I mentioned in my last post my recent struggles with my anxiety disorder and one of the things which really made me realise I had got very low was that I lost all my interest in painting which has been one of my mainstays during the last 5 years since my last battle with cancer. It was discovering a book by the wonderful Mindy Lacefield called "Wild Surrender" which finally got me over my reluctance to get out my paintbrushes once more. Mindy's art has a strong focus on simplistic style faces and children yet which are actually quite technical to achieve. Her idea of creating "primitive portraits", ie pictures which look (and indeed are)rather unfinished really captured my interest. I absolutely love her work, it is so delightful and so appealing to me. Her books also include her poetry so on finding Wild Surrender, I knew I had found someone with whom I could creatively identify.
I have had a go at a couple of primitive portraits which I have added to this post. Just my first little exploration of Mindy's ideas but they were such a joy to paint. It was like tapping into my childhood again and as we so often read it can help those of us with emotional or mental distress to make contact with our "inner child". I think working in Mindy's way does this exactly for me and could not have come at a more perfect time for the way I have been feeling over the last few months.
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