"But, don't my paintings have to look ‘real’ to be good?"

Often when we want to begin painting (perhaps for the first time since we left school) we quickly hear something like this in our head… “I can’t draw and I can’t accurately depict a scene or an object. So why bother? Don’t my paintings have to look ‘real’ to be good?”

In response, I wanted to open a world of possibilities you may have never thought about before and hopefully entice you to pick up a paint brush and play.

I’m going to take you for a waltz through a brief look at art history to give you the confidence that painting is open to so many more expressions than simply depicting scenes, people and objects realistically.

The beautiful thing about living in this day and age (meaning, after the industrial revolution) is the world’s view of art has drastically changed. There’s SO much more room to play, explore your curiosities and have fun, rather than get stuck worrying if your every line is ‘right’ and making sure your perspective is always ‘accurate.’

So what changed?

A popular and pivotal movement known as Expressionism emerged at the beginning of the 20th century, originally in Germany. It was one of my favourite ‘isms’ to discover as a young painter. You see, Expressionism went against the idea that art must depict scenes realistically, and instead it embraced presenting more of the directly felt human experience, which included expressing emotions, the appreciation of light, colour, shapes and even personal ideas.

Since then, it’s been widely accepted that art can be much more than just a representation of an object, person or scene.

Before the turn of the century, art had largely been used to represent spiritual or biblical stories, political events and the landscape, but once the camera was invented, it wasn’t so necessary to record these events and it opened the door for painting to be so much more. Back at the turn of the century, the invention of the camera was a pretty big deal.

These days, we’ve got Instagram to capture our memories and important events 🙂 No longer do we have to rely on painting to record or depict events for us, digital cameras and smart phones have got that pretty well covered.

So anyway, all of a sudden it was ok to paint circles on top of squares, just to see how they would look. Artists began wanting to imbue their work with more personal aspects. With their own subjective emotional responses. With what they were feeling or thinking.

Wassily Kandinsky began playing with free form colours, lines and shapes in bright eruptions of playful energy on the canvas.

Piet Mondrian began painting blocks of red, yellow and blue in grids of black and white rectangles.

A bit later, one of my favourites artists, Mark Rothko, simply painted glazes of colour over the top of other glazes of colour, creating what he called ‘colour fields.’ You can check out his incredible paintings in this video. His large canvases seem to vibrate with energy when you stand before them.

So if you perhaps feel like it’s childish or frivolous to play with paint, remember, these enlivening pictures were painted by serious, male artists who desired to express their spirituality, their humanity and their personal values. They were also making discoveries into the way we see and how we appreciate painting. Expressionism was part of a historical shift that’s endured in changing our perception and value of what art is today.

Which thankfully, has paved the way for us to play with paint and joyfully embrace our curiosities (which I’m a very big fan of & I encourage you to try!)

So please don’t let your mind stop you if it throws up the old idea that you can’t paint and create because you can’t make something look ‘real’.

There’s a whole world of painting available to us now.

And the first step can be as simple as the process of pushing paint around, seeing what happens, and being delighted or intrigued by what emerges.

You don’t have to know exactly what you’re doing, you don’t have to know how to draw, you don’t have to make your pictures look ‘real’, you don’t even have to have an idea of what you’re going to paint before you begin.

Until next time, have a creative, playful day.

With love,
Nicola xx

PS. If the process of playing with paint sounds like fun to you, make sure you sign up for our new, beautiful Get Started with Painting & Creativity: Free 10 Day eCourse.

We have a whole mini-module dedicated to playing with paint in an Abstract Painting Date. I walk you through step by step and guide you through the process. Dive in with us! You won’t regret it. The entire painting can be completed on the kitchen table and is a fun change from watching Netflix for the evening 😉 Your soul and creative heart will thank you for it. Join us here.