Love and charcoal
The first action of self-love that I did about two years ago, when I deliberately decided to start making art, was buying some charcoal to study and understand how to draw a face.
That was the very precise moment when I realised that I wanted to dedicate some of my time for a passion that had to be just mine. Not for my office, not for my husband, not for my children.
But just for Elisa.
Why charcoal? Because it’s the most forgiving medium, and if you make a mistake you can go back and try again simply rubbing it off from the paper.
Two years later, I still relate the learning of new skills to the use of charcoal and dry media. So I’ve decided to challenge myself in new skills and I will spend 100 days drawing figures in charcoal, trying to get looseness in the anatomy, without giving too much evidence to details.
And since I am a perfectionist, a bit of forgiveness is what I really need to balance my continuous tendency to self-judgement.
Gesture, movement, expressivity. These are my goals, and here some of the works of the first week.
Just black dust on a newspaper pad.
I also keep working on my series of huge paintings dedicated to meaningful female characters in literature. After Anna Karerina, Eve and Catherine Earnshaw Linton in Wuthering Heights, I have a crowded list of extraordinary women that I would love to paint and celebrate on canvas.
I will let my instinct guide me, and I will follow the order that better suits me, exclusively based on my intuition.
Will I be bold in colours and brushstrokes?
Or I’ll go tight?
Every moment is a choice, an opportunity.
Every movement of wrist, hand, arm and shoulder is a manifestation of the freedom that fills my mind, and I manifest my unconditional love for the woman I am.
The imperfect woman. The only one I will ever have!