Two Paths Every Artist Must Walk: The Path of Skill and The Path of Delight

Two Parallel Paths

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After a few weeks into my painting journey, I realised that I was on two parallel interconnected paths. The path of skill and the path of delight. 

The skill path is self-explanatory – understanding how to apply paint to a canvas, how to choose and mix colours to get the effect I want, how to choose brushes to make meaningful marks, and how to create a composition that attracts the eye. 

The path of delight is the path of choosing what to paint and the process of executing a painting. I found that the delight of painting increased in parallel with the level of skill I attained.

I quickly realised that I was not painting flowers, landscapes, and portraits; I was painting memories, feelings, and emotions. 

Each brush stroke was a creative act – the application of colour and shape to an ever-expanding collage of colour and shapes that together would evoke a memory, feeling, or emotion for me, or the person who had commissioned the painting.

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‍Two Themes:  Nature and the Soul of individuals

When I started painting, I immediately felt drawn to focusing on two themes

1. The emotions and memories generated by viewing natural beauty, such as landscapes and flowers

2.  The feelings of pleasure and connection generated through the painting of people, especially portraits.

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Emotions and tools for the journey...

I am fully engaged in studying the skills that allow me to do these types of paintings. I realise that studying skills is a never-ending journey on the road to perfection.

I am now feeling the pull to create paintings that generate positive and negative emotions: such as awe, wonder, and compassion, and anger, sadness and depression. I am also experiencing an attraction towards constructing my own paintings: not just reproducing what I see with my eye but making manifest my mind's imagination.

I am moving into the domain of true creativity. It feels exciting and challenging.

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