‘A Falling Romance’ Oil on Canvas, 100 x 150 cm
Painting on a large scale involves using your legs.
Not only do you stand at the easel but in Alexander Technique speak you have to use your monkey. That is to bend at the hips and knees to get into deep squats. Monkey is a must if you are not going to end up with back ache as a painter of large canvases. (An Alexander Technique teacher will show you how powerful your monkey is!)
Walking back into your back to get a distance perspective also helps. Walking backwards away from the easel is a chance to connect the arms deeply into your back to flick paint, smear, scratch, dab and throw paint as you move forward and up again into the painting.
Staying active up and out of the hips, legs and feet to move while you work is also essential. Move with the paint to let it flow.
Dance like a butterfly, paint like a bee!
This style, as used in ‘A Falling Romance’ could be described as action painting or whole body painting. It is exhilarating, gestural, fun and messy. A bit like pogo dancing at a punk concert – you just have to let go, go for it and not really care!
Inevitably beautiful passages of paint get lost in the craziness of the process.
Creativity, destruction, flow …
Let’s go…
If you want to let go more in your creativity adventure with a bit of Alexander Technique thinking thrown in, why not sign up for my free creativity e-course.
It’s fun – 8 emails over 8 days to get you thinking a little differently … hopefully!
It may be a good place to start and was written with love … link below
In the meantime – here is a monkey (ok a chimp)
Darwin, Oil on Canvas, 40 x 50 cm
Link to my free creativity e-course below
To start learning Alexander Technique click here