Lockdown Live art sessions

 As an Artist Lockdown has actually been a time of reestablishing myself as an Artist. Thanks to my husband I had actually done a couple of on site live art sessions just before Lockdown happened. I was invited to a church in Yorkshire to paint live at the evening conference of a well known speaker who was actually a musician in a past live.

I was so nervous before I started I had not painted live for maybe over 10 years, I had a vague idea of what I was going to paint but nothing complete in my mind like I like to have when I paint live which is not often. Thankfully I was not in the front of everyone the band were but I was to the side, nevertheless everyone could clearly see me. A good friend of mine came up to me and said just treat it like your having fun or playing with God. So that is exactly what I did. Besides not painting live for over 10 years.

The last time I had picked up a paint brush had been when I designed our wedding invitation 18 months previously.

I had quite a few painting gigs booked after that, I thought yey I am really going to be able to get myself out there.........................................

And then Lockdown happened and that was that, my whole life was being postoned and like the rest of the world everything grinded to a halt and I along with the rest of the world went into hedgehog mode (incidentally one of my favorite animals but that is for another blog) for a moment.

Until I realised that life had to go on and we needed to adapt. I was in the shower (how many of us have have our best ideas in the shower) one morning and all of a sudden I got a picture of a canvas, one that was lying in my studio which granted I had not done much in recently.

I had an impression from the holy spirit; at this point I need to explain that I am a Christian and I attribute most of the majority to the spiritual source who I call Jesus, the Holy Spirit or The father. I this impression showed me that I was to paint 3 nuggets of gold or treasure and they were to symbolise that God can even bring his glory out of a terrible disease called Corona which we are still living through at the present.

The voice (God's holy spirit) showed me that I was to paint live on facebook. True I was not going to be able to do the painting gigs I had booked but I could do my painting online.

Then throughout the summer I went live every week and did some live painting. The first time was nerve wracking to say the least, still it was just me in my studio and my camera.

Despite my lack of equipment there was still quite a lot to sort out like the lighting and the angle of the painting. Then making sure that all the social media channels were right. Then there was getting the word out there that I was going to go live. It was amazing that it didn't take long to get a small following who tuned in most weeks.

One painting turned into two paintings and the sessions included my musings or ramblings about what was going on in the world and how I felt about what I was painting. The second painting was of a lion and lamb and there will be a blog on that in the near future.

It was a really raw account of how I found painting online.

It is quite a vulnerable experience to know that although the people who are watching are not in the same room as you and they are not going to comment, there is the thought at the back of your mind of what do they think. Do people like it? I have learnt though that you can't stay there. The truth is some people will love what I do and some people will hate it and that's just the way it is and one needs to come to terms with that as an artist.

The truth is despite it being challenging and vulnerable I enjoyed doing the live sessions and I know that people miss them so I am going to be bringing them back starting this saturday at 5pm. I have a lot of christmas cards to paint so I will be starting there but it will be an opportunity to comment, message and even come on instagram as my guest.

If you would like to be a guest on my Lockdown Live Art sessions on Instagram then do let me know and we can have a chat. I look forward to seeing you online very soon :)