Welcome, lovely humans, to The Painted Presence Project, where I plan to paint in silence for ten minutes a day for thirty days, all on the same 11 x 15 inch piece of watercolour paper. While this studio diary will only include images, there are full length videos available on Patreon! 

DAY FOUR

Today’s session was entirely inspired by the images of paintings made by the lovely humans in my discord server + my always present desire for sparkle. Stay tuned for a wee gallery of participant paintings at the end of this post.

I pulled out the metallic watercolours first because black gesso practically begs for it. I loved the pomegranate colour I used, but the blue and minty green fell kind of flat for me.

Then? Fluorescent Pink because someone in my Discord server slapped some down on hers, and it made me ridiculously happy to look at.

There’s something about fluorescent paint that takes me right back to the 80s when I could be found bumming around in neon everything from the fluorescent pink beret I wore down to the orange neon jelly shoes.

The silver ink that followed was a substitution for the white ink I couldn’t find and splashing a whole bunch of water out of it happened because there wasn’t enough water in the bottle to spray. I was literally thinking “Whatever…I’ll just do this” at each of those points, which felt REALLY LIBERATING.

Do I love how this looks? No. *lol* This is a mess. But I love how I kind of floated away after, delighted with the memory that came up when I slapped on that pink.

Denny’s at 3 a.m. with friends. Underage, yes, but happily drunk. Happily sweaty and all danced out. Happily young.

This was a very rare occurrence for me since I was already a military wife and my life while my partner was home was not fun or great. When he was away, though, all bets were off. I was seventeen, y’all. It wouldn’t be long before I was pregnant with my first, the lovely RJ, whom many of you have already met and while I don’t regret having them for ONE SINGLE SOLITARY SECOND, it is also true that life got very complicated and much more unfun for me after that.

You might think I’d hate to have these memories, but I don’t. These memories provide me with an opportunity to lavish self-empathy on the girl I was, and while, yes, these memories come with complicated feelings, what I DO with them is what matters. How I let them move through me matters.

Yesterday, I talked a bit about meaning making and how I don’t want to “assign” meaning just yet, but today served up the alternative, which I prefer.

The unbidden meaning. The meaning you know without even having to think about it.

That fluorescent pink means rebellion. It means stolen time. It means freedom I had to sneak away to experience. It means illicit joy.

Remember that I was SEVENTEEN, so “illicit” doesn’t mean what that word might been to a grown ass adult. I wasn’t doing anything I’d even bat an eyelash over as I live and breathe here and now in my 57th year. My gods, I was so INNOCENT then. (Queue Adia by Sarah McLachlan!).

But EVERYTHING that wasn’t what I was *told* to do, everything that wasn’t what I was *expected* to do felt deviant. It felt subversive. It was a quiet rebellion, but it was powerful, and it was mine.

Woosah. Right?

What about you? Are you experiencing colours differently when you work with them this way? Is there any “unbidden meaning” coming up for you? Does anything you’re putting down on the page remind you of anything?

Feel free to share in the comments.

See you tomorrow.

xo
Effy

Take a peek at what my fellow Discordians are doing!

P.S. Folks who are in my classes over on Into The Wild (my teaching network) or Patreon are getting video content every day throughout the course of this challenge. Folks who are subscribed to my YouTube channel will be getting video updates weekly or so. There may be stuff going up on TikTok. There will definitely be posts going up on Instagram. 

Of course, this spot right here will ALSO serve as my studio diary, so I hope you’ll bookmark the site, and hey! EVEN BETTER! I hope you’ll sign up for the e-list, which I’ll use to let you know when a new post goes live. If you want the project PDF, here you go!