11 January 2022

Colors of the Heart: Meditating on Emotions

As mentioned in a previous post, I have had a predilection for hearts since early childhood. When I visited beloveds in the summer of 2016 and learned that they would regularly ask each other, "how does your heart feel?", naturally, the ritual resonated with me. When I returned home from my visit, I introduced the ritual to the new relationship that I was in. The question morphed into "What’s the color of your heart?" which still explored the feelings in the heart, but with emphasis on the colors. I knew I wanted to bring this ritual to my artwork, and in typical form for me, something deeper was drawing me to this.

On September 1, 2016, I used markers to create a heart to reflect how I was feeling that day. The next day, I used paint to create another heart. On the third day, alcohol ink was the medium used to create another heart. I enjoy working with collections in art, creating menageries, so after posting the first three on social media and seeing the response to them, I knew there was something here to explore further, so I decided to make this a daily ritual for the whole month. Each day, I would tune into the feelings in my heart, the colors would emerge, the medium would come to me, and a little heart was created, posted online, and added to the growing pile of finished hearts. It wasn’t until the following February that I brought together all 30 hearts into a single piece of artwork. In September 2017, I embarked on the same month-long ritual and tied those 30 hearts together into a single piece of artwork in February 2018. These 2 separate rituals yielded:

 

"Colors of the Heart 2"
"Colors of the Heart"

Some of these hearts reflect general feelings of the day, while others reflect very specific beings or events. In the time since then, I can’t see hearts in artwork without thinking about these 2 pieces. They are ever-present in my mind’s eye. Both chapters of the experience were transformative. Little did I know then that this was the beginning of an awakening, as contemplating patterns and colors of the heart would help me overcome the lifelong obstacle of expressing my emotions to others.

Featured in this post: Colors of the Heart 2 and Colors of the Heart
All current artwork can be found in my profile at Fine Art AmericaThank you for your time and your support.