I am opening this year with a reflection and a personal art project post. Hurray! And yes, my year kind of starts in March, with Spring. I’ve always thought that it makes more sense. The time of flourishing, saying good-bye to the heavy winter. Not dramatic but still.
Going through a process of letting go, I made these paintings throughout the month of February. The main objective of them was to simply express everything that has been going on within me for some months and to experiment – with the theme, format and style.
The main theme - Fire
Fire is a symbol of burning, letting go, as well as lighting up. Every painting had it’s own sub-theme dedicated to a word that starts with the letter “F”. Yes, like a little word-play. Hurray again!
As much as I would like to give a little more context, I believe the meanings will be discovered on the journey, and I want you to discover what associations these images bring to you.
There is some mystery over here… as before every painting I actually had no real idea of what I am going to make there. I had the word, I had the common color (orange), the Fire but the rest was created with the help of imagination and associations that arose in the process. Sort of like a surprise-art, let’s call it that way.
Okay, with no further delay… here are the four fires!
1. Failure
I feel like there is a storyline going through this series. So it all started with a failure. Not really a real failure (I don’t believe failure is actually a failure), however with a feeling of perceived failure that things are not right anymore. Dissatisfaction. Anger. Sadness. A full palette of emotions, and the strongest of them – disappointment.
I had to let go all of it somehow… I don’t want to feel like a failure, even if it feels like I did fail. Fear of failure is a huge topic. Maybe I did “fail” for a reason? Maybe it’s unavoidable? Anger is usually just a reminder that some action needs to be taken, that something is not serving me anymore.
So instead of falling from the stairs of failure, what if we listen to our heart that invites us to fly? To be free. To explore other options.
There is no lader. There is no failing. There is no one right way.
As you see in the painting, there are some symbols of fire – flames that are burning both outside and inside. Inner fires. Fire matches are letters. Failure that we can simply burn and convert into something more helpful. As even if we fail, it does not make us failures.
2. Feelings
I am sure I mentioned “feelings” in the previous description already. Indeed the fire and burning lead to a lot of feelings inside. A mix of them. Another word that came to me when creating this was “faith”. Choosing to believe in the good when things are burning. Feeling it all at the same time – both happiness and sadness. Bittersweet. Nothing is black or white.
This is probably the warmest painting of all color-palette wise. However, there is something that makes me feel very strange when I look at it. I think it is the conflict of emotions, the main character who is trying to protect herself, protect her heart. There is so much conflict going on when we let go. Inner conflict.
The fire here is burning inside, it is also reflected in the sun. The feelings are like a tornado. Every feeling is everywhere. There is no escape.
So we need to sit with them, be present with all of them. Acceptance. Self-compassion.
We got this.
3. Focus
So here we shift the focus on the helpful – our growth. What is interesting about this one, is that by shifting the focus, a new format of art arose. You can see the media version here. I made a video of the drawing process combined with my voice. Like a small poem explaining more what is going on there.
There are a lot of symbols that your imagination can see here – it is up to you where your focus is and what you discover… I asked some people and everyone could see something new here. Even a womb which in this case could mean rebirth and growing too.
I want to pay attention to the colors – there is a lot of dark but the dark is behind. The focus is on the light. Here the fire has been transformed into a helpful light that can help us to grow. And we can see more colors arising.
What we focus on we feel.
The dark stuff – everything that’s destructive
And of course – the light.
All the colors are valid here
Where to focus – it is in our hands
We can create so much with them.
We can feel better when we do.
And when we try to express and put it out there
It tends to come in shapes that surprise us…
Focus on your growth. On your healing, on something helpful Focus on what matters.
4. Flow
I love the natural color transition into the blue. I think we rather associate flow with water than with fire. But there is a lot of fire flow here – yeah, the lava! This big mountain of lava is actually our fingerprint – all the layers that we are carrying with us. You can see some more “F” words over there too. And at this point – we are ready to integrate the fire into the life. We are moving on.
The fire is the sun again – it’s always there – the light. And another new character comes in here – a firefly (yes, it looks like a butterfly, it’s more pretty this way, meh). It has burned it’s wing but it is ready to move on… The poem describes it better, so I will leave it below. You can see the media version with voiceover here.
We carry a lot within
Every layer that is written in our fingerprint might impact our life… but we shall trust our capability to create our story.
We shall bring the best we can and flow into the miraculous ocean of life
We might burn our wings on the way
However we can choose to carry that light instead
Like fireflies.
Don’t fear or fight your fingerprint, you can flourish, flow and fly. The way you are.
Flow your way.
I guess this project is a bold, colorful reminder that everything is a process. Every journey has it all. We try, we strive, we fail, we lose focus, we change, we grow, we flow, we burn, we love… and we find ourselves again. I hope that something from all of this was helpful to reflect on. Or at least I hope it was interesting to read what can be beneath the art. For me personally, this has helped me to process this process. In a more healthy way, with compassion and art. I might print these out as reminders that the fire can be experienced in different forms.
Thank you so much for reading.
With love,
Inese
