Intuitive Painting - The Blue Origami Crane: Responding as an Intuitive Artist to a Changing World
Working as an intuitive artist, my paintings follow a process. While I’m never sure what they will contain in terms of either subject or symbolism, the image and its accompanying narrative emerges as I paint. As I work on one aspect of the painting, I often get a nudge as to what else I should include, and in pretty much exactly the same way as a child decides what to draw, I rarely question that impulse. At the same time, while the content, story and emotion behind the work emerges, I stay with each element of the painting until it is right. In the process, I make peace with my own feelings and experiences.
How I work as an intuitive artist
This was how my painting Blue Origami Crane developed. I began this work while I was in the Lost and Found Gallery in Exeter. Lost and Found is a collective of Devon Artists who share work space and a pop-up art shop. I had finished another painting with a couple of hours of the day left, and so I began to form a new composition.
Blue Origami Crane (oil on canvas, 24 by 30 inches)
It turns out I find this stage of painting almost impossible in public. I watched a documentary about the British artist Maggi Hambling recently in which she described painting as making love to the paint, explaining that she couldn’t ‘perform’ on film because the process is too personal. While I can only aspire to reach her level of artistry I relate to her comments.
Because of this discomfort, my painting began extremely badly. Actually, in truth, all of my paintings begin in discomfort else I wouldn’t begin at all, but this one was agony.
I knew I wanted a face. I knew the feeling that informed its features. And I knew I would base it on my own face – something I do quite often at the start of a painting, since my face is nearest to hand. It took me four days to capture the face. I often feel at this stage like I’m trying to draw with my eyes closed. I know what the thing feels like, but not clearly what it must look like. I only know that once it’s done.
The other elements of the painting began to form. I had started with the canvas broken into three sections of vivid colour. Cadmium red to the left, yellow at the bottom and cobalt blue on the right. I used Rublev oils for the red and blue, and the pigments were vivid and arresting. Those colours are now behind the much darker background, but they shine through nonetheless. At the time, I wasn’t sure why I wanted those colours. I only knew that the canvas should be covered.
Oddly, though the face took me four days and some agony to catch, the painting is not meant to be a self portrait. While it has the composition and look of a portrait, it’s not a portrait of any sort. As with all my work as an intuitive artist, the face is just designed to express a mood or an experience. The story in the painting is found in the hare, the rose, the moon pendant and, most importantly, the blue origami crane. I often feel drawn to use a particular animal or object in a painting and only once I’ve included it and looked up its symbolism does the reason become clear.
Hare symbolism
The hare has many meanings, but here it symbolises new life, independence and the ability to move forward with strength as the world renews and changes. Appropriately, the hare calls for intuition and openness to inspiration. It also reminds me not to take myself too seriously.
What does the moon signify?
Although the painting has a look of night-time about it, I decided to depict the moon as a silver pendant. I like to play with ideas. As an intuitive artist, if I feel a particular thing should appear in the painting it can be fun to look for unpredictable ways for that to happen. The moon gives the idea of night, of a dark period of transition to the next new dawn. But it hangs casually from a twig on its broken chain. The idea of the moon as such a small object also indicates that his is not a portrait. It’s a painting about part of a journey that is both internal and bigger than the world we see.
Why are the roses faded?
I finished this painting in late October, after a visit to the rose garden in Regent’s Park, London. There were still hundreds of flowers in the garden, but the rose bushes themselves were bare of leaves and many of the flowers were rain-damaged or faded.
Roses are my favourite flower. I find them so sensuous, beautiful and evocative. And it struck me that even when they fade, they are magical. Again, the faded roses hold ideas about transition, change and transience, but show hope during that change.
What’s the story of the origami crane?
Regents Park also has a tree in which hang numerous origami paper cranes. The crane is a mystical creature in Japan. It is believed to live for a thousand years. Because of this, it represents good fortune and longevity, and the Japanese call it the bird of happiness. Its wings are thought to carry souls up to paradise.
It is also believed that if a person were to fold 1,000 paper cranes, their wish would come true. The origami crane has become a symbol of hope and healing through difficult times.
This is reflected in the story of a little girl called Sadako Sasaki who was exposed to radiation when the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. Although she survived the bomb at the age of two, when she was 12, she was found to have leukaemia. She set out to fold 1,000 cranes, hoping that her wishes to live and for world peace would be granted. But she was only able to make 644 cranes before she died. Her classmates continued to fold more cranes in her honour, and she was buried with a wreath of 1,000 origami cranes. A statue of Sadako stands in Seattle Peace Park, hand outstretched, holding a paper crane. Another in Hiroshima Peace Park is permanently draped with thousands of colourful paper cranes.
Developing a painting as an intuitive artist
The process by which I arrive at my paintings is never as straightforward as simply deciding what to paint. I begin with an idea, and then I follow thoughts, feelings and stories as they arrive. As the painting develops the emotion behind it is laid bare. Each of the paintings produced in this way feels like an imprint of my soul on canvas. But like a polaroid photograph, it’s an imprint of a moment. Once the painting is done, the moment has been navigated. So while this painting was never intended to be a self portrait, all of my intuitive paintings are self portraits to some extent, because each is a snapshot of my soul at the time of painting.
Next steps: If you’ve enjoyed this blog, you might like to read about how composer and sound artist Semay Wu rediscovered creativity through art in lockdown.
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