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This article is written by Deb Middleton-Hope

Recently retired from a hectic 30-year career and celebrating my 60th birthday, I committed to discovering my artistic soul, who has patiently waited her turn in my busy, busy life.  It was going to be a new beginning, a new adventure.  So true to my corporate working habits, I set my goal to be an artist, developed my strategic artist plan, created my perfect studio, bought tons of art supplies, signed up for courses, bought the videos and gave myself a one year time line.  I was set. I had my new beginnings journey all mapped out.

New beginnings? What has that been like?

With all the strategic process steps complete, the actual creating of art became a daily struggle as I made becoming an artist my new job to replace the working habits I had left behind. I soon realized I was not having fun and wanted to quit. I was afraid of the empty page and I struggled to put art to paper. Three months into the new beginnings my ego wanted to quit and I was ready to give up on my artist dream.  But my artist soul was not ready to give up on me and through the reading of a book by Natalie Goldberg called Writing Down the Bones, I was able to discover a whole new creative world.  Ms. Goldberg addresses the art of creativity through writing and talks of practice, patience and perseverance. With her encouraging words, I began exploring practical art exercises adapted from her suggested writing exercises to free the artist within. Little did I realize a book about writing would help me gain perspective on creativity. It taught me to have an open mind, listen to your inner voice and trust the process.

I incorporated two of her practical exercises to help me through the hurdle of putting paint to the empty page.  The first exercise focuses on  “keeping the hand moving,” by setting a timer and just let the hand be free; no logic, no control of the brush, just paint and when the timer goes, flip the page and start again.  I continue to do this exercise until I have a sense of freedom , deep feelings and a soul of satisfaction.  The second exercise I tried involved creating a list of topics to use for creative adventures.  I devised a list of art techniques I wanted to learn, placing them on sticky notes and putting them into my Art Jar, my version of the To Do List Job Jar.  Then on a day I need inspiration, I reach into the jar, grab a topic and make the topic the center of my creative piece.  The practice takes me out of my comfort zone and pushes me to learn about principles and elements of design, color theory, mediums and products, etc.

By incorporating these two simple practical exercises, I have depleted my fear of the empty page, the directional decision is made by the Art Jar and the original strategic plan is filed away in the draw as my artist soul shows up ready to play, create and have fun.  The following piece was created using the above exercises.  The red background in the 2nd picture was a result from the hand moving exercise and the topic I had selected was Tertiary color: primary and secondary: yellow/orange.  The red background gave me a feeling of movement, and when I started adding orange paint, I got a feeling of business, like a city rush hour.  Trusting my inner voice, I stayed with the theme and composed a piece called “Rush Hour Temptations”.

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Deb Middleton-Hope is discovering her artistic soul through mixed media and pushes herself to try new adventures as a learning tool.  As a beginner she seeks inspiration with an open mind and trusts her inner voice to guide her along the journey.  Deb can be reached at dm-h@shaw.ca.

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