Training Creativity

Creativity can be expressed in so many ways.  In order to unlock the secret depths of our creativity, I invited my friend Peter to come with me to a session led by Johanna Hartung in Salzburg.   She is an abstract artist, art therapist and has trained extensively as a psychotherapist.  I had met her last year while she was passionately throwing paint at a white carpet and creating very colorful "canvases". The process intrigued me and I decided to give it a try.  Also, it looked like a lot of fun (more...)

We arrived at the austere, warehouse-type studio and changed into leggings and a sweatshirt, put on shoes, gloves and a head scarf - Johanna assuring us that paint-in-motion has a tendency to land everywhere, which, indeed, it eventually did. She gave us a brief introduction to the techniques, and asked us about our motives or rather, what we expected to get out of the session.  I think our answers were pretty inconsequential at the time.

And then the fun began:  with Pink Floyd blasting from the speakers, each one of us attacked the paint pots:  Peter started mixing and throwing paint at the canvas in a very concentrated fashion, perspiration soon beading from his brow, stepping back, moving forward, mixing and throwing.

I plunged my hands in two pots and felt the sensual consistency of the paint on my hands, scooping it out and spreading it onto the canvas or sprinkling bits of color over the canvas.

After about 90 minutes, we were both quite exhausted.
Stepping back, we each considered the artistic qualities of our masterworks.

The results was surprising to each one of us.  Would we do it again?  Anytime!

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