The magical power of painting

I moved to the farm 2 months ago and while there is a little bit of rhythm to my daily life, there are so many loose ends - like figuring out why the power bill is delinquent when I had set up autopay.

There are piles of receipts that need to be recorded, wood that needs to be gathered, raspberries waiting to be turned into jam … oh, yeah, and a coaching business that is not launching itself.

Everything came to a crescendo a few days ago and I decided that I just couldn’t sit at my desk. I had to paint.

One of my tricks to save money is buying paintings from thrift stores and painting over them instead of buying new canvases. I have one such reclaimed canvas that I started working on several months ago.

I was playing with a sculpting paste and began with the idea of painting a representation of the rocket launch I witnessed. But the painting was someone else’s idea and I just couldn’t get myself to work on it any further.

This week I decided that I would work on that canvas and just let it show me what it wanted to be.

It turned into an angel. Not a glorious, triumphant angel. An angel that had come through a battle.

When I started painting, I felt frustrated and overwhelmed. When I was about halfway through I realized that the color wasn’t right, so I added some grey to the background.

When I looked at that adjusted background, it evoked a deep sadness within me. A sadness that had been hiding behind exhaustion and irritability.

And you know what? I feel better now. After painting I was able to choose to stop trying to build new things and just let myself acclimate.

That is my invitation to you today.

Take some time to do something that taps into the non-verbal part of your mind.

Even if it feels like there’s no time to do so, taking that pause will actually help you think more clearly and be more productive on the other side.