Mood-altering Substances
They're everywhere
I’m talking all natural, easily accessible, totally free substances. A partial list follows.
Color
Light
Art
Making art
The sun
The moon
Starlight
The ocean
Mountains
Woods
Meditation
Music
So many things! Many of them free!
We just had a rest week from CVP (Nicholas Wilton’s online course). We haven’t been doing so much actual painting as exercises in color, value, etc. Painting in earnest comes this week. For a few months before the course began, I had been working on collages for my August show, “The Art of Joy,” not painting but definitely making art.
This week I’ve been painting more. Hello, old friend! I’ve had this big, 3’x3’ painting on the wall for months. It just wasn’t right. I loved part of it but not all of it. The advice is generally a) expand upon the parts you love OR b) resist the urge to work around what you love and instead, destroy it. Of course I found it extremely difficult to choose “b.” It really is a difficult choice, if you truly love one half of the painting. So I saved the left side and started in on the right, changing it many times over. Now I have what appear to be two separate paintings on one canvas. No no no! This is not okay. But since the situation must be remedied, I now have more opportunity to enjoy the effects of painting on my brain and therefore my mood.
I also started working on four small paintings, with the idea of creating spare but beautiful pieces with paint, ink, and pencils, perhaps some bits of painted tissue paper, lots of different marks and lots of white space. They are still viable but they’re not quite there yet.
Still. It’s the doing that is mood-altering. The colors, as the paint goes down, light up my eyes and my brain, as do the marks, as they proceed along. The doing, the seeing, the movement. All of these are parts of what it is about making art that can lift you up. Even when you end up with a dog’s breakfast, you’d likely have to admit that while you were doing what you did, your mood lifted a tick. You might just shake your head at the result, wait for it to dry or wipe it off, and go at it again. Yay! More paint! More color! More mark-making! More joy! Possibly another mess, at the end of that day, but you probably would have to admit that you enjoyed doing it.
At the museum, sure, it’s the seeing that is mood-altering. There, we’re not doing. We’re looking. We’re soaking it all up. At the museum, by the sea, in the mountains, in the woods, at the lake. This goes for all those mood-altering substances on my small list. We’ve had lots of rain lately and this morning, from my nest, my east-facing bedroom with lots of trees and leaves just outside the windows, the sun was once again totally covered with clouds. But suddenly, out it came a-dancing! La! Lighting up the redbud leaves in my window frame, piercing through everything. One has to smile in that moment. It made such a brief appearance today, but I’d have to say that I went from subdued and thoughtful to elated, lickety-split.
We all experience this. Who doesn’t get a little jumpstart to their day on a bright, beautiful morning? Who doesn’t love a star-filled sky in a place that has few lights to compete? Who doesn’t draw in a quick breath at the full moon, especially when it’s low on the horizon or high in the sky with a ring around it?
There are so many ways to alter your mood. Meditating on a good question, picking up a paintbrush, walking out into the rain-soaked world, biting into a perfectly ripe juicy peach, letting “Ode to Joy” wash over you, watching sunlight sparkle on a lake, scribbling away with crayons—all of these and so many more will do it.
All completely free, entirely natural, and totally legal.
“If you ask me what I came to do in this world, I, an artist, will answer you: I am here to live out loud.” - Emile Zola
“We don't make mistakes, just happy little accidents.” - Bob Ross
“Dream delivers us to dream, and there is no end to illusion. Life is like a train of moods like a string of beads, and, as we pass through them, they prove to be many-colored lenses which paint the world their own hue. . . . ” - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Check out my Ampersand Cards website for greeting cards with my original writing and art, plus small paintings and collages.
If someone shared this letter with you, click the button below to subscribe for free! You’ll find all my poems here. Finally, if you’d like to check out my 365 Day Index Card art practice, click here.
Thanks for listening,
Kay
P.S. MerryThoughts is the name of my first book, out of print at the moment. The word is a British one, referring both to a wishbone and to the ritual of breaking the wishbone with the intention of either having a wish granted or being the one who marries first, thus the “merry thoughts.”