UPDATE: 5-3-2020 -- New cover photo. Taking this play thing to heart!

This can mean using throw-aways after both sides of the watercolor paper has been painted on. This is a funky collage in process from flotsam and jetsam. (The poem is cut up pieces from e.e. cummings' "be of love.") Saving scraps for post-painty-play! 

I painted on the back of the ugly red flower and did a blue thing I ended up liking a little.Sky and water with sunshine? Then got really brave and tried some wet-on-wet tiny flowers.

 

More weird stuff. The "color therapy" is great, and I even did a couple of very dark paintings of scary stuff, and that was cathartic like I couldn't have believed! Thanks for the encouragement, Yasmina!

 

The weirdest was the piece that must have come right outta my unconscious. An undersea scene with snakes, an odd jellyfish and a deranged pumpkin? (Phobic about snakes!)

Yasmina suggested we share our reflections on the process of intuitive painting-play. This class was astounding in its impact. I took copious notes, reviewed, reflected and got more and more bold. All of the info was first processed intellectually, my most comfy-cozy mode.

Then, with the practices and the options offered from color therapy to skill-drills to emotional engagement, the intellectual shifted dramatically to a "felt-sense."

By the time Yasmina got to the portion about painting feelings, I had become more bold, more brave, less judgmental. I painted an 8 year-old girl kneeling by a coffin draped w/ a flag. The impact was so shocking, the art so rudimentary. Then I painted what she saw coming through her window and why all the nightmares and life-long sleep problems. Both paintings in monochromatic grays and blacks except for those flag stripes in blue and red.

In terms of process, since this course was a journey and taught so generously and wisely, it boosted my courage. It was also therapeutic. I've never tried to draw those traumatic moments from 60 years ago, but doing so was healing. Throughout the course, my experience of process was underscored by gentle, reassuring and uplifting prompts and exercises. Yasmina sent so much devotion and support to students in this course, and so much of what I knew intellectually took root emotionally. I will carry that with me and feel deep gratitude.