Listening through the Layers

The first steps include spilling out personal pain through mixed media art.

When the page looks "done" add layers of paint and name the insight gained.

  (Mixed media) art journaling helps one listen for meaning, experience healing, and (re)experience the creativity of being a child. It is during the process of art that one is “helped to remember some of the glorious things we have forgotten, and some of the terrible things we are asked to endure” (L'Engle, Walking on Water).  Artist Robert Henri argued that “art tends towards balance, order, judgment of relative values, the laws of growth, [and] the economy of living—very good things for anyone to be interested in.” In explaining what he called “the art spirit,” Henri proposed that the arts were invented to capture—or express—the significant moments in life which are those moments of greatest happiness, wisdom, and vision. He called art “sign-posts on the way to what may be[;] sign-posts toward greater knowledge” (Henri, The Art Spirit). One of the great benefits of mixed media art and theological reflection is that the process provides a time, a space, and a place (the art journal) to listen. Listening opens a path to healing. 
 

Dump Sheet Self-Portrait

"Dump Sheet Self-Portrait" is a modified idea from Journal Spilling: Mixed Media Techniques for Free Expression by Diana Trout. Her concept is to identify your (self) critic through art. I like the concept, but the emphasis is negative and I prefer to emphasize the positive. "Dump Sheet Self-Portrait" begins by "dumping" the negative self-talk but then "flips" the negative to a positive to complete the mixed media reflection.

Begin by "dumping" internal/self-talk about a specific topic/theme.

Draw your head, neck, shoulders & cut out & paste onto page.

My "dump sheet" theme was the negative self-talk I found myself doing regarding my re-entering the world of writing. I have written countless articles and published several books, but I am re-entering after being out of that loop for a decade. I realized all of my self-talk was negative and needed to be dumped and replaced with positive.  This exercise was helpful to identify the self-talk as being negative and to intentionally replace the negative with the positive.

Paint the background and add bold words that counter the dump sheet. Top with more layers of paint.

Embellish with stamping.

Collage items in the background. [Add facial features; see top photo.]

Journal Spilling Dates Are Good

Choose a topic, event, person, or place and use your journal to "spill" all your thoughts, ideas, feelings, experiences related to what you have named. This example is "journal spilling" on the specific activities I did with my husband on our 48-hour date weekend to Cabo San Lucas. We had two days (Saturday & Sunday) to cram the R&R that we have previously leisurely had over two weeks; not two days. The exposed words on the altered book page "Acknowledgments" and "Staying in Touch" were the catalyst for the reflection and "journal spilling" about our date weekend which brought a favorite expression of mine to mind: DATES ARE GOOD. We often list our "top 10" best and least favorite memories when we take a significant plane or road trip. That tradition helped me to begin by naming the blessings of this short trip in the middle of the page. The brick pattern emulates the patio outside our hotel room, and the flower sandwiched between thin pieces of art paper and glued as an embellishment is the Esperanza (hope) flower my husband brought me from one of his his early morning hikes on the bill behind the hotel. Collectively, after spending time spilling and artsying up the pages, I was struck with the significance of time together--even much shorter than our usual/what we would have preferred--was SACRED SPACE. Journaling reminded me of the important of time together, and also has become a visual memory of that beautiful time.

Exposed words in an altered book.

Esperanza flowers sandwiched/glued  between art paper.

"Brick" shapes carved out of wine corks and used to imprint acrylic in a brick pattern.

The overall theme: SACRED SPACE painted with watercolor & a stencil.