Let your brushstrokes and colors speak for you

There is a lot of power in brushstrokes, textures and colors. They can be very expressive if you will only turn loose with them. I am speaking of a more spontaneous response to an empty canvas than what most of us will give ourselves permission to try.

I find doing this type of painting very cathartic. I find it helps me release me from me. However, we do inhibit ourselves, no one does it to us. I can give myself a million reasons why I shouldn’t.

I think the foremost one is that I think of what other people may think. I don’t want to be the crazy artist who has finally gone over the edge of sanity, just look at what he has just created.

Yes, these comments have been made about me several times, and yes, they could be true, but I feel with my past many years of painting I have arrived at this stage and style because I wish to reveal another side of my painting and a style that has grown from the inside out. I am talking about a painting of pure spontaneous impulse, one that is not thought through but reveals itself in the moment.

I do not always paint this way, most of the time, I paint nature as I feel it, and when I paint people, I inject what I see and feel together. When I try to paint simple flowers, I often become frustrated at not being able to capture their simple beauty. I am still trying and experimenting different methods to understand my emotions to them.

Some artists are not always in control of what they do. Sometimes I choose to have less control because I want to let my inner self or emotions actively work through me or more accurately said, work out of me. If I can bring the inside out, maybe the haunting visions will let me alone because they are then outside and I have more control.

It’s all terribly confusing, and yes, even to this artist who uses painting to reveal self to himself.

To reveal one’s soul, you stand naked before others and they see you uncovered, revealed. Often it is not a pretty sight but exposing one’s inner self often isn’t pretty, it can be a raw revelation.

Painting from the inside out with brushstrokes, textures, colors, places their ego out there for everyone to see, but to a few people they will also feel what the artist felt and at that moment they can share in this creative experience of the outpouring of the artist’s soul.

Harry Croghan is an artist, photographer, writer and teacher. You can send comments to croghan@dragonbbs.com or call (740) 852-4906.