It all began in the summer of 2014 with the wise words of my little daughter: “Try meditating, Mum. It will help you.” Of course, to be able to say this my daughter had to be older than the adjective “little” may lead you to believe. In fact, she was 19 then. But, hey, for a mother her kids stay little kids no matter how old they really are.
Anyway, these words set something in motion I would have never expected: I healed myself from a complex childhood trauma I hadn’t even been aware of, but that had been the cause of several symptoms I had been suffering from for most of my life (depression, migraine etc.). It took me eight years and especially the past four have been a total roller coaster of a healing journey and on some days it still is. For even though the actual healing is done, there’re still things from the past I have to let go of and the journey into my future I’ve embarked on which turned out to be an “art journey” helps me with that. And who knows, maybe art is the journey and the haven at the same time?
An important part of my healing journey was when I rediscovered my love for painting that I had lost when I was a kid, because I wasn’t “talented” and my pictures weren’t good in other people’s opinion. To me this meant that healing my inner little girl made progress. I bought crayons and coloured pencils, which I really loved when I was a kid, but actually I didn’t use them for a while. It already helped to just have them and to know I could use them when I would be ready for it. In other words: healing step by step by step… baby steps more like it.
Towards the end of 2021 I read a post on Instagram from an illustrator I had been following for a while in which she explained which tools she was using to create her illustrations: an iPad, an Apple Pencil and the app Procreate. This certainly got my attention and the seed was planted. I mean, what’s meant for you will always find it’s way to you, right? You just have to recognize the signs. Well, this sure was mine.
I know now that the reason for not using the crayons right after I had bought them had been fear; fear to not paint a picture that was good enough: “Don’t make mistakes.”, “The picture has to be perfect to be worthwhile.” etc. But with an app that let’s you erase, undo and start over and over and over again everything is possible, right? Right!
So, on January 10th, 2022 I bought myself a new iPad (my old one was way to old for this), an Apple Pencil 2 and the app Procreate and got started. Of course, as expected my first attempts were… well… nice tries, but I kept going, because this felt so right and more important it made me feel better. I learned to use the app by watching Procreate tutorials on Youtube and consulting books. Already at the end of January I was able to paint a picture I liked and it went from there.
One important thing I learned pretty fast was that there are artists out there who sell brushes for Procreate or even give them away for free. So, when I found brushes that simulated crayons, coloured pencils and watercolours I bought some. These brushes made me paint childlike pictures and it felt really good inside to do so as my inner little girl had not been out of the woods yet back then.
Somewhere around late spring 2022 a desire to paint “for real” meaning with watercolours, crayons, coloured pencils etc. began to awaken. So I bought the material I needed, added even soft and oil pastels and got started, when, in July, I left work.
Being able to spend more time painting speeded things up a bit; meaning my skills improved a lot. Also I became more courageous.
On August 9th, 2022 and almost a year after I had last posted on my Instagram account “@sabine_healingjourney”, I posted again on this account, but instead of photo art about depression and healing I used to post, I posted this picture I had painted in Procreate telling people I was back and felt better. That I dared to post at all was due to the fact that I had finally accepted myself and knew that I was enough and my pictures were enough. I don’t need anybody else’s praise anymore. As long as I like what I paint everything is fine.
Only a month later I posted an animation in which I announced the change of name of my account from “@sabine_healingjourney” to “@sabine.loves.to.paint” and deleted all the previous posts about depression because I no longer wanted my healing journey to define myself. I wanted what I love doing to define myself. Another big step forward.
Since my healing sometimes happens big step after big step, I said goodbye to my healing journey just two days later only to embark on my journey into the future. What this future would look like I had no idea, I mean who has actually, but I had an inkling that painting would play a big part. The picture I posted to celebrate this was one I had been working on for quite a while. It's me looking into a mirror placed in front of a cupboard. To be able to paint this, I took a picture of me in exactly that setting and used it as a reference. Of course, a lot of tracing was involved here.
About two weeks later I painted a picture with real crayons, which became the first traditional art picture I had felt like posting on Instagram and somehow the beginning of what was to follow. Meaning: spending more time with painting traditionally.
Another month later, on October 14th to be exact, another big change happened.
I did a session of what I call meditative dance. In other words: I let my intuition tell me when I need such a session, let her pick the music and let my body move on her own accord until she doesn't want to move anymore. In case you just wondered about me using the female pronoun for “intuition” and “body”: I am a woman. So my intuition and my body are both female to me and ...sorry... but I don't care about proper grammar in this case.
During this session the need to paint like I was doing this meditative dance came up; that is to let my intuition choose the tool, the colours, the strokes and their placement on the paper. This is something I haven’t done since I was a kid, when I wanted to paint but didn’t know what to paint. Back then pictures with no discernable motif of any kind like a house, a plant etc. were called “Krickelakrack” in my German mother tongue and they weren’t really appreciated, because they wasted paper and colours and eventually I stopped doing this. Naturally, I don’t like the question “What’s this supposed to be?” at all.
So that day I let my intuition set herself free and let her paint with opaque watercolours (her choice) whatever she wanted and wow it felt so good. The result is this picture which I called “Krickelakrack!!!” just because.
It was such a liberating experience and another quantum leap in my healing, something I couldn’t have done on my iPad, because the point of this was to free myself and my inner little girl from this old restraint of having to paint or draw something substantial in order to not waste any paper.
Apart from the liberating effect, painting with real colours and brushes on real paper is so much more than just putting colour on paper. It’s the texture of the paper, the smell of the colours and the dirty hands – at least in my case… It’s like reading a real book compared to reading an ebook. Don’t get me wrong, I totally love digital art and I will continue to do it, but, you know, it’s just different.
Something I also did during my healing journey and am still doing is writing down thoughts about healing and other things that pop up in my mind. I call them “spilled thoughts”. They helped and still help me to quiet my mind and to let go. Some of my spilled thoughts – easily recognized by “- sabinesl” as the source – inspired some of my pictures and I’m sure there’re more to come. So, my art journey is not only about painting, but also about writing.
Which is why I decided to go ahead with something I’d been pondering for a while, because Instagram and Facebook clearly have their limits: my own website for my art and a blog about my art journey that has picked up speed ever since that liberating experience in October 2022.
So here I am with my own website and blog.
And with this I start being what I now know I’ve always been supposed to be: an artist who sends love into this world through her paintings and her words to make it a brighter place.
Love, Sabine
February 15th, 2023
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