Anger Management

I find that nothing improves my mood more than taking a break and doing something with my hands.  Have you tried that? When you’re really stressed or feel like you could hit someone in the face with a chair, step back and do something creative instead.

Last week, the election results back home did it for me.  I won’t go into the details of the political landscape in the Philippines here, as I don’t want anything ugly on my blog.  Suffice it to say that I woke up learning about who won and immediately felt like wringing someone’s neck. So I did the next best thing. I painted.

Here is painting number one:

You might be surprised at the lack of any anger or violent imagery on it.  I didn’t even use strong colors. Well, that’s not how I create. Instead, I channel my energies and turn it into something I like, something that makes me happy.  As I mentioned in an earlier post, I paint to please myself, no one else.  And if earlier efforts don’t make me happy, I paint over it (some of my canvasses have 3-4 layers of experiments on it. haha).

I still wasn’t feeling very peaceful and zen-like after the first painting, so I made a second one.

Now this one, I really like! I had no plan when I started working on this one, I just knew that I wanted a field of flowers so I kept laying one wash after another and then started dabbing at the canvass.  I used all of my favorite cheerful colors on it, and for a final touch, added rich gold.

Here’s how the paintings look on my living room wall:

One day, I shall have them framed properly.  For now, the gallery style framing should do.

Did I work out my anger? Yes, I did!  =)

*forgive the lousy pictures,I gave my DSLR to my dad last year and have been taking pictures with only my iPhone since then.