I enjoyed engaging in an ongoing, evolving process. I was able to put down my painting, take a break, revisit it. I liked documenting the process so I could watch its transformation. It reminded me of watching plants grow in time lapse in a nature documentary. It was constantly becoming something new, emerging, yet each stage drew on and incorporated what came before it. There was cloaking, revealing, hiding, emerging. I enjoyed the freedom to cover over what I did not like and start anew. At one point I got so frustrated with how it was turning out, I crumpled up the page. That ended up provided beautiful texture for the later stages of my painting. It was interesting to hear other peers in class discuss how it was hard for them to paint over their work. It felt like loss and having to let go of something precious.
Interestingly, I edited my documentation process. There were certain stages I simply did not like. I found them unsettling and ugly, and ended up deleting the photos of those stages off my phone. I just wanted to present the beautiful, but in doing that I left out major shifts and layers of the story. It was ironic that I was accepting the concept of a messy, authentic, evolving journey, but then wanted to manicure and mask what others could see of my process. I also think it was interesting I wanted to pretend that the ‘ugly’ parts never even happened. The El Duende process gives you the freedom to cover and change what you do not like, but that was not enough. I didn’t want to just edit the final product, I wanted to alter the process itself. The El Duende provided an affective and perceptual experience, as I was moved by my work as I created it. It was a continuous cycle of being surprised by what emerged, feeling strongly, and continuing the conversation with the piece.
I see this process as a valuable way to process and document a symbolic, metaphorical healing journey over the long term. This made me think of people recovering from substance abuse. Recovery is a life long journey and the fact there is no moment when the process painting is ‘done’ lends itself well to exploring the process. Like the process of transforming an El Duende painting, recovery involves enormous loss. It is a journey full of ups, downs, successes, failures, progress, set backs, pride, and shame. Recovery involves moments you want to share and moments you want to hide, parts of yourself that you want to keep close and want to reveal. Abbe Miller discussed in her presentation how continual visual documentation supports memory and awareness. It creates a story of impermanence, letting go, growth, gestation, incubation, and evolving, multiple meaning (Miller, 2020).
Reference:
Miller, A. (2020) One-Canvas Method in Art Therapy -Research Presentation https://youtu.be/EOSRdek2STI
