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24 Jan 2008

Past, Present and the Future

Well in college we have to do some really serious stuff, like erm Painting!! Before you start with the chuckling, let me explain a bit more.
If your a regular reader to this blog, you will of realised that I am a quite creative person. Which ranges from blogging to photography and more recently cartoon doodles on the computer. For me its not about being particularly good at anything, its about enjoying it. So while others in the class visibly grimaced when the paints were brought out, I was a little bit excited ( okay a lot). I know that I am a bad painter, but I still enjoy it.

The Window
This exercise is called 'The Window', each window pane represents a a different time in your life. They are your Past, Present, Wished for Future and Feared for future.
We were given four pieces of paper, one for each pane 'time in your life', some basic paint colours and told to paint something that summed up that time in your life.
I think everyone sat there at first thinking what the f*ck am I going to paint, but the urge to splosh paint on paper soon takes over. I found myself thinking about what I had felt in that particular moment in my life and how to sum it up using the materials we had. The class was the quietest it has ever been,as everyone was painting away.
I know painting is not going to appeal to everyone, but a lot of folks simply stop doing anything creative and messy, once they leave the classroom. So to just simply sit there and paint was very relaxing, although it did bring up feelings that I wasn't expecting.


My past: As you will see in the painting I put little faces under a cloud, but there is one sad face. Yes the sad face is me. My childhood wasn't a horrible one, yes I had my mum going in and out of hospital, but it could of been worse. The overall feeling that I get when I think about my childhood is feeling alone and a bit sad. I did put the happy smiling sun, to represent the good times.

My present: You will see the smiling face that I use in my little cartoons on this blog. To one side is the sun which represents my friends, my college course and other happy things, The other side is a murky cloud that represents all the dark, miserable thoughts that sometimes overwhelm me.

My feared future: This is simply the fear of being overwhelmed by those miserable feelings that I think haunt everyone at some time in their life.

My wished for future: Is of course myself being happy, Mountains to climb (physically and mentally), travel the world and generally a sense of excitement and adventure.


So who is ready to get the paints out?
The idea behind using paint is you can't rub it out and start again. Just go where the paint takes you.

6 comments:

  1. That sounds like an excellent way to explore yourself. I am one of those guilty people who packed the paints up when I left school, yet I totally enjoyed it ... even got a really good grade in my exams.

    I think my pics would have been quite similar, though I have to confess that my past picture and the feared future picture would probably have been a lot darker :-(

    Thanks for sharing this with us!!

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  2. Thanks for taking the time to read this Thomas.

    It was a really interesting thing to do :)

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  3. Also, I think mine could of been darker but I normally go where the mood takes me and thankfully it wasn't a bad day :)

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  4. I've been in workshops that have you do things like this...it's a great release for what ails ya.
    I started doing this a couple of years ago in a journal. My counselor was surprised at how much you can do with magazine clippings and words...

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  5. wow, I made it to the last post on your homepage....I enjoyed it ...will be coming back for more for sure!

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  6. Sounds a great project to reflect and review one's lfe.

    Jackal

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