Intuitive painting is what tickles me and captures my curiosity. Often there are layers in the paintings that want to tell me something – I see it as a communication with my subconscious. Animals, women, flowers appear, often representing or symbolizing ongoing processes. A kind of mental cleansing. An emptying.
During the autumn I met a new teacher who allowed me to let go – who could hold me through old layers, shadows, and what you might call a kind of hypnosis. Wide awake and fully conscious. And there the painting began to change. The eye seeks a different kind of contrast, a sharpness, sharp lines, straight forms. Nuances that taste like something. And at the same time it was so murky – like stirring up sand from the bottom of a lake. The paintings didn’t “come” in the same way. So I gave my consciousness a task and a theme: Safety.
What does safety feel like? What is safety? Is safety the opposite of curiosity? Can something be safe and curious at the same time?
In the layers of color – intuitively drawn toward blue, green and brown – roses appear. Roses I see in inner images from wallpaper, large medallions in grand salons. Nuances that take me to other times – the fifties, the eighties. Safety that unfolds in bedrooms. Coffee cups in bed, roses on the nightstand. Roses on bed linen. Stories playing out in bedrooms. On pink wall-to-wall carpet. Pine furniture. The curiosity at the dressing table, scents, tastes. And all of this comes out in the paintings. Intuitive painting. Surrealist. Tickling. Because if the paintings stop tickling me, they might as well be a photograph.
Let it be unpolished and messy and true – Maha Rose
