Hi there!
I wanted to make my first blog post about how I discovered pour-painting, and the impact it has had on my mental health.
But first, a back-story, if you will.
When I was in my early teens, I was diagnosed with clinical depression. At the time, it was more than just the typical "teenage angst"; I felt like I had no purpose, my life was devoid of meaning. I would cry for hours on end, found no joy in anything I did, and I didn't engage with my peers as other children my age did. I found a little checklist in a magazine with boxes for different depression symptoms, and quickly ticked all those boxes. I brought this checklist to my mother, who booked me in to see my doctor. A trip to a child psychologist later, I was diagnosed, and sought counseling.
This was 25 years ago. Since then, I have also been diagnosed with GAD and C-PTSD, as well as several phobias. Suffice it to say, my brain isn't the healthiest part of me.
In the ensuing years, I have struggled with depressive episodes, some of which were relatively minor. Some, however, have been complete trainwrecks wrought with suicidal thoughts and absolute melancholy. In those 25 years, I have also endured several life-changing and debilitating losses: several sexual traumas, a near-death experience, growing up with alcoholism in my family, a stillbirth of my first son and the diagnosis of autism for my second son, and chronic illnesses that have destroyed my physical body as well at my mental state. Might as well throw in a few failed romantic relationships into the mix as well! These conditions have all come together as a recipe for the person I am today, and while those struggles are more than any one person should have to go through, I have overcome many, and still find myself fighting the battles everyday for others.
I have always been a creative person. In high school, I loved to draw pencil sketches, using portrait photos of my favorite celebrities and fictional characters from magazines as reference. I have tried to make music, and played the flute and piccolo throughout my high school years. I tried guitar (and failed), and cannot carry a tune to save my life.
I tried poetry and creative writing, fancying myself a grand auteur-in-waiting. Sadly, this was not to be!
A major turning point in my creative evolution came when I took up photography in my mid-20s. I borrowed a DSLR from my former father-in-law, and quickly found that I enjoyed capturing life in this format. As a child, I liked to play around with my parents' old 35mm, but never really got that involved in it. I knew it was meant to be my passion (at the time), when I entered an image I had taken of several honeybees pollinating apple blossoms into a radio photography contest, and won! My prize was a Samsung point-and-shoot camera, which started me on a long path of discovering this incredible world of photography. Over the next few years, I upgraded that camera with newer models, and learned this art through trial-and-error. I also began dabbling in post-processing using Adobe Photoshop, and then Lightroom. I quickly learned that I was much better with photo editing than I was with actual photo-taking, and became quite adept with the software programs.
In 2008, my grandmother passed away, and left me a small inheritance. I used this sum to purchase my first DSLR of my own, a Nikon D3100. I used this camera for 8 years, learning how to control exposure and focus, light and shadow. In 2015, I upgraded to a newer model, the Nikon D5200, and have been shooting with it ever since. In 2016, I enrolled in an 8-month long, university-level online photography course, and finished with a final grade of 96%. This was a huge accomplishment for me.
However, in the past few years, I have lost some of that passion for photography, and have found myself somewhat uninspired. I took up yarncraft, teaching myself to crochet. But even then, I found this hobby time-consuming and frustrating, although it was a good way for me to unwind while I binge-watched Star Trek on Netflix.
I always found that if I could create something, it would give my life meaning. Being able to make something from rudimentary items always put my mind at ease and helped me process my emotions. With that said, yarncraft just didn't scratch that creative itch, due to using a very patterned structure, and I needed another outlet.
Which brings us to pour-painting.
A colleague of mine at a previous job had gotten into doing pours, and I was dumbfounded by their beauty and intricacy. I watched live videos of her process, and was highly intrigued. It boggled my mind how simply "pouring paint on canvas and moving it around" could be so captivating! Boy, did I underestimate the process!
In the summer of 2019, I decided I was going to give it a try. I was currently in a severe depressive state after feeling lonely, lost and like I was failing miserably at a job I had worked so hard to get. There was no joy left in me, nothing sparked any sort of response for me anymore. I just felt bereft. So, I took a trip to the local dollar store, bought some canvasses, cheap acrylics and white glue (which is a popular method of pouring), and set to work.
My first attempt at pouring was less than stellar, which was to be expected, as I didn't understand what I was doing. I had not done any research on the method, I just kind of dove in, feet first, as I typically do with my creative ventures (I am proudly mostly self-taught for most things I attempt). I sat back and looked at that first piece, and it was terrible.
But I loved it. It made me incredibly happy, seeing how the colors shifted and melded and separated. It felt sort of like all the different parts of who I am, the fractured and broken parts, coalesced to make a beautiful and diverse whole. Those broken parts all came together and made a gorgeous abstract version of me in paint form, and it was just so cathartic and soothing.
I feel this way every time I do a new painting. I live for the pour now, that moment when you have the paint on the canvas and are manipulating it and the colors are doing their own thing. Sometimes, the paint does exactly what you want, but other times, the paint can be rebellious and will defy that vision you had in your head of what you wanted the final product to be.
I have since started using high-quality paints and resins to create my art, rather than the trusty cheap-paint-and-glue I started out with. Some of the pieces are still made using that method, but most of them are done using that more expensive material and it shows.
Another great thing about this method of art is that there have been many instances where I've finished a pour and was happy with it, but over the night or several days, the painting just takes on a life of its own. To me, these are my favorite ones, because I never know what shape the paints will take and what my final end result will be.
I feel this is a good analogy for life: you try to go one way, but fate will put you where you need to be. It might not be what you were expecting, but you can see the beauty and potential in that journey.
I love pouring. It lets me create in a most abstract way. My mental health has improved remarkably since I started doing this, and I find utter joy in being covered in gradients of different colors, head to toe (I still have paint in my hair). I love seeing that final product, and I fall in love with every single piece I make, which is not something that typically happened with other forms of art I've attempted. My fiance will just sit back and watch me work, and he can tell it makes me happy. He's been with me through some pretty rough patches, but now it's time for the light to shine through, which pouring does for me.
Any way, end-of-story: I have had a really tumultuous life and tried several creative outlets, but have finally found the one that truly lets me express myself, and my mind is so much happier for it.
** Above is my first successful pour, which I gifted to my very supportive landlady, Donna, who never fails to inspire me with her own paintings **