Writing, painting, and drawing are linked….

‘Loving ourselves through the process of owning our own story is the bravest thing we’ll ever do’   Brene Brown

Extracts from Living Color: Painting, Writing, and the Bones of Seeing by Natalie Goldberg

Writing, painting, and drawing are linked. Don’t let anyone split them apart, leading you to believe you are capable of expression in only one form. The mind is much more whole and vast than that.

I took my paints and the fountain pen I used for writing and I sat in front of my friend Gini’s funky adobe higher up on the hill. I first drew that house with my pen and then colored the drawing in with my paints. I found out that the pen’s ink ran with the watercolors.

I was delighted one day to paint an adobe house blue. Stepping through the belief that I must paint mud brown, I experienced an explosion of energy and freedom. It was as though that blue paint were a sword slashing through illusion,

I painted the sky red instead. I painted Jazz yellow. He was a brown dog but yellow expressed him better. Color became fluid. Leaves did not have to be green. I added turquoise, then mixed blue with black and splashed on navy, which added a touch of melancholy— after all, it was the end of summer.