Ep 06: Paint Your Feelings
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Perfectionist in Recovery
Paint Your Feelings
Hello and welcome back to the Perfectionist in Recovery Podcast! My name is Marcy Parks and I am a Perfectionist in Recovery!
Before we begin today I just want to say thank you to those who are listening and to those that have shared their feedback with me! This podcast was not in my 2020 plans that I made at the beginning of the year, but has definitely been one of the things bringing me joy this year, so I appreciate those of you listening and joining me here for the conversation. That being said, if you are enjoying the podcast and want to continue to support the podcast, please follow and leave a review on apple podcasts to help spread the word!
Now, for today I wanted to chat with you all about my new collection of work that I am working on, my creative process, and how it relates to your creative process during a tumultuous year.
So my new collection of work, titled “There are No Bad Emotions”, which will be available on September 5th, is a collection of large, mixed media abstract paintings exploring the emotions we typically consider to be “bad” or think of negatively. The inspiration for the collection came to me during a recent appointment with my therapist. I was in my therapist’s office (shout-out to Cindy at Hope and Healing Counseling Center in Abingdon -, she’s amazing) sharing with her the intensity of my fear and anxiety I have been experiencing lately. “There are no bad emotions,” she said. Then she asked me, “What would your fear look like if you painted it?” I saw it in my head immediately, and it was beautiful. In the moment of that exchange, I went from a heightened state of fear to the obsessive feeling of inspiration. I couldn’t get the image out of my head and had to come home to paint it.
And I did. My daughter, who will be three next weekend, joined in and painted some of it with me, which was really fun and surprisingly inspiring. Watching the way she painted helped me to loosen up even more in the way I approached this painting and took it to a totally different level. This painting was so powerful for me on so many levels. For one thing, for most of my life I have heard that I’m “too much.” Too much energy, too emotional, too crazy, too many ideas (too much fun 😜). And in many ways through my art, I explore that concept of “too much” - what’s too messy? What’s too crazy? Having been told that my feelings are “too much” for so long has left me scared of going “too far” - until now. This week was a breakthrough. This painting was my liberation. And if you see the painting, which you can view on my instagram at @MarcyParksArt (or you can click here to view it) and are familiar with my work, then you can definitely see a difference, a change.
Anyway, the point is that this painting unlocked something in me. The very next painting was my rage and I literally could not paint it fast enough. If I am being completely honest, I carry and have carried so much rage and I did not even realize how much until this painting happened. My partner had even said watching me paint it was different, he could tell there was a lot coming out.
I have since gone on to paint my insecurities, my loneliness, and my hopelessness, and I have plans for other emotions I want to explore - again, focusing on the emotions we typically consider to be negative.
What I am finding in this work is that it is an incredibly powerful way of expressing and observing my emotions in a way that is revelatory, and insightful, and even awe-inspiring.
I would definitely consider myself to be introspective, and reflecting on my emotions and motivations is something I engage in regularly both on my own and with the support of a therapist, but this process of painting my feelings has been profound and changes the ways in which I think about them. Essentially, I typically get very analytical about my emotions in an interrogative way where I am questioning everything about them - their origins, their validity, how I have expressed them, how I can regulate them better, etc. Painting my feelings however, has given me the space to experience them in a safe and comfortable way. For example, when painting and emotion, I am experiencing it and observing the qualities that it has and then trying to translate it into colors and marks that I am making. It is a very intuitive process.
I plan to do podcast episodes to chat a little more in depth about specific emotions and the experience of painting them in the future as I get closer to releasing the collection, but for now, I want to share a little more about my process and how you can translate this into your own practice in hopes that maybe this would be something that you might want to try or something that could help you in your own creative practice.
Painting Your Feelings Exercise
Feel Your Feelings: This may or may not be the hard part for you. For me, 2020 has been an incredibly emotional year as is, but especially the last 4 years. A lot has happened in the last four years both on the macro scale as an American that has been really challenging for me, but also on the micro in my own life - I started a new job, I got married, became a mother, bought a house, renovated a house, and have been working closely with a therapist to confront decades old trauma that has existed in my family. It has been a lot, so of course I have had and continue to have a LOT of feelings! Culturally, we are conditioned to ignore our feelings and pretend everything is fine. Well, it is 2020 and things are most definitely not fine and if you are feeling not fine, give yourself space and permission to not be fine! Write down all the feelings you are experiencing and if you get to a place where you are feeling like it is too much, phone a trusted friend, family member or therapist.
Write it Down: In trying to conceive how to paint my anger, I first took some time to write and think about adjectives that describe my anger. Some words that describe my anger and inspired my painting were heat, shaking, fury, blood red, sharp, and explosive. If you can, take a moment with your journal to feel whatever emotion you are experiencing in the moment and write down how it feels in your body. Describe it in as much detail as possible.
Visualize it: With the words you have written down describing your emotions, how would you translate those words into colors and marks? What would “explosive” marks look like? What would “heaviness” look like in color or in shape? What color is your loneliness?
Paint it: When painting it, let go of any expectations for how it is supposed to look. Even the image you had in your head, let go of that. Let go of any finished outcome. Just feel the feeling you are painting, have that in your mind, and begin.
Take breaks: Take breaks as you are painting and even reflect on the feeling you are experiencing. What I have found when painting my feelings is that through painting them and observing them, there are oftentimes other emotions tied in with them. For example, in the process of painting my rage, I started to experience and observe sadness and shame, and so those feelings were incorporated into the painting as well. I noticed that in painting my loneliness, there were also feelings of tenderness and longing, and so those feelings were then incorporated into the painting.
Find Support: In the last episode, I talked about having your community you can go to when you want to share about your experiences in your creative practice. This is one of those times where it is good to have support from people that can help you carry the heavy weight. This experience of painting my feelings has been liberating and inspiring for sure, but there was definitely a moment when rage painting that I was starting to feel like I was coming unglued and falling apart. It is definitely good practice to have someone in your corner that you can trust to help you if things get to be too much.
Otherwise, that is all I have for you today! Tune in next week for a guided meditation. If you try this exercise, be sure and share with me how it goes! Send me a message on instagram or share it on your stories and tag me @marcyparksart if you feel inclined. Be sure to follow the podcast and subscribe on whatever streaming platform you are using, and don’t forget to leave a review!
Also be on the lookout for my “There are no ‘Bad’ Feelings” collection coming up on September 5th.
Until next time, friends!
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