Cezanne, Gauguin, and Toulouse Lautrec–these were my favourites. But then I discovered Paul Klee. It was his “Mystical City Scene” on the front of a little book on mysticism that drew me in. Over the years I became more and more inspired, fascinated and intrigued; so now, perhaps it is he more than any other artist who ‘speaks’ to me. I am not forgetting the wonderful Kandinsky, of course, and must go back to those lessons.

Thank you for the opportunities you give us to think about these topics and put them into use artistically! I look forward to becoming more aware of my “shy and fast thoughts” in my own artistic endeavours! Happy New Year!

Thanks so much, Cathy! Your comment brightened my day.