Susan Dorf: How to Paint Fearlessly

Close the door, turn off the phones, and take a few deep breaths.

Squeeze out generous blobs of paint onto your palette and feel yourself getting excited about the colors.

Deep ultramarine blue, buttery Cadmium yellow, juicy Alizarin Crimson.

Line up your brushes and palette knives, adjust your easel and face the blank canvas.

Ignore the voices that say you are not good enough, and the ones that say you are wasting your time. If they persist, open the door and kick them out of the room.

Breathe.

Pick up a brush, scoop up some paint and put it on the canvas.

Make a mark, any mark.

A sensuous squiggle, a delicate line, a soft flow of color, a loose mass or shape.

Mix colors together. Earthy browns, exotic purples, mossy greens.

Paint from your belly, from the heels of your feet, from all of the unfamiliar places.

Paint as if you were naked. Then let your skin slide away and paint from your bones.

Slip into the unknown and jump without a safety net.

When the voices sneak back into the room to tell you how trite you are, or how silly or ugly your painting is, ignore them and keep going.

Listen to a new voice, the one that tells you what it wants you to do next.

Paint wings, horns, blood. Paint snakes and penises and bodies splitting open. Paint bunny rabbits and bullets, dailies and daggers, monsters and fairies.

Let them be as big as they want to be, as many as want to come, trusting that you are in the process of unearthing something long buried. Know that you are on a hero's journey to the source of all creation, slaying demons and embracing angels along the way.

This journey is an infinite one in which you may never arrive.

Susan Dorf is a painter and writer who finds that one practice is always influencing the other: the images from her writings make their way into her paintings and her painting process offers inspiration for writing. Susan teaches painting classes and workshops in "Fearless Painting: Cultivating the Imagination through Paint," in which she works with both techniques in acrylic painting as well as personal process in a non-judgmental setting.

Find out more about Susan's workshops and artwork on her website at www.susandorf.com and on her blog at http://artpilgrim3.blogspot.com

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Painting
written by sunny, April 02, 2011

Your description of painting was very interesting! I paint very differently - a picture comes to my mind/heart, complete - all I have to do is execute the work. 3 steps: a pencil sketch, a color sketch, the painting. I have never tried your method and have never associated painting with writing, so thank you! I've been in a long hibernation spell and your suggestions might break it.

Writing into the paint
written by Amy, April 02, 2011

I've been journal writing for more than five years. In the past year, I've stepped a bit out of the privacy of my journals to begin writing for publication. I picked up a paintbrush for the first time two weeks ago. I found that it fed something in me that was hungering for another form of expression. Sometimes a picture truly is worth a thousand words. And sometimes a single word can provoke a beautiful picture. I love my painting and plan to make a habit of playing in the colors. Thank you for your beautiful description of the process. This is very similar to how I write. Loud music drowns out the negative voices really well for me, too.

painting
written by Cathy Stengel, April 02, 2011

I love your words about painting. I can't paint at all and would be one of those people staring at a blank canvas for the longest time. For so very long I thought that was it, I couldn't play an instrument, couldn't sing marvelously, and couldn't draw...no gifts here. Eventually I realized that I do have gifts, and one of them is a different kind of painting...painting with words so that experiences come to life for those I am so fortunate to be with. We recently created a quilt for my mother in law's 90th birthday celebration. Every other square was blank for presenting one part of the family. My response was NOOOOOOO, don't make me do it!!!!!!! My sister in law said, you paint with words, so just write something. That is my kind of painting.

a new way to paint
written by crystal bushinsky, April 03, 2011

i always thought in order to paint, you must paint "something". i didn't realize you could JUST paint. When i read some of the other testimonials, i just wanted to cry. My palms got a little sweaty at the thought, and my head started to spin. My art was put down when i was quite young, so i never thought I would be an artist. I am currently working on myself and ridding myself of excuses, so i can continue on my journey and be emotionally pain free. I promise i will gather my canvas and colors and get it out.